Jesmyn
In Men We Reaped, her memoir about growing up poor in the American south, and the five men close to her who died too soon, Jesmyn Ward writes of a niggling dissatisfaction with her first novel. She knew that the twin boys in Where the Line Bleeds, who graduate high school only to face the […]
Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend is a superb historical-fiction novel sprinkled with supernatural elements that pulls readers into the life of a slave on a long, painful journey. And, while accurate, this description fails to communicate the depth of this novel as well as the multiplicity of layers in which it works. Angry, beautiful, raw, […]
Scribner We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. “Let Us Descend” (Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, part of Paramount Global), the latest novel from two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward, is thick with ghosts, history and searing poetry, in its dramatic story about an enslaved Black girl […]
Comment on this storyComment “Let Us Descend,” the title of Jesmyn Ward’s overwhelming new novel, alludes to Dante’s “Inferno,” but her story tells the tale of a real hell on earth. In one sense, that’s long been Ward’s setting. In “Salvage the Bones,” which . . .
Ward is classically beautiful — delicate and golden-skinned with her hair hanging in long curls. She is friendly and open yet reserved. Her face is unlined, making her appear much younger than her 46 years. But there are occasions when she sets her jaw and fixes to speak, and you find that she has the […]
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