Kin book club questions

From Tayari Jones, the bestselling author of An American Marriage, comes this magnificent novel that sparkles with wit, intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds collide in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbours since early childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives.

Emotionally rich and unforgettable, it’s the perfect pick for your next book club.

Discussion points and questions

• ‘I do not write historical,’ Tayari Jones said in an interview with The New York Times. ‘I am a dedicated contemporary novelist. I even have a kind of ideological stance: As a Black writer, there is this understanding that my job is to correct the record. My canvas is the now, things in my lifetime.’ Is there something about ‘the now’ that may have urged the author to write a novel set in the past?
• The novel expands the notion of its title, Kin, exploring family, lost, created and found. Including the concept of next of kin. Did this direct your reading?
• Annie and Vernice are ‘cradle-sisters’, both growing up without mothers. Through their school years they remain fast friends, sisters. On the surface it appears being motherless may be the only thing they have in common. Is this the basis of their friendship, or is there more between them?
• Annie’s mother, the ‘trifling’ Hattie Lee was last seen in Memphis. Annie cannot stop herself from seeking her. Do you think Annie believed no longer being motherless would change for her?
• Vernice and Annie are each intent on departing Honeysuckle. Annie ends up working in the laundry at ‘a sharecropping whorehouse’ while Vernice finds herself at Spelman College renowned for its ambition, respectability, class, activism and marriage prospects. Why do you think the author portrayed two such different life paths?
• Tayari Jones returned to live in Atlanta, where she grew up, to rediscover her writing voice for Kin. Do you think the novel would be different if she had written it from her previous home in Brooklyn?
• On meeting Joette, Vernice thinks ‘But she was a girl with money who resented people with money. I was a girl without money who wondered what it was like to have comforts that you didn’t even know you wanted.’ Is this what adulthood is about, discovering new things? Is there still room for the old?
• Vernice and Joette. Vernice and Franklin. Choices, decisions, love, lies and lifestyle. How important is honesty in a relationship? Should one always be true to themselves or is it OK to compromise for life choices?
• When Annie really needs her, Vernice turns away. Vernice then goes to Joette for help but is challenged. What is the novel saying about friendship, loyalty, and kin?
• A student of the author commented that each character in the novel has Main Character Energy. A huge story behind them. Do you agree?
• The novel has an open ending. How did that make you feel?