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Early life[edit]
Jones was raised in Cascade Heights, Atlanta by her parents, Mack and Barbara Jones, who both participated in civil rights struggles in the 1960s. They went on to gain PhDs in social sciences and became professors at Clark College. Her father taught political science at Atlanta University while her mother taught economics at Clark College. She recalls growing up following the Civil Rights Movement in America and being very aware of her race, given books featuring black children and playing with black dolls. Jones, whose name means 'she is prepared' in Swahili, has 2 brothers in her immediate family. She also has 2 sisters from a previous marriage of her father's. Jones and her sisters were raised apart and her sisters served as inspiration for Jones' novel Silver Sparrow.

Jones grew up during the Atlanta Child Murders (she was eight when the murders began) and describes it as "the most significant event of my childhood." Two of her classmates at Oglethorpe Elementary were killed: Yusuf Bell, the son of Camille Bell, and Terry Pue. Camille Bell would later help organize the Committee To Stop Children's Murders in response to the murders. Jones' experience of growing up during this time would serve as inspiration for her first novel Leaving Atlanta.

After graduating from Benjamin Mays High School, Jones attended Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta. Jones' desire to be a writer was fostered at Spelman by influential mentors and her reading of authors that would shape her world-view and inspire her own personal expression. She studied with Pearl Cleage, who after graduating from Spelman in 1971 joined the faculty as a writer and playwright in residence. As a sixteen-year-old self-described "little whippersnapper," Jones attended arts gathering at Cleage's house dubbed 'Live At Club Zebra;' these gatherings inspired Jones' desire to pursue an artistic and expressive life. Johnetta Cole, the first black female President of Spelman, also served as a role model for Jones: "The day I arrived on campus as a first-year student was the day that our Sister President, Johnnetta B. Cole, stepped into her historic position. Before this, I don’t think I had ever seen a black woman in a significant leadership position. I had never considered that possibility." It was at Spelman that Jones first read Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: 'in college I started to see that so many of the theories of power I understood about race also applied to gender. It changed me. I would never be the same. And Song of Solomon was a big part of that epiphany." Jones graduated from Spelman in 1991 and went on to complete a master's degree in English from University of Iowa in 1994 and a MFA in fiction from Arizona State University in 2000. She has received many fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Radcliffe Institute, and United States Artists.