Jesmyn Ward (April 1, 1977) is an American novelist and an associate professor at Tulane University.

Quotes

• I know that I could, but it feels very unnatural for me to strip my prose like that, in part because place is so important to me. I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.
  • On choosing figurative language for the majority of her works in “INTERVIEWS: Powell's Interview: Jesmyn Ward, Author of 'Sing, Unburied, Sing'” in Powell City of Books (2017 Aug 29)

• The reason that I like to use classical myths as models is because African American writers and African American stories are usually understood as occurring in some kind of vacuum — because of slavery.
  • On using mythology in her works in “INTERVIEWS: Powell's Interview: Jesmyn Ward, Author of 'Sing, Unburied, Sing'” in Powell City of Books (2017 Aug 29)

• Place is important to my writing; I believe that if a reader gets a clear picture of the place where a character is from, then they can understand what motivates the character, what limits him or her…
  • On using the setting to frame her novels in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘So much of life is pain and sorrow and wilful ignorance’” in The Guardian (2017 Nov 12)

• But what mires me in pessimism is the fact that so much of life is pain and sorrow and willful ignorance and violence, and pushing back against that tide takes so much effort, so much steady fight. It’s tiring.
  • On having a pessimistic nature in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘So much of life is pain and sorrow and wilful ignorance’” in The Guardian (2017 Nov 12)

• So I kept pulling my punches. And later I realised that was a mistake. Life doesn’t spare the kind of people who I write about, so I felt like it would be dishonest to spare my characters in that way.
  • On how she “protected” her characters in her first novel Where the Line Bleeds in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘Black girls are silenced, misunderstood and underestimated'” in The Guardian (2018 May 11)

External links