By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When… — 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
“We seem to be in a continuing feedback loop of repeating a past that our country has yet to address. Our history… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“We crawled through time like roaches through the linings of walls, the neglected spaces and hours, foolishly happy that we were still… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I love creating that community and writing about that place, because I think, in some ways, Bois Sauvage is like the DeLisle… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“By the time we'd moved into that rambling, lopsided wooden house, I'd already fallen in love with reading. I think my love… — 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
“It is as if we have reentered the past and are living in a second Nadir: It seems the rate of police… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“First, it confirmed how inextricably interwoven the past is in the present, how heavily that past bears on the future; we cannot… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
When you have a family, even though you might move a lot, you collect all of these things. It's the detritus of… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
My time in New York really clarified things for me. I thought, 'What could I do with my life that would give… — 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
At one time, when I was eight years old, my mother and father, my brother and my sisters - we had to… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“But race in the United States is not a tidy matter. Only three of the submitted pieces explicitly referenced the future. Most… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think that the first book that made me think that I could try to be a writer - or that made… — 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
I was a freshman at Stanford University the first time someone called me a 'bama.' One of my new friends from D.C.… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
It took me a long time to write again because Katrina destroyed the home I loved, and that robbed me of hope. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
People ask me all the time, 'Why did I move home?' As well as I can articulate it, that's why. I moved… — 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
