Kin: Oprah's Book Club

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of 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.

Autorentext

TAYARI JONES is the author of four novels*,* most recently An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta.

Klappentext

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE • 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.

“Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I’m always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profound. This is Tayari Jones’s very best work.” —Ann Patchett, author of Whistler**

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.

Zusammenfassung
**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST • 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.

“Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I’m always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profound. This is Tayari Jones’s very best work.” —Ann Patchett, author of *Whistler

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.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1
VERNICE

My first word was “mother,” spoken out loud and with texture. MOTHER. There was a host of witnesses, including Aunt Irene, who called out for God and con­sidered running down the block to fetch the pastor. But before she could even straighten her skirt, she decided that this wasn’t a pot to be stirred by any man’s spoon. It was August, canning season, and the women were gathered to put away snap peas and pole beans. It was Louisiana hot, but even more so, due to the water boiling to purify the mason jars. Aunt Irene, never at home in the kitchen, busied herself plaiting my hair while everyone else hulled and cut up the harvest. The Ward Sisters sang out amid the thick radio static as Aunt Irene added her col­orful soprano to the arrangement. Sitting between her knees, I rested my face on her thigh, still as stone and just as quiet. Sharp against my scalp, a rat-tailed comb created precise parts.

After the death of my parents, I had shown myself to be a peculiar child. No one could say if I was born that way or if I turned that way. I walked early and would do so in my sleep, escaping my crib. I once found my way to the front porch, where I was discovered humming with my face resting on the matted fur of a stray puppy.

At two and a half, I had yet to speak. Folks worried that I was slow. My cradle friend, Annie, was already talking up a storm. She even gave me my nickname, because Vernice had been too many letters for her to hold in her mouth at the same time. “Niecy!” she called, determined to shake loose a response. When shouting didn’t work, she tried kindness, breaking her shortbread cookie in two. I smiled in gratitude, and sometimes offered sloppy baby kisses in return, yet I didn’t say a word.

Annie’s grandmother joked that Aunt Irene should be grate­ful for my silence. Annie never shut up, not even when she was asleep. Shut eyes quivering, she mumbled the name of her own mother, Hattie Lee.

“This baby will talk when she has something to say.” Aunt Irene knew there was quickness in my eyes but feared that see­ing my mama shot dead had shocked the words right out of my mouth. Others worried that I had been taken over. Spirits can be hardheaded and hold grudges—purposely missing their ride to the next place. When this happens, they might just set up house in a defenseless body. Aunt Irene shut that conversation down, dismissing it as “hoodoo”—her catchall word for anything not of this world that didn’t involve our Lord and Savior. That said, even though there could be substance to that hoodoo talk, she knew her dead sister, my mother. When Aunt Irene held my face to hers, she didn’t see Arletha staring back.

Because of this, but not only this, my aunt didn’t indulge any gossip. She kn…