Past Quotes by Jesmyn Ward

9 Past quotes by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward’s evocative voice brings depth to recollections, and these nine concise quotes offer a resonant, emotionally rich glimpse into the past.

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I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through…

Jesmyn Ward

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I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in…

Jesmyn Ward

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Living in the rural South, you sometimes feel trapped, like you don't have any options. It grinds people down, and of course…

Jesmyn Ward

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'The UnAmericans' is a compassionate and brilliantly rendered debut - and for a book set largely in the past, these stories feel…

Jesmyn Ward

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In the past, I've felt like an outsider, with New York the center of everything literary, but right now, there are new…

Jesmyn Ward

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In the past, I travelled with 'The Hero and the Crown' by Robin McKinley: I suffer from a fear of flying, and…

Jesmyn Ward

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I love creating that community and writing about that place, because I think, in some ways, Bois Sauvage is like the DeLisle…

Jesmyn Ward

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I'm always thinking about time. That's one of themes I return to in my work, the way the past bears on the…

Jesmyn Ward

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“But race in the United States is not a tidy matter. Only three of the submitted pieces explicitly referenced the future. Most…

Jesmyn Ward

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I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African…

Jesmyn Ward

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I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and…

Jesmyn Ward

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There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And acknowledging that…

Jesmyn Ward

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“The dream of her was the glow of a spent fire on a cold night: warm and welcoming.”

Jesmyn Ward

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The first writer that I think of immediately that I studied with at Michigan is Peter Ho Davies. He was really important to me,…

Jesmyn Ward

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I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta,…

Jesmyn Ward

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“Vines catch my arms, my head; we tear through until we break out into the clearing before the fence, the field, the barn, the…

Jesmyn Ward

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

Jesmyn Ward

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People give the South a bad rap. It's often stereotyped as backwards and close-minded and dogmatic, and all of those things have been true.…

Jesmyn Ward

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By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events…

Jesmyn Ward

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

Jesmyn Ward

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She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies,…

Jesmyn Ward

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I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people.

Jesmyn Ward

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When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested…

Jesmyn Ward

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“Lot of folks was in there for stealing food because everybody was poor and starving, and even though White people couldn’t get your work…

Jesmyn Ward

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