Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jesmyn Ward Books
Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward Books

Novelist

Related Quotes

“The first time I read As I Lay Dying, I was so awed I wanted to give up. I thought, "He's done it, perfectly. Why the hell am I trying?" But the failures of some of his black characters - the lack of imaginative vision regarding them, the way they don't display the full range of human emotion, how they fail to live fully on the page - work against that awe and goad me to write.”

WritingInspirationImagination
Book:Salvage the Bones
Create image

“During the pandemic, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house, terrified I would find myself standing in the doorway of an ICU room, watching the doctors press their whole weight on the chest of my mother, my sisters, my children, terrified of the lurch of their feet, the lurch that accompanies each press that restarts the heart, the jerk of their pale, tender soles, terrified of the frantic prayer without intention that keens through the mind, the prayer for life that one says in the doorway, the prayer I never want to say again, the prayer that dissolves midair when the hush-click-hush-click of the ventilator drowns it, terrified of the terrible commitment at the heart of me that reasons that if the person I love has to endure this, then the least I can do is stand there, the least I can do is witness, the least I can do is tell them over and over again, aloud, I love you. We love you. We ain’t going nowhere.”

LoveDeathLossGriefFamilyDyingLoved OnesCovid 19Witnessing
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“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 [...] since Mama got sick, 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.”

CountryPainNature
Book:Sing, Unburied, Sing
Create image

“It is as if we have reentered the past and are living in a second Nadir: It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of lynchings during the worst decades of the Jim Crow era. There was a lynching every four days in the early decades of the twentieth century. It’s been estimated that an African American is now killed by police every two to three days.”

RaceRacismBlack Lives MatterJim CrowBlmLynching
Book:The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
Create image

“I read about Ahmaud, I said. I read about Breonna. I don’t say, but I thought it: I know their beloveds’ wail. I know their beloveds’ wail. I know their beloveds wander their pandemic rooms, pass through their sudden ghosts. I know their loss burns their beloveds’ throats like acid. Their families will speak, I thought. Ask for justice. And no one will answer, I thought. I know this story: Trayvon, Tamir, Sandra. Cuz, I said, I think you told me this story before. I think I wrote it.”

RacismPoliceBlack Lives MatterPolice BrutalityGeorge FloydBreonna TaylorAhmaud Arbery
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWorldNeedsChildrenBookEnoughHomeRunningGirlFightingEvilFoundStrongBornSecretCreativeHonestSmartGardenFoolishGood And EvilDragonsMuseumsRunning AwaySpySlidesStraightforwardNew FriendsAway From HomeSecret Garden
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“When I decided to write about my brother and friends, I was attempting to answer the question why. Why did they all die like that? Why so many of them? Why so close together? Why were they all so young? Why, especially, in the kinds of places where we are from? Why would they all die back to back to back to back? I feel like I was writing my way towards an answer in the memoir.”

WayFeelsWritingKindTogetherYoungDiesAnswersBrotherDecidedMemoirMy WayMy BrotherAttempting
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I've also never written about home in this way before. I guess a lot of it is subconscious and I am intuitively making these decisions when I'm writing. I wanted to communicate in the book that on one hand, being at home - both in our homes and in DeLisle - gives us a sense of belonging and family and safety, but at the same time, being in those places makes us less safe.”

WayGivingWritingBookHomeHandsWantedDecisionWrittenSafeSafetyCommunicateBelongingSubconscious
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“When you have a family, even though you might move a lot, you collect all of these things. It's the detritus of your family and they become the symbols of your family life, and your unit out in the world. In that moment I wanted to allude to the fact that the way my parents' relationship was falling apart was impacting me and my brother, my parents, but also our symbols.”

WorldWayMomentsFactsMightWantedMovingFallParentBrotherSymbolsOur FamilyMy BrotherThat MomentUnitsFalling ApartFamily Life
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult. It doesn't erase anything that happened, but I think that it was healthy for me to do it. The teenage self-loathing that I suffered from all of a sudden found itself turned into rapids with my grief after my brother died. I turned it inwards. In the same way that my mom processes her grief and her problems. This project, as a memoir, has helped me funnel it outwards.”

ThinkingWayWritingSelfProblemFoundProcessDifficultGriefHappenedBrotherMomHealthyProjectsDiedMy MomMemoirMy BrotherTeenageRapidsEraseLoathingSelf LoathingReckoningBrother DiedMy Brother Died
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth. That's what the memoir form demands. I also had to figure out how much of the truth do I tell, how do I make the truth as balanced as I possibly can? How do I make these people as complicated and as human and as unique and as multifaceted as I possibly can? For me, that was the way I attempted to counteract some of that criticism.”

