Kin by Tayari Jones

Description

Tayari Jones has a superpower when it comes to writing novels about complex relationships. This is apparent in her earlier work, like Silver Sparrow and An American Marriage–the latter of which was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2018, but in Kin that power is heightened by the brilliant and troubled lives of Annie and Niecy.

The two girls call themselves “cradle friends,” but truly feel more like sisters. Each was born into difficult circumstances. While Niecy’s mother was murdered by her father, who then killed himself, Annie’s mother abandoned her. Their upbringing, raised by kin who did their best, is a mirror of one another. Niecy has support and makes her way from Honeysuckle, Louisiana, to Spelman College, where the fullness of life is on display for the first time. She is no longer the precious orphaned daughter, but someone who works hard, gets ahead, and falls in with Civil Rights activists while finding love for the first time. In parallel chapters, Annie runs away from home before graduation day, hopeful that she can find her way to her missing mother and a life of belonging she’s never felt.

Told in alternating chapters and locations, we see these girls become women who, despite distance and time and wildly divergent lives, remain committed to one another in the way only chosen family can be. Simply, Kin is a masterpiece. Lovers of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston will especially love this book.