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Jesmyn Ward Biography

Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and an associate professor of English at Tulane University. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction and a 2012 Alex Award for her second novel Salvage the Bones, a story about familial love and community covering the 10 days preceding Hurricane Katrina, the day of the cyclone, and the day after. Prior to her appointment at Tulane, Ward was an assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama. From 2008 to 2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010–2011 academic year. Ward joined the faculty at Tulane in the fall of 2014. In 2013 she released her memoir Men We Reaped. In 2017, she was the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The same year, she received a second National Book Award for her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which made her the first woman to win two National Book Awards for Fiction.

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Jesmyn Ward Quotes

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 in the club. And some of it doesn't have a lot of depth, it's true, but some does. I wanted to work against that stereotype. These are verses by Southern artists who are really wrestling with what it means to be here, young black men who are trying to figure out how to live in the South. So I wanted the epigraphs in my novels to reflect that.

Artist, Mean, Reflect, Work, Wrestling, Young

I consider myself a progressive, so my answer would be that we need to be progressive. For some reason the people in power in Mississippi still seem to be invested in these very American myths. "The individual is alone. " "We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. " "We create success for ourselves, and if we work hard enough then we will succeed and have success beyond our wildest dreams. " I think that we need to do away with that kind of thinking and be more aware of history and how the history of this place bears in the present and how it affects people.

American, Bears, Dream, Hard Work, Present, Thinking

There are things about the South - the politics, the classism, the racism - that I hate, and I want to be here to fight those things. I don't want to be in California or Michigan just complaining about them. I'm here trying to make a difference in the way I can, writing about it. And I want younger people, especially kids from my community, to see that being successful doesn't have to mean leaving a place like this. You don't have to trade in your family or your sense of belonging for that.

Belonging, Hate, Kids, Leaving, Mean, Politics

Living in the rural South, you sometimes feel trapped, like you don't have any options. It grinds people down, and of course it leads to substance abuse. I see it all around me. So many people in my family, probably more than 50 percent, have had substance abuse problems, either currently or in the past. It's so personal and immediate to me.

Abuse, Options, Past, People, Probably, Rural

Most people just aren't clear-eyed about the rural South. We think that the urban centers are the problem, and the rural areas across the country are idyllic, suffused with good old American values, social values, religious values, moral values. It's what we tell ourselves to keep this political power structure in place, and it's what we see in pop culture, too.

Country, Moral, Problem, Religious, Thinking, Values

I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.

Dance, Growing Up, Lives, Mother, Racism, Running

My mom worked as a housekeeper, and I saw her relationship with her employers - how on the one hand she spent more time with these women than with a lot of her friends, and how in certain ways they were friends. But then they weren't.

Hands, Mom, Relationship, Time, Way, Worked

She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.

Babies, Baby, Blood, Dark, Gulf, Mother

I read the last Harry Potter, and I cried for at least the last 70 pages. Awful! I was curled into a ball and I just kept sobbing. It was embarrassing. I was loud, and I just kept wiping tears away so I could see the page.

Tears, Balls, Potters, Sobbing, Pages, Wiping

By the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.

Numbers, Racism, Records, Lives, History

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

Black, People, Survival, Voodoo, Writing

I've also never written about home in this way before. I guess a lot of it is subconscious and I am intuitively making these decisions when I'm writing. I wanted to communicate in the book that on one hand, being at home - both in our homes and in DeLisle - gives us a sense of belonging and family and safety, but at the same time, being in those places makes us less safe.

Book, Home, Writing, Belonging, Safe, Places

I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I have to concentrate my efforts on writing something that will really engage people's humanity and will tie readers to my characters regardless of race. I have to prove that I can connect with a wider audience.

Book, Writing, Character, Wider, Efforts

I think that we need to be more aware of how we are all interconnected, and how we actually need to invest in safety nets and in education, and that we need to come to the realization that health care is a human right and try to provide that for people.

Come, Education, Human, People, Safety, Thinking

It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again for a few pages. I got to live with my brother again for the entire book. Of course as I'm writing the book, I'm getting closer and closer to the end and I know what that means. I knew exactly where I was heading. It was really difficult, but it was nice to make them come alive for those scenes. It was good.

Book, Brother, Difficult, Entire, Make, Nice

There is laughter, shrill calls. Everyone is flirting, saying in nudges and jokes and blushing what they would do in private

Laughter, Flirting, Nudge, Blushing, Saying

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

Hopefully, Ideas, Possible, Think, Thinking, Trying

I wanted to be my own heroine.

Heroine, Heroines, My Own, Wanted

In the past, I've felt like an outsider, with New York the center of everything literary, but right now, there are new opportunities being created that let us tell stories in the South, whether the medium is writing or TV or reality TV.

Created, Felt, Opportunity, Past, Right, Writing

I think my love for books sprang from my need to escape the world I was born into, to slide into another where words were straightforward and honest, where there was clearly delineated good and evil, where I found girls who were strong and smart and creative and foolish enough to fight dragons, to run away from home to live in museums, to become child spies, to make new friends and build secret gardens.

Foolish, Girl, Running, Smart, Straightforward, Strong

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