Jesmyn Ward

“I don’t want to be empty breath. Bitter at the marrow of my bones. I don’t want that, Leonie.”

— Jesmyn Ward

“Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee.”

— Jesmyn Ward

The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.

— Jesmyn Ward

“I believe there is power in words, power in asserting our existence, our experience, our lives, through words.”

— Jesmyn Ward

There was nothing postracial about my experience, and there still isn't.

— Jesmyn Ward

It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.

— Jesmyn Ward

It's very hard to deal with true subject matter, especially when you're writing about such weighty issues.

— Jesmyn Ward

Confidence definitely did not get me here! More of, like, desperation.

— Jesmyn Ward

As a reader, sometimes, I just want to not think. You know, I want to read something that is purely enjoyable: that…

— Jesmyn Ward

On one hand, I am very pessimistic, but on the other hand, if I didn't believe that speaking up would do something,…

— Jesmyn Ward

Faulkner's characters, too, were uneducated. They were deprived, but they were allowed to have very rich inner lives. I want to advocate…

— Jesmyn Ward

“own, did that mean we were living the same story over and over again, down through the generations? That the young and…

— Jesmyn Ward

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones'…

— Jesmyn Ward

If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the…

— Jesmyn Ward

“We crawled through time like roaches through the linings of walls, the neglected spaces and hours, foolishly happy that we were still…

— Jesmyn Ward

Because everyone grows up together in my small hometown, everyone knows everyone else. And there are such large extended families that a…

— Jesmyn Ward

“Because I wanted Michael's mouth on me, because from the first moment I saw him walking across the grass to where I…

— Jesmyn Ward

I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all potential millionaires if only…

— Jesmyn Ward

I've also never written about home in this way before. I guess a lot of it is subconscious and I am intuitively…

— Jesmyn Ward

When I was a teenager, I was the only black girl at a small, private Episcopal school, where my tuition was paid…

— Jesmyn Ward

“Why figure out what will motivate this kid to learn if, statistically, he’s just another young Black male destined to drop out…

— Jesmyn Ward

My brother died when he was 19, so a part of me indulges and thinks that some part of him that made…

— Jesmyn Ward

I've heard some writers say that they are obsessed with certain ideas and that they find themselves writing around the same obsession…

— Jesmyn Ward

Most people just aren't clear-eyed about the rural South. We think that the urban centers are the problem, and the rural areas…

— Jesmyn Ward

“I washed my hands every day, Jojo. But that damn blood ain't never come out. Hold my hands up to my face,…

— Jesmyn Ward

“I'm tired of this shit,' I say. I don't know why I say it. Maybe because I'm tried of driving, tired of…

— Jesmyn Ward

“One day, me and him was sitting on my mama and daddy front porch and we heard Stag a ways off, coming…

— Jesmyn Ward

Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult.…

— Jesmyn Ward

“Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling.We see, we listen, we speak, and we…

— Jesmyn Ward

“Kids will take shots of white strong liquor, they will smoke weed wrapped in thick blunts, they will even take Ecstasy or…

— Jesmyn Ward

My mother helped to integrate the local elementary school in the nineteen-sixties.

— Jesmyn Ward

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

— Jesmyn Ward

In American culture at large, but especially in African American culture, it's a sign of weakness to ask for help.

— Jesmyn Ward

It took me a long time to write again because Katrina destroyed the home I loved, and that robbed me of hope.

— Jesmyn Ward

I live in the South; there are Confederate flags everywhere.

— Jesmyn Ward

“Sorrow is food swallowed too quickly, caught in the throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe.”

— Jesmyn Ward

People don't read me and say, 'Oh, it's so clean and elegant.'

— Jesmyn Ward

I love my community. I love always being able to come back and have a home.

— Jesmyn Ward

One of the ways my first novel failed was that I was too in love with my characters.

— Jesmyn Ward

At every turn, Molly Antopol's gorgeous debut story collection, 'The UnAmericans,' is firing on multiple cylinders.

— Jesmyn Ward