Kin by Tayari Jones

Friday, Aug. 21, 2026--San Antonio

Kin by Tayari Jones is a novel set in the South during the 1960s--beginning in a small Louisiana town where the two main characters are Black females who have been best friends all their lives.  One was raised by her aunt after her father killed his wife and himself just a month after the baby was born.  The other was raised by her grandmother after her unmarried mother left just after giving birth.  Most of the book takes place during the 3 years following their graduation from high school when their lives go separate directions.  Niecie leaves home to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, and Annie leaves home to go to Memphis to try to find her mother (after having been given an address where she might be living).  The young women stay in touch through letters as events in their new lives unfold.  The car that Annie and 3 friends are driving to Memphis breaks down, and they find themselves living and working by barter on a former sharecropper farm which is now a whorehouse with the women each having one of the former sharecropper shacks for hosting their johns.  Niecie finds her plans for trying to easily fit in at Spelman derailed when she accidentally takes a seat in the last row of the white section of the bus (thinking it to be the first row of the Colored section) to take her to Atlanta and the driver kicks her off the bus.  He leaves with her luggage holding the wardrobe she had prepared for college still on the bus to be lost forever.  Life can be difficult for everyone after leaving their hometown, and both young women are learning this quickly.  This was the period of uproar involving protests, forced desegregation, and upset people on both sides of the color divide in the South.  The fact that the Supreme Court had made their ruling did not change things overnight.  There are ups and downs in the lives of both girls during the next 3+ years--more ups in Niecie's life and more downs in Annie's, but their friendship holds throughout it.  As the reader, you get to live through it all with the both of them.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.