Female Friendship Is at the Heart of ‘Kin'

We're not going to give you any spoilers, but can you give us an idea of what the plot is and how the plot came to you? Okay. It plotted itself. Well, they all kind of, I always know, I generally know what the book is about, but I don't know what the people are going to do. But this is a story of a female friendship. And I do believe that as a woman writer at some point, female friendship, because it's such a part of the fabric of our lives, is a natural topic. Everybody here has a friend, right? Everyone has a friend. Yeah. Even you non-females too, right? They're friends since they were infants because neither of them has a mother. Although Niecy's mother is dead, Annie's mother has abandoned her. So Annie has hope that one day she'll see her mother again. Niecy knows she'll never see her mother. So the question is really, is hope a double-edged sword? Because hope's twin is disappointment. And their lives, you know, their lives unfold. They take different forks in the road. One is able to pursue education. The other is living in Memphis, working in a bar, you know, shacking up with a piano player, but their hearts are still connected. They are still dearest friends. And it's really, I think about also maintaining your friendships, despite the fact that your lives are different. Different lives don't mean that you necessarily have different hearts and you cannot mistake your life for your heart. Those are different things. Wow. Why did you choose this time in American history? Because it's said in the 1950s, in the 1960s, the dialogue, the sights, the smells, all of it. Well, I was curious about growing up in the wake of the civil rights movement because my mother, when my mother was 15 years old, she participated in a sit-in movement in Oklahoma City. For two years, my mother, her sister, and some other children that went to their school, the whole summer, they sat in at a drug counter, drugstore counter. And during the school year, they did it on the weekends. And it was just a part of the fabric of their lives. Part of what I did in this book was really to try to get to know my own mother better by thinking about the circumstances under which she came of age. It helped me understand the way our lives are the same and the ways that our lives are different. Wow. And I love this, this page 11, just, it spoke to me so profoundly. While I was tended to, I was never mothered. Still the hole in my spirit made me into the girl I was and then the woman that I am. One day, I will grow a person within myself and love that little person so hard that it would bind her to me like rich dirt in the corner of a canvas satchel. You're crying. Why are you crying? Because that was your line too? Yeah. We lost our mom when we were young. It spoke to you too. Yeah. Let's talk about it. Yeah. I can't believe how well and accurately you captured the experience of what it's like to be a girl without a mom. And every line, like that line was like, yep, my reality. That's my reality. That's my reality. And so it didn't feel even sad. It felt normal reading it. Yeah. And, um, felt normal and seen and heard like someone else knows my story. Yes. Even to say that you accompanied these girls through the story was like, oh, like you accompanied me through just the witnessing is so powerful. So one of the themes that really stood out to me is this tension between survival and belonging and how you have to sacrifice part of who you are in order to fit in because it's not just a being seen and known kind of thing, but, uh, am I going to be safe and cared for and protected type of thing? So what was it that you were hoping that people would take away from that tension of when do I, when do I sacrifice myself in order to fit in, or when do I protect myself in order to survive? Thank you first off for, for sharing your experience. I think that we believe that we have to sacrifice more than we actually have to sacrifice in order to fit in. You know, a lot of times I think that we capitulate in advance, like we anticipate that we will not be safe. Like, I think that, um, Nisi doesn't believe she'll be safe and telling her truth, but she does not know that like that is a risk. I think everyone should take the risk of the truth because you may be accepted and you don't know it because you're afraid. And so that to me is what I, the dignity is in the truth. And I think that that's the thing we have to, we, we think, we think we can live without dignity. You know, we think I'll do this to survive. Like dignity is a luxury, but dignity is not a luxury. And you only get it by being your authentic self. I think that's one of the takeaways. And the other takeaway is I really hope that we can stop being so tied to the question of biology. The question of biology is something that is decided for us before we're even born. Like none of us chose our families and we as adults, we as full human beings should have the right to create a family that works for us. I'm not saying that your chosen family has to replace your family family. You can have both, but not to feel like this accident of birth is the determining factor in your life that you can be loved by someone else. Even if it's not your biological mother, your biological father, someone else's love can be just as significant if you let it. Like Annie is so committed to the idea of blood that she cannot experience the other love that's around her, but it was right there in front of her. It was right there, but her commitment to it's an idea. And then he eventually says he cannot be seen anymore because she's chasing the thing that's already there. Obsession is never a good idea. It's never. Yes. Yes. You've said that writing this novel gave you a deeper understanding of your own mother. Did it also give you a deeper understanding of yourself? Absolutely. Because I came to understand in writing about this previous generation, just how, how their experiences were so different than our own. Like there's some things that, you know, I kind of blamed my mom for like not understanding my life. And I realized now, how could she understand my life? She grew up in a different world. She was born in 1943. How is she meant? I mean, the nature of progress is such that we are each in our modern lives, living unprecedented lives. And you cannot expect other people to imagine the nuances of our unprecedented lives. And that's what I really came to see that people do the best they can with the experiences that they have. And you have to give them some grace and credit for how hard they try. Wow. That is such wisdom. And I love how you turn a phrase on page 20, you say, my mother rough as an emery board looks like she was born to die. Yeah. Poor Hattie. Yeah. How did you, I mean, so as you're thinking of my mother is rough or my mother is, you know, challenged or my mother, how does that come to you? Rough as an emery board? Some of them come to me right away, but other times once I'm in the zone, like when I'm in the zone of a book, if I touch something rough, I'll become more aware that I'm like, that's rough. I should use that somewhere. Like it, if I'm in the mode, I'm looking for, I'm looking for metaphors. I'm looking for metaphors, but we also have metaphors and symbols, you know, all over our lives. But when I'm in the zone, I hear things everywhere. Like I'll hear a song lyric and it'll remind me of something in the book. Or I also think of ways, how am I similar to my characters? I can never write about a character who has experienced any, the book is not autobiographical. None of my books are autobiographical, but I have experienced every emotion my characters have experienced. And I'm more aware of my emotions and how they feel and where they manifest in my body as I write.