Kendra Allen Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Kendra Allen is a published author.

Kendra was born in Dallas, Texas, where she grew up. She wrote her memoir Fruit Punch and is also known for the poetry collection The Collection Plate as well as When You Learn the Alphabet, an essay collection. Alphabet won her the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction in 2018.

Readers can find some of her work or writing published in places such as High Times, Oxford American, Repeller, Southwest Review, The Paris Review, The Rumpus, and others. Her debut fictional novel is titled Good Morning Means I Love You.

Fruit Punch is a 2022 memoir by Kendra Allen. If you have been looking for something new to add to your reading list but don’t know what to pick, this one of a kind and completely unique memoir may be the selection you have been looking for.

This book is a completely original journey that moves through the memories of growing up as a black child for Kendra where she had a desperate need to create a clear reality for herself. This memoir is written in a distinctive voice and is full of humor, pathos, and personality.

It’s a unique memoir that is different from others you have read, perhaps because Kendra is an everyday person. This millennial talent grew up in Dallas during the 90s and 2000s, and had a complicated family life that was full of community but also dealt with various undercurrents of violence and turmoil.

As Kendra navigates her way through an obscure world, she also finds that she is surely discovering outlets that can help her make her way through growing up and against the performance that is expected of you when you are a young woman in the South who is black, an ever-shifting ground where class, race, and gender all come into play.

This book deals with a wide variety of topics, such as the question of beauty or how we come to form concepts of ourselves. When she was young, Kendra would make a hole into the stockings that she had to wear– dealing with youthful rebellion while growing up in the Southern Baptist church which came with many rules. These and many other stories from her real life form the basis of a book that is a unique work and achievement. This is an incredible memoir from an honest voice in literature that you won’t want to miss.

Good Morning Means I Love You is a 2026 book by Kendra Allen. It is her debut fictional work. This is the story of a young woman from Texas and it revolves around the family that she makes with two men. She fell in love with Noon and then they fell in love with Micah. She has both of their babies years later, naming them Morning and Night.

In this novel, the author focuses on themes of motherhood, partnership, love, pleasure, and going after freedom in the unconventional terms of one woman. Rae has come back to her family after some time being gone, the family being her two male partners and the sons that she has had with both of them. Through the course of one year, they will go through a lot of devastation as well as a variety of joys that they never saw coming.

This book follows Rae’s character as she makes various choices about being a mother, a partner, and sex that may surprise everyone else just as much as they come naturally to her. She watches her children grow as they learn to walk and understand language, even as her lovers deal with their own ideas of what it is to be masculine or to be a person or father.

Along the way, Rae starts to understand the toughest truth, which is that we don’t have that much time on this planet in order to make love, family, and to make good on the promise of this one life. This is a beautiful novel and a wonderful debut from Kendra Allen. Check it out and be one of the early readers to experience the words of this incredible author!