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How Tayari Jones explores grief and gratitude for those we love in ‘Kin’

March 11, 2026

Between 2020 and 2023, Tayari Jones lost three longtime friends. While COVID-19 was not a direct cause, Jones said, she saw their deaths as “collateral damage” of the pandemic.

The author recalls how she met her friend Angelite, who had just transferred into Jones’s third-grade class.

“The teacher said to Angelite, ‘You should sit next to Tayari. She’s gregarious.’ I didn’t even know what that word meant, but I liked it,” Jones remembered. “It was love at first sight for both of us.”

They stayed close throughout school, both eventually attending Spelman College, the historically Black women’s university in Atlanta. In 2021, Jones received word that Angelite had unexpectedly passed away.

“When you lose someone you’ve known your whole life, it’s like part of your memories are gone, because that other person is the keeper of your memories. They have the other piece of the story.”

Jones credits her childhood female friendships and her years at Spelman College in helping shape her latest work of fiction, “Kin,” out now from Knopf and an Oprah’s Book Club pick for 2026.

The central characters, Vernice “Niecy” Davis and Annie Kay Henderson, have been friends almost since birth in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, one of many similar small towns largely settled by the descendants of slavery.

The early loss of their mothers, Vernice to murder and Annie to abandonment, left the girls in the care of various relatives, growing up during the Jim Crow era. Upon reaching adulthood in the 1950s, Vernice departs for a bright future at Spelman College, and Annie leaves Honeysuckle to search for her mother in the seedy underbelly of the South. Yet despite heading for completely different futures, all while the Civil Rights Movement reaches a turning point, the bonds between Vernice and Annie remain unshakeable.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Q. How did the idea for this book come about?

Actually, I started out trying to write a book about modern life, about Atlanta and gentrification in the New South. That was my original impulse. But the story just didn’t have that intangible thing, the magic that lets you know when you’re making art. After struggling with it for over a year or two, I had to start over with a clean piece of paper and just write what was on my mind and what was in my heart.

These characters – this is the first time this has ever happened to me – came to me almost like I could physically see them. I just started writing, and in the process, realized I was writing characters that appeared to be living in the 1950s, which was a surprise to me, because I don’t normally write historical fiction. But by this time, I was enchanted with the characters, and I wanted to know where the story went, and so I followed them.

Q. How did you go about researching the time period?

I had read a wonderful memoir by Dovey Johnson Roundtree, called “Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights.” It’s about her experiences at Spelman College – my alma mater – in the 1940s and 50s. I was fascinated by a history that I had not known about, which was the proud working-class history of Spelman College.

I think that Spelman has a reputation for being a school where the Black middle class sends their daughters. In fact, many of the people who attended Spelman, and all the historically black colleges in the ‘40s and ‘50s, were people from working-class families. You know, the community would put together every dime they had to send these kids to college for a better life. Many of these students worked full-time as maids while they were in school. I had no idea.

It’s also shocking to realize how recent the history of enslavement is. My dad is from a small town in Louisiana called Oakdale, and the era in the book is the era in which he grew up. He talked quite a lot to me about what his childhood was like growing up – the day-to-day realities of growing up during Jim Crow. Those stories have always kind of haunted me, because my dad would tell me what I thought were the saddest stories I had ever heard – and he would say, “What are you talking about? That’s just life.”

Q. One big theme of this book is female family and friend relationships. Can you talk about that?

Female friendship is a standard plotline for American literature, so my question was, what can I do with this plot that hasn’t been done much? So many stories about female friendship are about very thorny relationships in conflict. That’s not the case with Annie and Niecy – their friendship is not fraught. I wanted to write a friendship that is a love story, because I do believe our friendships are the other love stories in our lives.

I was dealing with my own feelings of grief and losing those three friends between 2020 and 2023. I wanted to write about the solidity and the enrichment that women’s friendships carry – not the ways that these friendships complicate our lives, but the ways our lives are enriched by them.

Q. Another theme was maternal absence. The girls receive bits and pieces of “mothering” from other women.

A significant thing that drives the girls’ trajectories is how they lost their mothers. Niecy knows she will never see her mother again, and is more open to the idea of a surrogate mother. Annie, because her mother is out there somewhere, cannot let anyone in in that way. She wants what she sees as the genuine article. Of course, one of the big questions is: Is there even such a thing as a genuine article? Think of how we use the term biological mother to make a distinction. Annie wouldn’t say biological mother – Annie would say, “real mother.” That changes the way she interacts with the other people who could possibly take that place in her life.

In writing this, I had to consider the real labor of being a mother. Life was so different when people did not have access to safe, reliable contraception and other reproductive care. Imposed motherhood could happen to any woman at any time.

Q. Can you talk about Niecy’s sexual identity and what role that plays in her path?

The idea of being “out” as a queer woman in the early ‘60s, where the best you can hope for is to be some kind of small town eccentric? Niecy knows her options. It’s not just about what she could potentially achieve in life, but also the sacrifices that so many people went through to give her opportunities.

At the same time, you do give something up when you make that choice. There’s an indignity that comes from not being able to be yourself.

Q. Many of these small towns in the deep South have so much tragedy and tragic history, but also are such a source of support and community.

I lived in New York for a while, and it felt like a lot of people there just understood the South as a kind of shorthand for unhappiness. They couldn’t understand that there was something meaningful and valuable about the communities people made for one another in the South – they just saw a lack of opportunity, right?

But Honeysuckle is an example of the way a town comes together for its children. People want the best for one another, and they’re proud of their native daughters and native sons that do well. There’s a sense that each of us has a responsibility to be a launching pad for the young people, as best we can.

Q. What would you like readers to take away?

I would like people to think about the emotional labor that those who love you do every day, and have a renewed gratitude for what that takes. I also want readers to give themselves credit for the love they have for others and the ways in which they show up.

We think of love as so easy and effortless – and perhaps the emotion of love is easy and effortless – but the expression of that love can absolutely be labor. Basically, I want everyone to have a better appreciation for their own friendships.

Tayari Jones will appear with Attica Locke at the California African American Museum, hosted by Rep Club.

When: Thursday, Mar. 26 at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Where: California African American Museum, 600 State Dr, Los Angeles

Tickets: Free with RSVP on Eventbrite. For $32, order signed copies of “Kin” from Rep Club for pickup at the event.

Orange County Register

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How Tayari Jones explores grief and gratitude for those we love in ‘Kin’

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