Book Buzz: Kin by Tayari Jones

southernbooklady

1 month ago

“There are only so many stories out there—people say seven—but for me, the question is always: what is the question I want to ask?…In Kin, the question I was interested in interrogating is the idea of searching for one’s mother. The classic story tells us, of course you search for your mother. If someone says, I don’t know where my mother is, we frame it as a brave quest to find her. But I wanted to question that impulse. Is it always better to know? Is it okay not to know? Can we learn to be satisfied with not knowing? In real life, people can be satisfied with what they have. In real life, you can marry someone who isn’t the person you once dreamed of and still have a good life. In a story, that’s often treated as an unpardonable compromise. I’m trying to bring into story life the wisdom we already know from real life.”
― Tayari Jones, Interview, She Reads

What booksellers are saying about Kin

Vernice and Annie, best friends and loyal companions since infancy, leave their hometown of Honeysuckle, Louisiana on very different life trajectories. Jones vividly describes their journeys, allowing the reader to feel deeply each of the bumps along the road as Vernice attends Spelman College in Atlanta and Annie desperately seeks to establish a relationship with her birth mother in Memphis. The powerful bond that these friends maintain across the miles and the years reminds us that we don’t have to be biologically related in order to be “kin.”
― Burch, Righton Books, St Simons Island, Georgia | BUY
What a fantastic novel! I finished this book last week and I am STILL thinking about it. This is such an important story about daughters without mothers. Tayari’s writing pulls you in the moment you begin the story. My heart and soul went out to Vernice and Annie. Seeing them attempt to conquer life and find love while searching for a mother’s love captures you from beginning to end. A story about the complexities of female relationships, especially among Black women. I cannot wait to put this book into as many hands as possible.
― Kala, M. Judson, Booksellers, Greenville, South Carolina | BUY
I’ve been waiting a long time for a new Tayari Jones novel and this one was worth the wait. I was mesmerized by the stories of Niecy and Annie and a bond that is closer than blood. The novel made me examine who my own “kin” are and how I can honor that bond. As always with Jones, I also loved the Atlanta setting. Atlanta feels like a character of its own and I love it!
― Kandi, Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, Arkansas | BUY
In Kin, Tayari Jones has written an absolute glory of a novel: one that explores friendship, family, the ties that bind and so much more through the lens of two friends – both motherless girls in the small town of Honeysuckle, Louisiana – and the different paths their lives follow. Niecy, orphaned as a baby and raised by her convention-defying aunt, has her sights set upwards – towards Spelman College and the upper echelons of Black society in 1950s Atlanta. In contrast, her “cradle friend” Annie lights out to the bars and clubs of Memphis in search of the mother who abandoned her as a newborn. Told with joy, wit, and pathos, and wearing its erudition lightly, Kin is a novel to savor and enjoy.
― Jude, Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi | BUY

About Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta.

Share: