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The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There
A remarkable debut that explores the imperfect ways we care for one another, and how we seek repair when care fails.
“What’s our obligation to each other?” asks Jennifer Eli Bowen in this propulsive exploration of community, solitude, and love. Drawing on her experiences as a mother, daughter, and founder of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, the country’s largest and most enduring prison-based literary organization, she examines the wild spectrum of shapes that care can take. She investigates the role of community across the world and in her own neighborhood, driven by a curiosity to uncover what might be gleaned from various vanishments in her own the shadow of her father, disappeared backyard chickens, a Moleskine notebook that passes in and out of her Little Free Library.
Tracing both connection and its lack, Bowen uncovers what happens when it’s missing, how we find it, and how it heals individuals, communities, and systems—from the incarcerated caretakers of newborn foals in Norway to the time-bending drama of watching children grow into adults. And through this winding quest to understand love, she moves readers out of their complacency not only about the state of American incarceration, but about what we owe ourselves and society.
Unflinching, vulnerable, and surprisingly funny, The Book of Kin encourages us not to abandon each other, reminding us that “harm is shared, and healing is too.”
“What’s our obligation to each other?” asks Jennifer Eli Bowen in this propulsive exploration of community, solitude, and love. Drawing on her experiences as a mother, daughter, and founder of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, the country’s largest and most enduring prison-based literary organization, she examines the wild spectrum of shapes that care can take. She investigates the role of community across the world and in her own neighborhood, driven by a curiosity to uncover what might be gleaned from various vanishments in her own the shadow of her father, disappeared backyard chickens, a Moleskine notebook that passes in and out of her Little Free Library.
Tracing both connection and its lack, Bowen uncovers what happens when it’s missing, how we find it, and how it heals individuals, communities, and systems—from the incarcerated caretakers of newborn foals in Norway to the time-bending drama of watching children grow into adults. And through this winding quest to understand love, she moves readers out of their complacency not only about the state of American incarceration, but about what we owe ourselves and society.
Unflinching, vulnerable, and surprisingly funny, The Book of Kin encourages us not to abandon each other, reminding us that “harm is shared, and healing is too.”
- GenresNonfictionEssaysMemoir
264 pages, Paperback
Published October 21, 2025
15 people are currently reading
193 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 2, 2025
I read this so quickly. It was such a joy. When describing it to others, I don’t think I have at all captured it. This author has a way of weaving together seemingly unrelated information to capture life’s complicated feelings that have no singular word. It was wonderful!!
October 23, 2025
A deep and impactful collection of essays. Not only was this a powerful telling of Bowen’s life stories and experiences, I walk away with a deep push to better understand history. The history of the broken systems all around us, and those of my family. It forces me to evaluate how I’m showing up for my people and strangers alike.
November 10, 2025
Fantastic writing, deep and wonderfully human essays. Highly recommended.
February 26, 2026
The Book of Kin by Jennifer Eli Bowen asks a seemingly simple question: What’s our obligation to each other?
Using her expertise as the founder of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, Bowen explores the range of prisons in the world, and the care incarcerated people receive there. Spanning the entire globe, years of her life, a pandemic, her children, some baby chickens, and many prison settings, she does a deep dive into the necessity of human connection and the various ways our world strips people of this most basic need.
Bowen visits a prison in Norway, filled with natural light and forest views, and she wonders “Can beauty and kind touches markedly improve a horrible situation, or just mask a tough reality? Does ‘humane’ take the edge off of ‘alone?’” (43). She visits a prison in Texas, where the incarcerated men are used as props in a dangerous, sickening rodeo show. The description is vivid and stark, bringing the reader into the horror of the Angola Prison, and she reiterates to readers that this is not some story from the past, but the reality of the present.
The Book of Kin is thoughtful, personal, honest, and experimental with its essay structures. Bowen has brought many issues with the carceral system into light, and this book instigates questions of what we might do instead. It sparks the imagination of the reader, making them wonder what the point of the current “justice system” is, and how we might imagine a world where we all care for another differently.
February 13, 2026
One of the best books I've read in the last year. I was a bit sad when I got to the end of it.
This author exhibits an extraordinary skill in writing that is truthful, insightful, raw and tender. With the way she writes about her lived experiences and observations, she displays an uncompromising care for others, incarcerated or otherwise (e.g.: a man with behavioral health difficulties living in her neighborhood), animals included.
Given that she lives in Saint Paul (according to what she included in this book), in a neighborhood not far from my own, I hope that sometime I might actually run into her someplace local, and maybe talk with her a bit.
This author exhibits an extraordinary skill in writing that is truthful, insightful, raw and tender. With the way she writes about her lived experiences and observations, she displays an uncompromising care for others, incarcerated or otherwise (e.g.: a man with behavioral health difficulties living in her neighborhood), animals included.
Given that she lives in Saint Paul (according to what she included in this book), in a neighborhood not far from my own, I hope that sometime I might actually run into her someplace local, and maybe talk with her a bit.
March 8, 2026
Y'all should read Jennifer Eli Bowen's The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There. This collection of interconnected essays does what I wish of all books of essays: in here, we see the microcosm of Bowen's experiences--family, teaching, parenting, relationships, death, chickens, a notebook--but each experience is part of the larger world, a commentary or question about the "bigger issues," about how things are and could be, about how we, as individuals, are part of the collective of existence and time. The book is often sweet and vulnerable; it focuses more on seeking answers than having them; it is far less lecture than conversation. Highly recommended!
February 1, 2026
I have been on an essay kick recently and this one, I think, is going to hang around in my brain for a while.
Specifically the essays on prisons and humanity and dehumanization.
The one that was both on and not on the ethics of penitence is something I want to come back to in...about 8 months or so, when Elul rolls around.
But, with Minnesota looming over everything, the way Bowen keeps asking variations on the question of "what happens when we believe people are ours" just keeps ringing in my ears.
Specifically the essays on prisons and humanity and dehumanization.
The one that was both on and not on the ethics of penitence is something I want to come back to in...about 8 months or so, when Elul rolls around.
But, with Minnesota looming over everything, the way Bowen keeps asking variations on the question of "what happens when we believe people are ours" just keeps ringing in my ears.
February 6, 2026
This MN Book Award nominee is absolutely one of the best memoirs I’ve read in years. I laughed, cried, was horrified, and was left with more screen shots of beautiful language than I can count. I was planning on giving it to my daughter and her husband, but I’ll buy them their own copy. I’ll need to keep this! ❤️📚 Milkweed Editions
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December 17, 2025Milkweed Book Club for January 2026
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews