I asked myself why I came here to this wretched place. Why did I surround myself with death, insanity and decay? Like everyone else who dwelled there, I had been discarded. I had no choice, nowhere else to go.

Kindred is a literary portrait of the difficulties author Fatimah Broxton faced as a young girl who grows up feeling like an outsider in her own family. The product of a drug-addicted biological mother and a ruthless adopted mother, differences in bloodlines and emotional sensibilities make for the near destruction of a fragile girl's self-esteem. A childhood filled with abuse leads to eating disorders, nightmares, and thoughts of suicide. The only bright spot in her life is the happy, sweet, and, above all, religious grandmother, who brings some sense of normalcy. From being beaten with broom handles and whipped with the branches of a forsythia bush to becoming a talented young writer, Broxton's life makes for a chaotic blend of self-hatred, emotional longing, and an unexplainable will to triumph.

The stories in Kindred illuminate the miracle of the human capability to love and forgive despite the brutal treatment from the one person Broxton loves most-her mother.