Let me say, I am not one to follow the trends. I have my own mind and the books folks rave about I will gladly wait for the paperback or for ebook to go one sale.
Yet, I became caught in the wave of reading Kin before I l knew it. I put a hold on the novel via Libby — it responded with a 12 week notification. I was thinking it would be about summer before I would be able to glance at the pages. I was surprised when I saw it was available.
I finished it in a week. I became obsessed, reading the Libby copy and listening to the audiobook while driving.
I held the novel like a friend, the characters, neither Annie Kay nor Niecey, my blood, still, they became kin.
This novel is set in the dirty South during the 1950s. Jim Crow was still at its height in the story’s setting of Louisiana, as it was in all across southern America. Both of them are bound by the fact that they are motherless daughters although they are raised by the women in their families, they are still searching for the love only a mother can give.
And as all young girls looking for love no parent had given, they find their version of it in the most wild of places.
After graduation, or in Annie Kay’s case, before, life takes them on two different paths. Both take the world headstrong, though naïve. They communicate through letters as if they were still little girls playing in the grass. They gather, when they need on another the most.
After reading, you’ll want to call your friends. Ponder on those who actually deserve the title. Does friendship exist anymore? Those that you knew from the cradle or the story time rug in school. Is friendship defined by time? Or the effort to keep the union.
When I reached the end of the book, I had to reread the pages, it left me hanging in a way that reminded me of Toni Morrison. Tayari, had be reading riddles. I thought of Sula too, how they were separated for most of the book and still, neither could be whole without the other.
‘Blood alone can’t give you kinship’
‘Don’t you want dignity? There’s no life without it’
‘Money ain’t the root of evil — it’s envy’
“Spirits can be hardheaded and hold grudges — purposely missing their ride to the next place
‘I struggled to decide if secrets and lies were twins, regular sisters, or just cousins’
Tayari Jones is a New York Times best-selling author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage. Published in 2018, An American Marriage was also an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and even appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list.
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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