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 Copy Share Image
I wrote poetry in middle school and high school and even through college. It was bad. I just don't think I'm very… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I see so many talented writers of color struggling to get their work out to an audience. I know that's the case… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think that we need to be more aware of how we are all interconnected, and how we actually need to invest… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share 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… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I can't stop thinking about the devaluation of black life, and I find it seeping into everything I write. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share 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… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I have never written a novel that volleys back and forth between a couple of different first person perspectives. It's definitely a… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think my love for books sprang from my need to escape the world I was born into, to slide into another… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I consider myself a progressive, so my answer would be that we need to be progressive. For some reason the people in… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
Some people think that Southern hip-hop doesn't have any depth. They think it's just noise, all about people having a good time… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult.… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“The dream of her was the glow of a spent fire on a cold night: warm and welcoming.” — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee.” — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
