When Niecy was an infant, her father killed her mother. When Annie was an infant, her mother abandoned her. It’s these girls’ shared loss that blossoms into an unexpected friendship in “Kin,” the long-awaited new novel from award-winning author Tayari Jones, which takes place in the segregated town of Honeysuckle, Louisiana.
It is the March selection for Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.
As her characters grow, Jones alternates between character perspectives, following Niecy’s choice to attend Atlanta’s Spelman College, and Annie’s choice to go searching for her mother in Memphis. Portraying their bond as that of a “found family,” she draws on the experiences of losing friends during the pandemic, and honoring them as the “other love stories in our lives.”
“With friendship, you constantly have to recommit,” Jones said. “And [Niecy and Annie] continue to do that, even though the world takes their lives in very different directions.”
Jones said she didn’t intend on writing a novel set in the ‘50s, instead promising her publisher a “novel about modern Atlanta.” However, when writing sessions proved fruitless, she turned to her own past, attempting to tell a story she found intimate and “necessary,” yet simultaneously unfamiliar.
“[The ‘50s] is the era of my own mother, and I realized that I moved to Atlanta because I wanted to get to know my mother as one grown woman to another,” Jones said. “I think this journey into this historical moment — you know, my mother was a child activist in the civil rights movement. It really was my effort to get to know her, [and] give myself context for understanding my mother.”
In exploring the theme of Black motherhood, Jones also hopes to dispel the common stereotype of Black women being “endlessly maternal,” especially during a time with less access to safe contraception and abortion. While Annie has a vision of her absent mother as one big “hug,” Niecy’s Aunt Irene is defined not by motherly care, but by the awkward emotional disconnect of being forced to care for her niece due to unexpected circumstances.
With this grounded framing, Jones hopes readers walk away with an understanding of the “full range of life and humor and love and heartbreak” present in the Black experience, even during times of racial division. If Jones has it her way, the historical depth of Kin’s storytelling will lend the novel well to “multi-generational book clubs.”
“The old folks do not like to tell us what they really went through, what they felt,” Jones said. “And perhaps in talking about a book, we can share, because we cannot gather wisdom from one another if we don’t tell each other what is going on.”
Tayari Jones will be discussing “Kin” at the Brattle Theatre on Thursday, March 5, at 6 p.m. Click here for more information.
Guest
- Tayari Jones, award-winning author of “Kin”
