Kin, by definition, are the people with whom we share a common ancestor. Author Tayari Jones takes it a step further, defining kin as the family we inherit from our mothers — either through birth or circumstance.

“It’s about matrilinearity,” said Jones, whose latest novel, “Kin,” was published earlier this year. She calls the work “a novel about the things we inherit and carry through the women in our biological families, but also the women in our lives.”

Jones, a 2012 Radcliffe fellow, discussed the book and its characters in a recent Virtual Radcliffe Book Talk.

“I think that we know one another to the extent to which we allow ourselves to be known.”

“Kin” follows lifelong friends Annie and Vernice, Black girls growing up motherless in Jim Crow Louisiana. Vernice’s mother was killed by her father while she was an infant; Annie’s mother abandons her for life outside of their tiny town of Honeysuckle. Despite growing up extremely close, the pair take different paths in life before ultimately coming back together.