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. 

A Memoir

Fruit Punch

Sabrina D. 

He laughing, not thinking nothing he did is technically wrong. But we all know what wrong is, and we all know not to talk about wrong things to no adult no matter how much they assure us they the open books they parents weren't for them. We know parents who say they open to secrets never know how to handle them once children start spilling. They start questioning your secrets for being secretive; so agreeing to hush ain’t even a conversation we need to have amongst ourselves. 

THE FIRST TIME L.A. SAYS Let me show you how to slow dance she whisks me up and down all the laundromat aisles like I’m Cinderella at the ball and "So into You" by Tamia plays in the Cind background, so now we play it every time; turning our chore into something to look forward to. As the clothes enter cycle after cycle, we go back and forth, song for song, singing loud in these people’s place of business, until we get to our last fifty cents for our last song—our song—that leads into our last dance—the finale—as our clothes enter their final dry cycle right before it’s time to fold. 

Fruit Punch quotes

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