Dear readers, I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot about Tayari Jones’s new novel, “Kin.” You might know Jones as the author of “An American Marriage,” an Oprah Book Club pick about a Black couple, Celestial and Roy, whose lives are upended after Roy’s wrongful conviction. It went on to sell over a million copies. Now, Jones has written the story of two childhood friends, Niecy and Annie, who leave small-town Louisiana in the 1950s and forge vastly different paths while keeping their relationship at the center of their lives. This week, my colleague Elisabeth Egan profiled Jones, and spoke with her about her creative drive, her feelings around self-worth and her shift to writing a story set in a previous era. I was struck by what she called a kind of “ideological stance”: “As a Black writer, there is this understanding that my job is to correct the record,” Jones said. “My canvas is the now, things in my lifetime.” Yet “Kin” gave her a way to think about her parents’ experiences during the Jim Crow era through characters she enjoyed, so she pressed on. “Such is the bittersweet power of fiction, that it can braid two friends’ lives together, bridging their separation,” wrote our reviewer, Radhika Jones. “When the two women reunite, the novel makes good on the promise of its title, testing the bonds and boundaries of the kin we choose.” See you next week. Like this email? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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