Vernice and Annie, both motherless, grow up in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, and are best friends.
Annie’s mother left her as a baby to be raised by her grandmother, so this absence is something that Annie carries throughout her entire life and colours all her decisions. Vernice’s mother was killed by her father in a murder suicide, and her progressive aunt returns to raise her. However, at age 18 Vernice and Annie take different paths and are fated to live starkly different lives.
Annie is fixated on finding her mother. She has an address in Memphis and sets off with three other small-town escapees. A broken car sees them living and working in a brothel to earn money and Annie connects with Lulabelle who becomes a protecting mother figure.
Vernice goes to Spelman College and forms connections but discovers a world of affluence with its tight ties of expectation and inequality
I love the friendship between these two women. It is deep, naive and complex. The letters they write to each other are a great way to cover many years and aspects of their lives and to read it in their rich, colloquial language is a treat. All the characters have great depth; duty is a strong theme along with sacrifice for family. Safety and security at all costs is also examined with heartbreaking results.
I thoroughly enjoyed Kin. When characters take up residence in my heart and whisper to me, I know they will remain long after the final page. Kin drips with the American South on every page and I found it a wonderful place to visit.
Reviewed by Nicola Skinstad
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. An American Marriage was an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his year-end roundup. The novel was awarded the Aspen Words Prize and an NAACP Image Award. It has been published in two dozen countries.
Jones, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016.
Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
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