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Writing Quotes by Jesmyn Ward

50 Writing quotes by Jesmyn Ward

All Writing quotes Jesmyn Ward’s page

Jesmyn Ward writes to reclaim the voodoo tradition of the African diaspora, challenging stereotypes and giving the practice a respectful, human face in her stories. She also talks about shaping her characters to feel fully human, and about how her subconscious choices guide the way she writes about home and identity.

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I didn't start really focusing on writing until I was 24.

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A lot of times, real life is more surreal than writing.

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I knew it would be painful to write a memoir.

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As an artist, I feel a certain responsibility to write about difficult subject matter.

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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…

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My time in New York really clarified things for me. I thought, 'What could I do with my life that would give…

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It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and…

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That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

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I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor and the black and the rural people of the South.

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

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

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I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.

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

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While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different…

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It's always hard for a writer to make herself into a character; I had to figure out what my defining characteristics were,…

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I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch,…

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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…

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The reason that I like to use classical myths as models is because African American writers and African American stories are usually…

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I've found that in fiction - and this is just the kind of writer I am - I can't really work from…

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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…

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When I decided to write about my brother and friends, I was attempting to answer the question why. Why did they all…

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It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again…

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I hope that if the people who read my work encounter people in the real world who are like the characters that…

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I want each character to be as unique as possible. I want them to reflect something of who they are in the…

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There are things about the South - the politics, the classism, the racism - that I hate, and I want to be…

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

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

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When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth.…

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I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative…

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I dabbled in writing, wrote really bad poetry in high school. I also took a few writing classes when I was an…

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After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more…

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If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better…

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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…

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I wrote poetry in middle school and high school and even through college. It was bad. I just don't think I'm very…

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I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are…

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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…

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I feel a lot of pressure when I'm writing because I know, you know, if they looked at a synopsis of the…

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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…

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I think that being a parent has expanded my writing, expanded my understanding of my characters, and has added a depth and…

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I felt like if I didn't write about what happened to the young men here in the South of America, the same…

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More by Jesmyn Ward

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

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

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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.…

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

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

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

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

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

“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…