#Jesmyn Ward

[quotespile]

But this grief, for all its awful weight, insists that he matters.

Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped

[girljeremystrong]

books about dads and about family and about complicated feelings

FICTION

they're going to love you by meg howrey: carlisle goes back to greenwich village to her father's house and finds herself dealing with her complicated feelings towards her dad.

foster by claire keegan: a story about a young girl who's sent to live with another family and founds a love she wasn't familiar with before.

the namesake by jhumpa lahiri: most beautiful novel by our gratest author about the son of immigrants from calcutta growing up in america.

east of eden by john steinbeck: the nobel prize winning greatest story of a father growing two very different boys in california.

still life by sarah winman: ulysses finds himself with a child and chooses to become the best man he can for her (and they move to italy).

unlikely animals by annie hartnett: emma's dad has a mysterious brain disease so she drops out of med school and goes back home. it's a delightful story.

the family chao by lan samantha chang: a retelling of the brothers karamazov set in a modern day chinese restaurant in america.

the incredible winston browne by sean dietrich: sheriff browne recieves some bad news and suddenly he finds himself taking care of a runaway girl who doesn't speak.

we begin at the end by chris whitaker: duchess is only a kid but she takes care of her little brother with all she has even when circumstances keep getting worse and worse.

razorblade tears by s. a. crosby: two black men are killed and their fathers, who always had trouble accepting their sexualities, decide to get justice.

the sweetness of water by nathan harris: in the waning days of the civil war two brothers find refuge with a couple in a farm.

salvage the bones by jesmyn ward: esch's brothers and her dad in the 12 days before during and after hurricane katrina. a modern classic and one of the most beautiful books ever.

the patron saint of liars by ann patchett: in a kentucky home for unwed mothers, a woman meets a man and can't escape her past.

homeland elegies by ayad akhtar: a very personal story of a man and his father dealing with feelings of dispossession and belongings. again one of the best books in the world.

NON-FICTION

the three mothers by anna malaika tubbs: the story of the three women who raised and shaped martin luther king jr., malcolm x and james baldwin.

how to say babylon by safyia sinclair: a memoir of a childhood shaped by a volatile father.

beautiful country by qian julie wang: after moving from china to the usa young qian finds a place among books as her family struggles to adapt to their new home as undocumented immigrants.

between the world and me by ta-nehisi coates: a black father shares his fears for his son growing up in current day america.

[litsnaps]

[dearlyjess]

currently reading 🍂

[vessels-for-good-intent]

“Even though he [Nick] insists he is not carelessly violent like Tom or Dasy, the young understand that Nick is as much a product of his social class as Tom, that its backwardness and insularity marks him as much as it does Tom and Daisy.”

- Jesmyn Ward

[thechanelmuse]

My Book Review

"The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand."

Straight out the gate. If I needed to be reminded why Jesmyn Ward is one of my favorite writers with a ridiculous pen game...

I thought I would read this historical fiction meets magical realism novel, Let Us Descend, in a day or two and just sit with it. I ended up rereading sections and chapters a number of times because of how Jesmyn exquisitely threads words into lyrical, sensory writing; the symbolism within nature; the way this story set in the Carolinas and New Orleans during chattel slavery bends in reality, imagination, and memory for our enslaved protagonist, Annis; and the driving force of grief, mother-daughter bonds, survival, and identity.

In her interview with Late Night with Seth Meyers, Jesmyn reveals her intentionality behind giving Annis different types of agencies — emotional agency, imaginative agency, the agency of memory, spiritual agency — because she doesn't have a physical agency since she's the physical property of someone else. I've never read a story with this heavy subject matter that was presented like this. It's poetry. The creation of a system of spiritual and mental survival during the system of chattel slavery. Mind blown.

[the-final-sentence]

But I never found the book that allowed me entry, granted me succor in story, and a home after the last page until I wrote my own.

Jesmyn Ward, from "Magic Mirrors"

[wellconstructedsentences]

Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and it beats like your heart. Same Time.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

[quotessentially]

From Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

[whilereadingandwalking]

Everything Jesmyn Ward writes is gorgeous, and her newest, Let Us Descend, is no exception. In it, she examines grief and reclamation through Annis, a young slave separated from her mother and her lover, sold south in a fit of anger from her father and owner. Annis is caught in a world of spirit, ones that give but at a cost, ones that ask for worship and take what they need. As she fights to retain her own survival, to protect herself, Annis thinks of her mother's old stories and digs back into her oldest memories, as the wind makes her promises and the river whispers to her ominously.

It's a beautiful book. The prose itself is beautiful, of course, and so is Annis's difficult story. The editor, in the introduction to the review copy, notes that Jesmyn's partner died in early 2020, influencing this novel greatly. Ward also writes that it took her "years and multiple drafts to understand how Annis and enslaved people might have retained their sense of self, their sense of hope," and how to strike a balance of portraying terror while also portraying "her resistance, her tenderness, her imagination, her belief in who she is and what she is capable of."

Ward's beautifully descriptive yet straightforward prose has a particular gift for evoking transcendence—collective solidarity as felt through song, for example, or the feeling of being immersed in a generational memory, or the feeling of dissolving into the realm of the spirits. Everything feels tangible, from the clots of soil to the injury and pain to the decadence of a rare gift of good food. The book is earthy and rich, powered by Annis's determination to decide her own fate in a violent, chaotic system that demands obedience. It is a book about love, perseverance, and stubborn resistance.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Let Us Descend comes out from Scribner on October 3.

Content warnings for sexual assault, torture, violence, body horror, death, suicidal ideation.

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Jesmyn Ward﹒

Six Books Written By this Author:

Salvage the Bones

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Men We Reaped

The Fire This Time

Navigate the Stars

Let Us Descend

___

Happy reading!

[quotespile]

Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants... I learned pain can do that too. Can eat a person until there’s nothing but bone and skin and a thin layer of blood left. How it can eat your insides and swell you in wrong ways.

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

[boy-who-studies]

So happy to be able to work on this novel again

[litsnaps]

[litandlifequotes]

I think my love for books sprang from my need to escape the world I was born into, to slide into another where words were straightforward and honest, where there was clearly delineated good and evil, where I found girls who were strong and smart and creative and foolish enough to fight dragons, to run away from home to live in museums, to become child spies, to make new friends and build secret gardens.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward

[wordswithloveee]

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.