Kin: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK •
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR
“Tayari Jones’s storytelling washed over me like a trip back home. . . . Kin is a masterpiece of a novel that will live with you long after you turn the last page.” —Oprah Winfrey
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR
“Tayari Jones’s storytelling washed over me like a trip back home. . . . Kin is a masterpiece of a novel that will live with you long after you turn the last page.” —Oprah Winfrey
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
BUY THE BOOK
Join a book club that is reading Kin: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel!
Community Reviews
Tayari has written a non-traditional love story or maybe even a series of love stories beautifully woven together through the lives of two characters of precarious beginnings. There are so many quotes but the truest of them all might be "Atlanta is a black soap opera".
Chapter 1 was a slow start, but the rest held me in subtle captivation. I wanted Verneice and Annie to win, to have their mother hunger satisfied. I suppose they were filled in other ways and redefined the importance of other relationships.
"We are motherless and naked, like peas without a pod."
Abandonment, shame, trauma, survival, resilience, self-discovery, growth, disappointment, acceptance, change, love, loyalty.
If anyone asked what this book is about, I would use no less than all of these words to describe it.
What I loved about Kin was the illustration of the depth and importance of the bond among chosen family. While Niecy and Annie may have gone down very different paths in life and even drifted apart, there was no denying that they forever connected. Although the outcome between the two novels is vastly different, I couldn't help but think of Nikki May's This Motherless Land.
Another plus for me was the history of HBCUs interwoven into the story.
It’s a sin. It’s a shame. It’s a scandal. Their lives have never been fair; they have always been on the opposite sides of the table. Annie Kay Henderson is the daughter of Hattie Lee, who wasn’t cut out for mothering, and the granddaughter of Irvina Henderson, who couldn’t cut out of mothering. Vernice Irene Davis McHenry–Niecy–is the daughter of Arletha Irene Merriweather Davis, who was murdered before she had a chance to be a mother, and the niece of Irene Merriweather, who never wanted to be a mother but did the best she could. Niecy’s first word is mother, and Annie thinks it will be the last word she says before they put her in the dirt. Although they are born cradle friends, they take different tines at the fork in the road.
But what you have in common isn’t what binds you. Hearts grow strings out of shared knowledge, and experience to knit together the gaps of loss for what’s gone missing. Love is both the needle and thread that repair and the quilt in need of mending. Like a bolt of yellow flowered fabric or silk in the clearance bin because of a rip or tear. Kinship lines the blossoms up just right and uses stitches so tiny they vanish into the pattern.
"We come to love people in many ways. Much is made of the burning love that hits like a smoldering remnant of a star hurled down to earth. Yet this is not the only type of love any more than the camellia is the only flower. There is the love that blooms from decency, and from that love, passion." There is the love that blooms from dignity, and from that love, friendship, kinship. "Love requires bravery, but it fortifies you at the same time. I don’t know anything else in the world that gives back the exact same treasure it demands."
Next of kin is part of being a doctor. Even a dentist has to ask. But why do they say it? Is there a second next? A last of kin? The truest kin are not necessarily related by blood but those who give us mother-love. Kin isn’t just the people you’re related to, it’s how you feel when you’re with them. They are the women who do not know us from Eve, but love us with the care that people save for kin, those who show us that you can love a stranger as deep as you can love somebody you’ve known for years. Receiving their friendship is akin to Favor. Aunts, grandmothers, sisters, roommates, lovers, girlfriends are our next of kin, and Tayari Jones’ Kin is a tribute to that sisterhood.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.