Shawna Kay Rodenberg

There's a certain amount of defiance hovering between Shawna Kay Rodenberg's words as she discusses Kin, her debut memoir slated for publication by Bloomsbury in June—and after spending time with her searching, resilient book, it is easy to understand why. Kin recounts her family's exile from their native Eastern Kentucky to rural Minnesota, where Rodenberg spent much of her childhood as a member of The Body, a Christian fundamentalist End Times commune that preached a strict, patriarchal gospel of denial and austerity. When the family abandoned the group to return to Appalachia, they were left to reckon with the effects of The Body on their family and to confront the fraught, sometimes violent dynamics playing out within the confines of their home—the legacy of Vietnam and generations of hardship and abuse. The volatile relationship between Rodenberg and her father occupies the heart of the memoir, and it is her search for empathy and understanding—of her father, of her family, of Appalachia, of herself—that drives the fractured narrative.

"My family's story is epic," Rodenberg declared in a recent conversation with Appalachian Review, "and I'm proud of who we are and everything we've survived."

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JASON KYLE HOWARD:

Kin recounts how, when you were a child, your family left Eastern Kentucky to join an End Times religious community in rural Minnesota—and the lingering effects of that experience after your family eventually left. Where did the book begin for you? How did you come to write it?

SHAWNA KAY RODENBERG:

My dear friend and mentor, Mark Wunderlich, whom I met when I was studying poetry as an MFA candidate at the Bennington Writing Seminars, suggested that some of my poems were bogged down by too much narrative burden, and that maybe I should write a memoir, which was the absolute last thing I ever wanted to do. I had chosen to study poetry for many reasons, but most of all I think because of its inscrutable and mysterious nature, which felt like a kind of protective veil one could

Shawna Kay Rodenberg

hide behind, if she wanted to. I think many writers become writers because they long to be known from a safe distance, and I know that's true for me. "Just write it like no one will ever read it," Mark said, "like you're writing something for your kids to read after you're gone." A year and a half later I had what I thought might be a prologue, which I showed to another professor at Bennington, Ben Anastas, who teaches creative nonfiction, and like Mark, he believed in the book right away, long before I did, and helped me machete my way through the high weeds of the first few chapters until I could see a possible path.

JKH:

A major focus of the book is the fear and violence that existed inside your home and was centered on your father. At one point you describe his decision to not become a coal miner in Eastern Kentucky: "He said the men there lived most of their lives underground, and that it hardened them. He had tried to make a different kind of life." This passage seems to be symbolic of something beyond his career path. What else was he running from?

SKR:

My dad rarely talked about his dad and the mines, so when he did, I paid especially close attention and decided to include a few of those moments in Kin because I believe they point to a fairly universal experience. I'm speaking about the way my family and most families in marginalized communities and regions become preoccupied with the effort required to bear up beneath heavy traumatic lineages and psychic burdens, the struggle to carry on from whatever place in the generational relay race you're passed the family baton. From an early age, I sensed that the conflict in my family was an old one that existed long before I made my way into the world. I...