Joette Cunningham in Kin: A Character Analysis

Overview

Joette Cunningham, a secondary but unforgettable character in Tayari Jones’s Kin, enters the novel as Vernice’s wealthy Spelman College roommate and evolves into her secret lover. A daughter of a prominent Atlanta mortuary family, Joette is sharp-tongued, defiant, and intimately familiar with both death and respectability. Her arc moves from vibrant companionship to heartbreak as she is forced into a conventional engagement, then ultimately back into Vernice’s life at a moment of crisis. This analysis examines Joette’s actions, decisions, and relationships, drawing only on the novel’s outline and retrieved evidence.

Plot Role and Key Appearances

Joette’s first appearance is in Chapter 9 (through Vernice’s perspective), where she arrives at the dorm with a maid—a detail that immediately marks her privilege. She teases Vernice about being a “country mouse” but also offers practical help, proposing to connect her with attorneys to sue the bus company after an assault. Joette’s role deepens in Chapter 23, when she reacts with devastation to Vernice’s engagement, pleading with her to reconsider and suggesting they move to Washington together. At Spelman’s Founders Day, she scratches Vernice’s hand and bitterly remarks on Vernice’s choice, establishing a lingering wound. In Chapter 27, Joette is engaged to Thomas Donaldson Jr. and encounters Vernice at Rich’s department store, where she again urges Vernice to run away with her. By Chapter 34, her wedding is cancelled—a public embarrassment that Mrs. McHenry dismisses as a “bullet dodged.” In Chapter 43, Joette reappears as the gatekeeper of a discreet funeral for Annie, using her position to demand that Vernice finally tell Franklin the truth about their past. These appearances trace a character who is both a catalyst for Vernice’s internal conflict and a mirror of her own struggles with love and duty.

Motivations and Traits Through Action

Joette’s primary motivation is freedom—freedom from the suffocating expectations of Atlanta’s Black elite, freedom from a marriage she does not want, and freedom to love Vernice openly. Her actions consistently rebel against protocol:

• She appears bare-legged at Founders Day despite her mother’s presence, refusing to wear stockings.
• She chews gum during the ceremony, a small act of defiance visible only to those who know her.
• She chooses a plate pattern with expensive taste, signaling her disdain for easy conformity.
• Most crucially, she proposes running away to Washington, a direct challenge to the life Vernice has chosen.

Yet Joette is not merely rebellious; she is also deeply pragmatic. When she learns of Annie’s death, she negotiates hard: she will arrange the burial only if Vernice confesses the truth to Franklin. This demand shows that Joette values honesty and accountability, even as she herself has suffered from the secrecy of their relationship. The text suggests her toughness is a shield: after being outed to her parents (as referenced in the outline), she endured a week-long exile and was forced to cancel her wedding—yet she continues to run the family business with competence.

Chronological Arc

1. Freshman Year (Ch. 9): Joette meets Vernice and is immediately drawn to her. She offers help, teases her, and begins a romantic relationship that provides Vernice with a taste of devotion and a wider world.

2. Engagement Era (Ch. 23, 27): When Vernice accepts Franklin’s proposal, Joette is devastated. She tries to persuade Vernice to choose a different life, even offering herself as a partner. Her proposal to flee to Washington is both a genuine plea and a sign of her own desperation.

3. Forced Marriage and Cancellation (Ch. 27, 34): Joette becomes engaged to Thomas Donaldson Jr. under family pressure. The engagement is later cancelled, the novel implies because of her relationship with Vernice becoming known or because she cannot go through with it. The printed announcement of the cancellation—“will not take place”—lays bare her failure to conform.

4. Reunited in Crisis (Ch. 43): Years later, Joette meets Vernice at the funeral home. She is wary, wounded, but ultimately willing to help—on her own terms. She demands the truth as payment, then assists with Annie’s burial. This scene marks her emotional maturation: she has learned to set boundaries while still honoring her past love.

Relationships

Joette and Vernice: Their relationship is the novel’s most intimate and most secret. Joette calls Vernice “Mouse,” a nickname suggesting both affection and a sense of protected innocence. She sees through Vernice’s performance of respectability and understands her deepest fears—of poverty, of abandonment, of being killed by a man. Their love is genuine, but it cannot survive in the world of 1960s Atlanta. Joette’s final concession to help Vernice, despite the pain of rejection, shows that her love endures as a form of care rather than possession.

Joette and Her Family: She is the only daughter who steps into the family mortuary business after her brother escapes to Virginia. Her parents are uneasy but allow it, knowing she may never marry. The mortuary is both her inheritance and her prison; it ties her to the dead while she longs for the living. Her mother Albertina is a strict enforcer of rules, and Joette’s rebellion at Founders Day is a direct challenge to her mother’s presence.

Joette and Mrs. McHenry: They share a strained, mocking relationship. Mrs. McHenry refers to Joette as “ornery” and dismisses her prospects, while Joette is wary of the McHenry family’s influence over Vernice. Their conflict underscores class and cultural differences within the Black elite.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Joette’s decisions often come at great personal cost, yet she consistently prioritizes integrity over comfort.

Themes and Symbolism

• Secrets and Lies: Joette is a keeper of secrets—her own and Vernice’s. The demand in Chapter 43 that Vernice tell Franklin the truth links Joette with the theme of truth-telling as a form of healing. She embodies the consequences of living a hidden life.

• Class and Colorism: Joette’s wealth sets her apart from Vernice, yet she rejects the performance of class. She wears no stockings, she chews gum, she refuses to be a debutante. Her rebellion is against the very hierarchy that gave her family status. The contrast between her apparent privilege and her deep loneliness challenges assumptions about what money buys.

• Love and Sacrifice: Joette sacrifices her own happiness for Vernice’s, first by respecting Vernice’s choice to marry, then by helping her bury Annie despite their history. Her love is neither possessive nor conditional; it is a steady undercurrent that shapes both women’s lives.

• Death and Kinship: As an undertaker’s daughter, Joette lives with death daily. The funeral home is a site of both commerce and care. Her ability to handle Annie’s remains with professionalism and compassion ties her to the novel’s central theme of kinship—people being “each other’s business” as the Gwendolyn Brooks epigraph suggests.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Joette ask Vernice to flee with her instead of simply accepting the engagement?

Joette’s proposal to move to Washington reflects her desperation to preserve the only genuine connection she has. She sees marriage as a trap that will sever her from Vernice and from her own authenticity. In the text, she argues that there are other ways to live, but the language she uses—“We could work. Live. Be together.”—suggests she imagines a shared life as partners, not just roommates. Her offer is both an act of love and a bid for survival.

2. What does Joette’s demand for truth in Chapter 43 reveal about her character?

By requiring Vernice to confess to Franklin before she will bury Annie, Joette shows that she values accountability over comfort. She refuses to be complicit in Vernice’s continued secrecy. This demands a moral reckoning and positions Joette as the agent who forces Vernice to grow. It also underscores how much Joette has suffered from that same secrecy.

3. How does Joette’s family background shape her worldview?

Growing up above a funeral home, Joette is intimate with death and the rituals that manage grief. She understands that death treats everyone equally, which may fuel her skepticism toward social hierarchies. Her family’s legacy of tending to Black bodies with dignity gives her a strong sense of purpose, even as she resists her parents’ expectations about marriage.

4. In what ways is Joette a foil to Vernice?

Where Vernice craves stability, family, and conventional belonging, Joette craves freedom and authenticity. Vernice marries into a powerful family; Joette cancels her wedding. Vernice is careful with money; Joette spends without thought. Yet both are shaped by loss—Vernice by her mother’s murder, Joette by the loss of Vernice. Their differences sharpen the novel’s exploration of choice and constraint.

5. Why does Joette help Vernice bury Annie despite their painful history?

Joette’s decision is rooted in her professional ethos—she serves the living by caring for the dead—and in her enduring love for Vernice. She could have refused, but she does not. The condition she sets (truth-telling) is not revenge but a demand for mutual respect. By helping, she re-enters Vernice’s life on her own terms, reaffirming that kinship, not grievance, defines her.