I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all … - Jesmyn Ward

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Quote of the day

The ultimate goal is victory. And if you refuse to work as hard as you possibly can toward that aim, or if you do anything that keeps you from achieving that goal, then you are just cheating yourself.

Jesmyn Ward

I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all potential millionaires if only we put in the work. I think that's destructive and ignores history and is one of the reasons we as a state are consistently at the bottom of all the lists because we handicap ourselves.

Destructive, Ignores, Millionaire, Reason, Think, Thinking

Same Author Quotes

Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages.

Children, Earth, Fire, Raise, Sharing, Space

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

Grief, Hurt, Knits, Scars, Suffering, Ways

When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth. That's what the memoir form demands. I also had to figure out how much of the truth do I tell, how do I make the truth as balanced as I possibly can? How do I make these people as complicated and as human and as unique and as multifaceted as I possibly can? For me, that was the way I attempted to counteract some of that criticism.

Memoir, People, Unique, Way, Writing

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

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