KIN
By Shawna Kay Rodenberg
Bloomsbury, June 28, 2021
When Shawna Kay Rodenberg was four, her father, fresh from a ruinous tour in Vietnam, spirited her family from their home in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to Minnesota, renouncing all of their earthly possessions to live in the Body, an off-the-grid End Times religious community. Her father was seeking a better, safer life for his family, but the austere communal living of prayer, bible study and strict regimentation was a bad fit for the precocious Shawna. Disciplined harshly for her many infractions, she was sexually abused by a predatory adult member of the community. Soon after the leader of the Body died and revelations of the sexual abuse came to light, her family returned to the same Kentucky mountains that their ancestors have called home for three hundred years. It is a community ravaged by the coal industry, but for all that, rich in humanity, beauty, and the complex knots of family love. Curious, resourceful, rebellious, Shawna will ultimately leave her mountain home but only as she masters a perilous balancing act between who she has been and who she will become.
Selected Praise
“Shawna Kay Rodenberg may have been born 'bruised-ass-backward into a world of chaos' in Appalachia, but her memoir Kin is so full of ballsy intelligence and unremitting love that it feels like secular scripture. Like Richard Wright's Black Boy and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Kin is a American original.” ― Benjamin Anastas, author Too Good To Be True
About the Author
Shawna Kay Rodenberg holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Consequence, Salon, the Village Voice, and Elle. In 2016, Shawna was awarded the Jean Ritchie Fellowship, the largest monetary award given to an Appalachian writer, and in 2017 she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award.. A registered nurse, community college English instructor, mother of five, and grandmother of one, she lives on a hobby goat farm in southern Indiana.