Sophie Lucido Johnson is the author of the new book Kin: The Future of Family. Her other books include Many Love, and she is a cartoonist for The New Yorker.
Q: What inspired you to write Kin?
A: I kept hearing how everyone around me felt spread too thin in all aspects of their lives, and it really didn't feel like it needed to be quite so hard all the damn time.
We want to help each other. We want to belong to each other. But we haven't learned how to take care of ourselves and each other, and so we keep trying to emulate what our parents taught us: that the nuclear family could save us.
As we face greater social, economic, and environmental challenges, it's clear that that was a broken promise. I wanted to make a guide for building chosen families that could sustain themselves and help us sustain ourselves.
Q: The author Laura Danger said of the book, “In Kin, Sophie Lucido Johnson weaves a tapestry of storytelling that feels both intimate and expansive, guiding us through the ways we’ve become isolated and how we can respond to our profound yearning for connection.” What do you think of that description?
A: Thanks for bringing that up! I feel grateful and like this was such a generous thing for Laura to say. It's definitely what I was hoping to bring to the book. After Laura read this book, we actually became close friends. It ended up doing the meta-work of connecting us, literally.
Q: In the book’s introduction, you focus on Thoreau and Walden Pond. Why did you decide to start there?
A: I was among the many, many teenagers who thought longingly about going out into the woods and living in solitude. But even then, it struck me as unrealistic: we aren't solitary animals! This book is the antidote to the impossible idea that we can get all our needs met with solitude.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: The most impactful thing about writing this book came from all the conversations I had with people who were brilliantly re-imagining the family. It inspired me to learn that there are so many folks out there who have decided to build their lives in new ways, bringing more people into the folds of their lives to increase love and support.
I cried so much when doing these interviews (Is that unprofessional? Well, then it is!) because it was tremendously moving to hear love and communication in practice. People are changing the way we think about families; it is working. I hope readers feel it too.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A novel! It's about women in comedy. I'm also a New Yorker cartoonist and do a bunch of cartoons every week, and I spend a lot of time on my newsletter, You Are Doing A Good Enough Job.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I truly believe that loneliness and fear are not inevitable. At the end of the world, we will have each other.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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