Review | ‘Kin’ by Tayari Jones: a tale of love, loss and sisterhood

In Kin, the latest offering from Women’s Prize-winning author Tayari Jones, childhood friends Vernice and Annie are bound by a quirk of fate early in their lives: the former is left motherless by domestic violence, the latter by abandonment. Set against the realities of the American South in the mid-20th century, among other things, the novel is the story of two cradle sisters by accident, kin by choice. Jones grips you from the opening lines — “My first word was mother. Not ma-ma like other babbling babies. I said the word out loud and with texture. MOTHER.” — and never really lets go. The girls grow up bosom friends, with “the care you save for kin”, but what will define them is the distinct ways in which they grow around their lack of motherly love (if you have ever experienced it, you can never “forget the fragrance” Vernice says), and the vastly different opportunities offered to them. When ‘hearts grow strings’Vernice’s maternal aunt, Irene, never wanted to be a mother and has to sacrifice her hard-won freedom, but she is determined to give her niece a better life. And so it is that Vernice (or Niecy, which is Annie’s affectionate nickname for her) enrols at Spelman College in Atlanta after high school. There, she will pledge for a sorority of well-connected and wealthy Black women, and marry into one of these families even as she cannot shake off self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and what it is she truly wants but hasn’t allowed herself to feel or even consider. Author Tayari Jones | Photo Credit: www.tayarijones.com Annie, on the other hand, has her strict Granny who does her best but can never get within even touching distance to fill the gaping, aching chasm of absence, neglect, and want, in the daughter of her daughter. Annie’s obsession with the woman who had her, then left her, will take her through rural Louisiana in a far more perilous and disjointed journey. And yet, even through the disparate journeys they embark upon before finding their way back to each other, the girls’ bonds of sisterhood hold steadfast. As Kin tells us, “what you have the same isn’t what binds you”. What binds you to someone is “what you know that’s the same, what happened to you that’s the same”. When what you want is the same, that is when “hearts grow strings”. And, so, through the ups and downs of the choices they make, Annie remains the one who gave Vernice the “name that people call if they really [know her]”, while Niecy remains Annie’s ride-or-die constant; each keeping the other from “being the thing [they] most didn’t want to be”. Intimate narrativeThis is a story about many things but chief among them is love. Sisterly love, motherly love, familial love, romantic love, the love we choose and the one that chooses us. The one we cannot shake. It is about the shapes love takes, the faces it wears, the changes and growth even within those most familiar. “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,” says Niecy’s husband to her at one point in the novel.The narrative style of alternating chapters with individual voices lends an intimate nature to the story, even when the girls are writing to each other during their years apart. The emotional intensity and vulnerability that inhabits the novel’s pages might perhaps be explained, in part, by the writing process Jones followed. She was originally contracted to write a different story, which she was struggling with. So she returned to analogue practices — a freshly sharpened pencil and some lined paper. “It was just for the pleasure of writing, to see what was on my mind,” she said in an interview. If that is to be any indication, what was on her mind was an unputdownable, women-centric story about what it means to be kin, to show up, support, sacrifice and love, through it all and everything beyond. Kin Tayari JonesOneworld Publications₹650The reviewer is a Mumbai-based author and editor. Published - September 28, 2026 12:37 pm IST