Tayari Jones on friendship, writing, and choosing your ‘Kin’

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Tayari Jones discusses her novel Kin, a historical story about two motherless girls in 1950s Louisiana and Atlanta, and how illness, grief, Black language, and memory shaped its creation. She reflects on writing through Graves’ disease, revisiting family history and civil rights-era Atlanta, and using letters to reveal intimacy and identity.

Main Topics: The breakthrough behind Kin (Priority: 5/5): Jones explains how the novel unexpectedly emerged after years of stalled work, illness, and a shift away from a planned contemporary novel toward a story that felt emotionally and creatively alive. Illness, shame, and writing through Graves’ disease (Priority: 5/5): She describes being diagnosed with Graves’ disease, the severity of her symptoms, and the reluctance she felt in sharing her illness, especially as a Black woman navigating autoimmune disease. Motherlessness, grief, and female friendship (Priority: 5/5): Kin centers on Annie and Vernice, whose bond is formed by shared loss. Jones connects this emotional core to her own grief after losing a close friend and to the complexity of adult friendship. History, family, and returning to the 1950s (Priority: 4/5): Jones traces the historical setting to her attempt to better understand her parents’ generation, her mother’s civil rights activism, and her father’s Louisiana roots, treating the novel as a meeting with her family’s past. Language, letters, and black vernacular (Priority: 4/5): She discusses why letters work in fiction, how language can create meaning and moral texture, and how Black vernacular reshapes English to fit lived experience. Writing craft: control, surprise, and revision (Priority: 3/5): Jones rejects the idea of being merely a 'vessel' but says first drafts often surprise her, while revision is where she exerts full control and shape over the work. Roots in Leaving Atlanta and childhood fear (Priority: 4/5): She revisits the Atlanta child murders and how that trauma informed Leaving Atlanta, emphasizing that children can be children while still living with fear and historical awareness.

Key Arguments: Jones argues that creative breakthroughs can come when a writer stops forcing an agenda and writes for comfort, curiosity, and personal survival instead of contract-driven goals. She says her move back to Atlanta was an attempt to understand her parents as adults and meet them in the world they came from, which helped inspire Kin's time period and emotional setting. Jones contends that grief is central to friendship: losing a friend can be as devastating as losing family, even if your name is absent from the obituary. She argues letters carry more force than speech because they cost time, money, and attention, making them a deliberate record of care and relationship. Jones insists historical fiction should avoid anachronism in labels while still conveying truths that existed then, even if people lacked modern language for them. She emphasizes that Black people have always shaped and expanded English, and that words like 'trifling' carry layered moral meanings that standard English cannot fully capture. Jones suggests children experience events primarily as feeling, while adults later impose symbolic meaning on those same events. She frames her early writing identity as something that solidified when a teacher took her seriously and made her write down her thoughts.

Data Points: Years since first novel: more than two decades - Jones says her first novel was published over 20 years before Kin. Publication year of An American Marriage: 2018 - The novel that brought Jones national recognition. Countries published: more than a dozen - An American Marriage was released internationally. Time spent stalled on new project: years - Jones struggled for years to make a post–An American Marriage project work. Diagnosis: Graves disease - Jones was diagnosed during the period of creative difficulty and illness. Age at move back to Atlanta: 8 years ago - Jones says she moved back home to Atlanta eight years before this interview. Decade of Kin's setting: 1950s - The novel is set in Louisiana and Atlanta in the 1950s. Age when she went to Spelman: 16 - Jones entered Spelman College unusually young after skipping grades. Atlanta child murders timeframe: 1979 to 1981 - Jones discusses the historical context behind Leaving Atlanta. Minimum number of victims in Atlanta child murders: at least 28 - She references the victims linked to Wayne Williams. Bra size mentioned: 28 AAA - Jones recounts a childhood memory used to illustrate fear and humiliation during the Atlanta child murders era.

Pivotal Quotes: "It ain't got a thing if it ain't got that swing." — Tayari Jones: She uses the jazz metaphor to explain why an early draft of the novel felt lifeless and forced. "hearts grow strings because of what you know that's the same, what's happened to you that's the same, and when what you want is the same." — Tayari Jones (reading Kin): A passage describing the emotional basis of Annie and Vernice’s friendship. "I think that my imagination took me back to my mother's era." — Tayari Jones: She explains why the novel moved into the 1950s and connected to her family history.

Implications: Jones’s remarks show how illness, grief, and family history can reshape artistic direction. Kin also highlights the value of Black vernacular, historical empathy, and female friendship as tools for making the past feel emotionally immediate.