Jesmyn Ward – författare

* AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK *‘A spectacular achievement’ ANTHONY DOERR‘Extravagantly beautiful’ DAILY MAIL‘One of the greatest writers of all time’ JACQUELINE WOODSON‘Extraordinary’ GUARDIAN‘The best book I’ve read in years’ LOUISE KENNEDY-----------------------The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand.On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother’s resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother – how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness.When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth. A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation – a masterwork for the ages.Praise for Sing, Unburied, Sing‘A must’ Margaret Atwood‘One of the most important writers in America today’ Ann Patchett‘Ward is a lyrical, visceral storyteller’ Daily Mail‘A searing, urgent read’ Celeste Ng‘Plays out like a grand epic … Staggering’ Marlon James

The collected creative nonfiction of a singular American writer, Jesmyn Ward, including widely shared classics, three never-before-published speeches, and an introductory essay.Respair (noun, obsolete), fresh hope after despair.From the two-time National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Jesmyn Ward, this collection of essays documents more than a decade of work in the life of a singular writer often lauded as 'the heir apparent to Toni Morrison' (LitHub). Beginning with her upbringing in a multigenerational household in rural Mississippi, the cradle of both her youth and her gift for storytelling, Ward brings her keen wisdom and hauntingly lyrical prose to a range of topics, following in her grandmother Dorothy’s footsteps when she promises always to 'Tell it straight. Tell it all.'True to her word, in these pages Ward contemplates the writers and novels of her youth and adulthood — the transformative power of discovering Octavia Butler as a twenty-something, the mirror that Richard Wright’s novels held up to her own childhood, and of course, her lifelong love for Toni Morrison. Ward ruminates on her approach to both fiction and life, reflecting on the power of the novel, how to raise a Black son in an era of rising divisiveness and cruelty, as well as her own personal tragedies — including the titular essay of the collection, which tells the story of her partner’s sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic. Every bit as piercing and moving as her fiction, On Witness and Respair is a testament to Ward’s powers as one of America’s finest living writers and is a monument to hope, beauty, and personal and collective resilience.PRAISE FOR JESMYN WARD:'One of the most important writers in America today' Ann Patchett'Ward writes like a dream: a real dream, uneasy, vivid and deep as the sea' The Times'Takes the territory made so familiar by writers such as William Faulkner... and reclaims it' Financial Times'Jesmyn is, simply, the best of us' Ta-Nehesi Coates

_______________SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2017ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW STATESMAN, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TIME AND THE BBC_______________'A must' - Margaret Atwood'A searing, urgent read' - Celeste Ng'Staggering' - Marlon James'Disarmingly beautiful' - Spectator'Blazing with power, grief and tenderness' - Financial Times_______________An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds. Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black and her children’s father is white. Embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEREdited by two-time National Book Award winner and Women’s Prize shortlisted-author Jesmyn Ward, a timely and groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race in AmericaIn this bestselling collection of essays and poems, Jesmyn Ward gathers a new generation of writers and thinkers to speak on race. From Claudia Rankine to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Kiese Laymon to Carol Anderson, these voices shine a light on the darkest corners of American history, wrestle with the struggles the country faces today and imagine a better future.Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin’s groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, The Fire This Time considers the black experience in modern America. Significant progress has been made in the fifty years since Baldwin's essays were published, but America is a long distance away from a post-racial society – a truth that must be confronted if the country is to continue to work towards change.Baldwin's 'fire next time' is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about. Sage, urgent and impassioned, this is an essential collection edited by one of America’s greatest writers.

_______________'A brilliantly pacy adventure story ... Ward writes like a dream' - The Times'Fresh and urgent' - New York Times'There’s something of Faulkner to Ward’s grand diction' - Guardian_______________WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDHurricane Katrina is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. He's a hard drinker, largely absent, and it isn't often he worries about the family.Esch and her three brothers are stockpiling food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; at fifteen, she has just realized that she's pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pit bull's new litter, dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.As the novel progresses through twelve dramatic days, this unforgettable family - motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce - pulls itself up to face another day._______________'Masterful ... A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page ... Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it' - Washington Post'Beautifully written ... A powerful depiction of grinding poverty, where somehow, amid the deprivation, the flame of filial affection survives and a genuine spirit of community is able to triumph over everything the system and nature can throw at it' - Daily Mail

_______________'A brutal, moving memoir … Anyone who emerges from America’s black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward’s deserves a hearing' - Guardian'Raw, beautiful and dangerous' - New York Times Book Review'Lavishly endowed with literary craft and hard-earned wisdom' - Time_______________The beautiful, haunting memoir from Jesmyn Ward, the first woman to win the National Book Award twice'And then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped' - Harriet TubmanJesmyn Ward’s acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young black men dear to her, including her beloved brother – to accidents, murder and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected by identity and place. As Jesmyn dealt with these losses, she came to a staggering truth: the fates of these young men were predetermined by who they were and where they were from, because racism and economic struggle breed a certain kind of bad luck.The agonising reality brought Jesmyn to write, at last, their true stories and her own._______________'Acute and often beautiful' - Financial Times'Haunting' - Laurie Penny, New Statesman Books of the Year'Elegiac, rage-filled, and uncommonly brave' - Vogue'A brilliant book about beauty and death' - Los Angeles Times'Essential' - San Francisco Chronicle'Burns with brilliance' - Harper's Bazaar'Unvarnished and penetrating' - Elle

The first novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, a timeless Southern fable of brotherly love and familial conflictJoshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in a rural town on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Over the course of a single, life-changing summer, as they struggle to find work and contend with the reappearance of their parents – Cille, who left town for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict – the brothers are forced into a series of decisions that will ultimately damn or save them. A delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife and the bonds that can sustain and torment us, Where the Line Bleeds marks the beginning of Jesmyn Ward’s extraordinary career in fiction.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

As an adult, I learned this: persist. Work hard. Face rejection, weather the setbacks, until you meet the gatekeeper who will open a door for you. Jesmyn Ward grew up in a poor, rural community in Mississippi. Today, as the first woman to win the National Book Award twice, she is celebrated as one of America’s greatest living writers.Navigate Your Stars is a stirring reflection on the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. First delivered as a 2018 commencement address at Tulane University, it captures Ward’s inimitable voice as she reflects on her experiences as a Southern black woman, addressing the themes of grit, adversity and the importance of family bonds.Beautifully illustrated in full colour, this is a meditative and profound book that will inspire all readers preparing for the next chapter in their lives.

'Let us descend, and enter his blind world' Dante's Inferno Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation. From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land - the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward's most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.

Named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times Book Review and New York MagazineThe two-time National Book Award winner and author of Salvage the Bones and Let Us Descend, contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a Black man in the rural South.“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet TubmanIn five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own. Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.