Tayari Jones Still Needs To Read Anna Karenina

Tayari Jones’s novel, Kin, is available now from Alfred A. Knopf, so we asked her a few questions about writers block, writing advice, favorite books, and more.

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What time of day do you write?
I prefer to write in the morning. I used to say that I ONLY write in the morning, but I realized that I was sort of telling myself that the creative spigot dried up at ten AM and, it started to feel true. As a woman with a very busy life, I cannot disqualify all of the other hours of the day due to some made-up superstition. That said—I love rolling a fresh page into my typewriter before the light of day. The quiet house plus the optimism of the dawn stimulates my creativity.

How do you tackle writers block?
Writers block is a personal problem, not a writerly problem. In 2020, I could not access the place in my spirit that creates fiction. As the world was paralyzed by COVID and racial unrest, I just didn’t see how writing a novel was going to help the situation. If I had been in Minneapolis, could I have thrown a book at the officers beating George Floyd?  Would it make sense to offer a person on a ventilator a copy of my debut?

It really shook my WHY because I had always looked at writing as my contribution to the project of social justice. The despair all around me, caused me to feel helpless and powerless. I had to do some heaving lifting in my journal before I could convince myself that my writing is, in fact, a contribution. It’s a subtle addition to the collective work that must be done. And I had to be humble enough to accept this revised world view. I joke to my friends that like the Little Drummer Boy, it’s just my rum-pa-pum-pum.

What’s the best or worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
Pearl Cleage once advised me to “wear cheap shoes.” She meant that I shouldn’t run up my credit cards and then have my writing time eaten up by work to pay the extra bills. She was also cautioning against letting image trump substance. “You are not a model or an actress.”

Pearl has had a profound impact me, partly because of her advice to me as a writer, but so much of her advice has impacted the kind of PERSON I want to be, which then steers me as an artist. As a debut novelist, I was devastated when I discovered that other writers had been formally introduced to the media at fancy luncheons. Imagine me, running around with stacks of postcards and flyers that I would leave at coffee shops–this was my publicity strategy.

And then I find out that there was a whole machine behind my peers! This was at Breadloaf. (I was the fellow called up from the waitlist.) I called Pear tearfully from a payphone. “How will I ever catch up?” With patient wisdom she asked “How are you behind? You didn’t write your book to solict New York Times review.  You wrote this book to speak to people who need to hear what you have to say.” Those words still calm my nerves whenever I feel slighted by the industry. I just remember that I write for readers, regular folks live the lives I write about. Their generous attention is more than enough.

Name a classic you feel guilty about never having read?
I never feel guilty about reading—or not reading, as reading is an intellectual endeavor not a moral one. A classic that is way overdue for my TBR is Anna Karenina. I never read it because someone spoiled the ending when I was in the tenth grade and I’ve been sulking ever since. Happily, a book is like a carton of milk—it never expires.

What book has elicited the most intense emotional reaction from you?
I was asked to write an introduction for the re-issue of Song of Solomon. At first, I was intimidated by the assignment. Who am I to say ANYTHING about Toni Morrison? But then I settled down for what must have been my tenth reading of my favorite novel in the entire world. When I reached the end, the hair on my arms stood up and danced. I can’t explain why, but this time it just hit different. All of the layers of the story arc–the tragedy, the hope, the stressful open-endedness and also the sweet relief of resolution–I felt them as a breathtaking chord of compassionate understanding. I am still uncertain about the extent to which literature changes the world, but I will never question the fact that it has changed me. I am so grateful to be vulnerable to the majesty of language.

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Kin by Tayari Jones is available from Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.