PeopleWayWritingHumansFormFiguresBattleDemandPagesUniqueCriticismComplicatedMemoirTelling The TruthBalanced
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I want each character to be as unique as possible. I want them to reflect something of who they are in the way that they move and in how their bodies work. That was foremost in my head when I was writing Salvage: I wanted every gesture, every little movement, to really carry meaning and communicate meaning to the reader. I was very conscious of that when I was writing.”

WayWantWritingLittlesCharacterBodyWantedMovingMovementReaderUniqueConsciousCommunicateGesturesSalvageBody Work
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again for a few pages. I got to live with my brother again for the entire book. Of course as I'm writing the book, I'm getting closer and closer to the end and I know what that means. I knew exactly where I was heading. It was really difficult, but it was nice to make them come alive for those scenes. It was good.”

KnowsWritingMeanBookEndsCoursesFeltDifficultNiceAliveBrotherScenePagesPainfulMy BrotherIndulgenceHeadings
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I came to the realization that I had failed in some respects because I had been more of a benevolent narrator than the world I saw reflected around me, and in the lives of the people in my community, and in my family. There was no benevolent God sparing us pain and loss and grief and struggle. If I was going to continue to write about the place where I am from, and the kind of people who live in my community and who are in my family, I owed it to them to be honest with what our lives are like.”

PeopleWorldWritingKindPainCommunityLossGriefStruggleHonestMy FamilyRealizationBeing HonestBenevolent
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I have never written a novel that volleys back and forth between a couple of different first person perspectives. It's definitely a challenge because I had to think about who knows what, when do they know it, when are they sharing what they know or what they think they know, how the reader's perspective affects things. Telling the story in that way is challenging. It does require a lot of revision.”

ThinkingDifferentChallengesNovelPerspectiveCouple
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“My understanding of voodoo is that it was important to the people who practiced it because it helped them survive. There are practical ways it enabled survival. It used herbal medicine to heal, to aid in childbirth. It was a spiritual system. It made room for hope and for magic and for possibility. For people who struggle and fight to survive and who fight to live, those are really important things.”

PeopleImportantSpiritualFightingUnderstandingStruggleMagicPossibilitySurvivalAidsHealChildbirthVoodoo
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I consider myself a progressive, so my answer would be that we need to be progressive. For some reason the people in power in Mississippi still seem to be invested in these very American myths."The individual is alone." "We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps." "We create success for ourselves, and if we work hard enough then we will succeed and have success beyond our wildest dreams." I think that we need to do away with that kind of thinking and be more aware of history and how the history of this place bears in the present and how it affects people.”

PeopleThinkingKindReasonEnoughDreamIndividualHard WorkSucceedMythProgressive
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I hope that if the people who read my work encounter people in the real world who are like the characters that I write about, that maybe that might make them feel empathy for those people. I know it sounds idealistic in a way, but I do hope that my work maybe changes some minds, and that my work makes readers see people as human that maybe before they read my work they might not have seen as humans, and those people include me and my family and my kids, people in my community.”

PeopleWorldWritingMindRealCharacterKidsCommunityEmpathyMy FamilyReal World
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.”

WritingRunningMotherGrowing UpRacismLet MeEverydayHealthcareEveryday LifeHomecomingYachtLet Me GoFundraiser
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“Black people in the US are told all the time, from all aspects, that they're nothing, that they're less than. And of course that bears fruit, but no one wants to shoulder part of the blame. A lot of people here can't see around their own family's history. They don't want to see that where they come from and the people they surround themselves with might have played a role in all this. This is all part of our national myth about the individual. We think that a lack of success comes from the individual not working hard enough. A lot of people in this country really believe that.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveCountryEnoughIndividualBlackBlameMythSurroundBlack People
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“There are things about the South - the politics, the classism, the racism - that I hate, and I want to be here to fight those things. I don't want to be in California or Michigan just complaining about them. I'm here trying to make a difference in the way I can, writing about it. And I want younger people, especially kids from my community, to see that being successful doesn't have to mean leaving a place like this. You don't have to trade in your family or your sense of belonging for that.”

PeopleWritingTryingMeanKidsHateFightingCommunitySuccessfulRacismI HateTradeLeavingComplainingOur FamilyMaking A DifferenceBeing SuccessfulBelongingI Want YouClassism
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image

“Most people just aren't clear-eyed about the rural South. We think that the urban centers are the problem, and the rural areas across the country are idyllic, suffused with good old American values, social values, religious values, moral values. It's what we tell ourselves to keep this political power structure in place, and it's what we see in pop culture, too.”

PeopleThinkingCountryProblemPoliticalValuesCultureReligiousMoralUrbanPop CulturePolitical PowerMoral ValuesAmerican Values
Author:Jesmyn Ward
Create image