Shawna Kay Rodenberg - Kin: A Memoir

Praise for Kin

Whatever you believe about Appalachia, prepare to have those beliefs upended, or at least beautifully complicated. Unless, of course, you are from there, and then prepare to glimpse what is possible. Kin is about remembering who and what we areto not only making peace with that, but to shape it into something remarkable.

Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire

Life isnt neat, and [Rodenberg] leans into that, digging deep with dense but readable prose and providing compelling insights.

Star Tribune (MinneapolisSt. Paul)

Shawna Kay Rodenberg tells her story with a near-heroic self-awareness and insight into her family, her Appalachian ancestors, her spiritual suffering and religious sustenance, the damage done by generations of abuse, and the damage repaired by love and her own self-witness. She is a masterful storyteller, writing with lucid courage and prose both powerful and kind.

Rosanne Cash

Defies easy definition [Rodenberg] writes about her difficult childhood with a sense of grace and generosity The echoes of an important chapter from Americas past call out from these pages, and Rodenbergs stories of lives that are generally overlooked make for essential reading.

The Washington Post

Bountiful, sometimes haunting Rodenbergs depth of feeling, intelligence, and love opens eyes and demolishes stereotypes.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An intimate portrait of hardscrabble life in a much-derided, little-understood place. With the grit of the damaged yet hopeful, Rodenberg crafts the raw notes of faith, addiction, and generational trauma into a hymn to survival. By focusing on the deeply personal lived experience of a family, Kin contains worlds.

Michael Patrick F. Smith, author of The Good Hand

This super-smart, gorgeously gritty debut smashes stereotypes and has a similar cant-take-your-eyes-off-it appeal as Tara Westovers Educated .

Oprah Daily

This startling memoir of a wild soul will electrify you. The unbreakable Shawna Kay rises again and again to forgive, despite every institution that failed her.

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

Fascinating What makes this one special is the way the debut author widens her view to tell the stories of her parents, grandparents, and other relatives, including times before she was born, with as much compassion and realistic detail as she gives her own story A nuanced portrait of a complicated place and people.

Booklist (starred review)

Written from a reservoir of astonishing empathy, Rodenberg never shies away from the complexities and contradictions of the forces that shaped her. Kin bears testament to how family and place can nurture and maimand to the redeeming act of storytelling.

Jason Kyle Howard, author of A Few Honest Words

Brilliantly detailed writing. Scorning the stereotypes, [Shawna Kay Rodenberg] gives us a story about forgiveness and love.

Newsday

A gutsy testament to pure grit and the resilience of the human spirit. All through this astonishing testimony of a family in the grip of piety threads a remarkable placeKentuckybenevolent and beloved.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Highly readable, even in the darkest of its many dark moments. Rodenberg is a gifted writer and brings her setting to life. It is a beautifully written look at resilience and the power of family and place.

Bookreporter

A remarkable story that will stay with you long after you have finished reading.

Rose Andersen, author of The Heart and Other Monsters

This tales about enduring, and about understanding yourself, your past, your family, and your future.

The Times Weekly

Shawna Kay Rodenberg may have been born bruised-ass-backward into a world of chaos, but her memoir Kin is so full of ballsy intelligence and unremitting love that it feels like secular scripture. An American original.

Benjamin Anastas, author of Too Good to Be True

A vivid coming-of-age account.

Publishers Weekly

Rodenbergs lyricism, mastery of form, and command of image and metaphor are matched only by the power of her honesty and the precision of her recall. Kin will endure and bring light and warmth to all who encounter this beautiful book.

Robert Gipe, author of Pop: An Illustrated Novel

Rodenberg writes with an evocative and unflinching style This is a richly nuanced portrait of people and place, along with the bounds of forgiveness.

Library Journal

For my father and his mountain,

my mother, who loved us,

and my sister, who stayed.

CONTENTS

Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

JAMES BALDWIN

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.

3 JOHN 1:4

The truth will stand when the worlds on fire.

GRANDMA BETTY

2017

I am trying to sneak two ounces of primo marijuana that I have carried all the way from Evansville, Indiana, to Seco, Kentucky, past the producer of the CBS Evening News and into the double-wide trailer where my father anxiously waits for it. Two ounces is his minimum monthly preference, and we are nearing the end of the month. I cant see him, but I know he is cagey, because he is always cagey.

I am acting as a sort of guide for CBS, an ambassador to this region, the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, often as inscrutable and inaccessible to outsiders as a war-torn third-world country. I have begrudgingly become a tour guide, a bridge, a translator, and a mediator. I have done this work in some capacity several times, always unpaid, for independent filmmakers, for NPR, and now for CBS.

This particular producer, a nervous, well-meaning blonde with doe eyes and the patrician bearing of a New England soccer mom, contacted me after she read an article I wrote about my job teaching English at a community college in eastern Kentucky. The piece detailed the experiences of some of my dual-credit high school students, who, after the foundation of their already run-down high school was irreparably damaged by nearby blasting, were crammed into a tiny middle school, where they remained four years later. The students, bright and full of promise, were fighting despair.

The producer flattered me and called my left-leaning article enlightening and moving. She asked if I had experienced any blowback in painting an negative picture of local politics, and I explained that the superintendent of that high school had insisted someone replace mehe didnt want me teaching his kids. She said that CBS was putting together a news segment on the proposition of school choice in Appalachia and asked if I would be willing to help. I had reservations for many reasonsmy fear of public speaking, my worry that I might be somehow responsible for yet another unfair, stereotypical representation of the mountains and people I lovebut I agreed, as I had before, because I believed school choice was just another way to undermine funding for Letcher County schools, and because, as my mom put it, If you dont help them tell the story right, who will?

A few days later the producer emailed me with a list of everything shed need:

an interview with me, somewhere related to my childhood, she thinks maybe at a diner

B-roll of me in the country, walking on a back road