Bestselling author Tayari Jones speaks with Stratford Arts and Lectures at the Bruce Hotel
- Apr 16
- 3 min read
Stratford Arts and Lectures hosted another fascinating evening at the Bruce Hotel, this time with bestselling, award-winning author Tayari Jones, who has written an unforgettable novel, Kin, that reads with wit, intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
Jones has only three stops on her Canadian book tour, and Stratford is one of them – and the first. She is from Atlanta, Ga., and is the award-winning author of An American Marriage.
Her conversation with Stratford Arts and Lectures founder Rina Barone focused on Jones’ creative process and personal journey as a writer, emphasizing themes of identity and voice.
Jones discussed the influence of moving back to the American South and rediscovering her unique voice, and explored the nuances of African American speech and its untranslatable nature.
"One of the words in African American speech is the word trifling, because you can give examples of, but you can't explain exactly what it means,” she said. “… And I wanted to capture that in this novel, this way that people confidently speak a language within a language."
She also reflected on the challenges of writing a novel about modern America versus the 1950s, emphasizing the importance of empathy and understanding across generations.
"I think I wrote this book with less confidence, because when I was writing the things that I knew, I felt confident that I was right about the order of things, the customs, etcetera, so I think, this time, I was writing with a different kind of humility,” she said. “I think it's always good when we are humble. I think it makes you pay more attention to each word, because you're really thinking about it more. So that was a good experience."
Her new novel, Kin, is about Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, La., who have been best friends and neighbours 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 18 for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute 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, and culminate in a battle for her life.
Jones said she never knows an ending when she starts writing, but she enjoyed this project and learning about her characters.
“I'm not one of those writers that knows the ending. I don't know the ending when I start, but I do like to think that I know what it's about, but I just had to kind of surrender in the process.”
The novel is about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood and the complexities of being a woman in the American South.
The Stratford Arts and Lectures series, in collaboration with the Bruce, has grown significantly since last year and has now doubled in attendance.
Tickets for upcoming events can be found at www.stratfordartsandlectures.com.
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