Fruit Punch by Kendra Allen

Fruit Punch by Kendra Allen

An arresting and one-of-a-kind memoir about the alternately exultant and harrowing trip growing up as a Black child desperate to create a clear reality for herself in this country

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 nineties 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 weight 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 means to grow up in her great uncle's Southern Baptist church--with rules including "No uncrossed ankles" and "No questions." Inflected 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 voice. 

This collection of unflinching personal essays explores the landscape of a Black girlhood in all its beauty and brutality.

• Black Girlhood in the South: From Dallas, Texas, in the nineties to the expectations of a Southern Baptist church, Allen navigates the complex performance of being young, Black, and female on ever-shifting ground.
• A Millennial Voice: Written with the raw honesty, humor, and rhythm of a one-of-a-kind talent, this is a story told on its own terms.
• Family, Love, and Trauma: An intense exploration of a complicated and loving family life, where deep community exists alongside undercurrents of violence and turmoil.
• Literary Nonfiction: A stunning achievement in memoir, with a distinctive, poetic voice that bears witness to the moments of rebellion--like scratching a hole in every single pair of stockings.

Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She is the recipient of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She has been featured on C-SPAN, interviewed in The Rumpus and Poets & Writers, and her work has been taught by New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds alongside that of Jamaica Kincaid and Eve Ewing, among other distinctions. She is the author of The Collection Plate.