Kendra Allen

"An arresting memoir about what it means to come of age at the center of exultant bloodlines and harrowing bloodshed. Written in a distinctive voice and filled with personality, humor, and pathos, Fruit Punch is a memoir unlike any other, from a one-of-a-kind millennial talent. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Kendra Allen had a complicated, loving, and intense family life filled with desire and community but also undercurrents of violence and turmoil. 'We equate suffering to perseverance and misinterpret the gravity of shame,' she writes. As she makes her way through a world of obscureness, Kendra finds herself slowly discovering outlets to help navigate growing up and against the expected performance of being a young Black woman in the South -- a complex interplay of race, class, and gender, that proves to be ever-shifting ground. Fruit Punch touches on everything from questions of beauty and how we form concepts of ourselves -- as a small rebellion, young Kendra scratched a hole into every pair of stockings she was forced to wear -- to what it was like to grow up in her great-uncle's Southern Baptist church, with rules including 'no uncrossed ankles' and 'no questions.' Influenced by a powerful sense of place and touched by poetry, Fruit Punch is a stunning achievement -- a memoir born of love and endurance, fight or flight, and what it means to be a witness, from a blisteringly honest and observant perspective." -- From back cover.