LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Following the physical and spiritual journey of an enslaved American woman, Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend is a raw, poetic tour de force. A story that speaks the language of spirits and the soul. Of salt, smoke and soil. Of the earth and water. From its crackling opening line — “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand” — through its heart-rending, radiant path, this is a work of stirring, spellbinding power.
“Mama has always been a woman who hides a tender heart: a woman who tells me stories in a leaf-rustling whisper, a woman who burns like a sulphur lantern as she leads me through the world’s darkness.” So shares Annis early on in the novel, when she and her mother are enslaved on a Carolina plantation, a place where the sire “appraises me in the same way he studies his horses.” While Annis deals with the “mess” in the chamber pot of the man who’s violated her mother several times, his twin daughters — her half-sisters — learn about Aristotle.
At the same time, Annis’ mother teaches her resilience, and shares nourishing, empowering stories of her African warrior grandmother. These stories serve her well, and feel potently real, when her mother is sold, before Annis herself is sold and taken south. Through her journey through rice fields and the Great Dismal Swamp, Annis sees a spirit and partly occupies a mythic world beyond our own.
On reaching New Orleans — “City of the living, city of the dead, city of all between” — she sees free people, women who “walk through the world as if every step they take were their own”, but is sold to a Louisiana sugar plantation. As the spirit urges her to “do as your people did. You must sink in order to rise”, Annis navigates her own way to selfhood and freedom.
Joanne Owen
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Let Us Descend Synopsis
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.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9781526666765 |
Publication date: |
1st August 2024 |
Author: |
Jesmyn Ward |
Publisher: |
Bloomsbury an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
304 pages |
Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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Other Genres: |
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Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Jesmyn Ward Press Reviews
Jesmyn Ward is one of the greatest writers of all time. And Let Us Descend, once again, proves it -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of RED AT THE BONE
Exquisite, harrowing, elemental, transcendent and ultimately hopeful. The best book I’ve read in years. What a writer Jesmyn Ward is! - Louise Kennedy, author of TRESPASSES
Ward resurrects an enslaved girl out of the lost folds of the antebellum South, twists magic through every raindrop, mushroom and stalk of sugarcane, and drops you into the middle of her harrowing, unendurable, magnificent song. This is a gripping, mythic, bone-pulverizing descent into the grim darkness of American slavery – and yet somehow this novel simultaneously leaves you in awe of the human capacity to not only endure, but to ascend back to the light. A spectacular achievement -- Anthony Doerr, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
A stunning achievement. Will grip you from the first word to the last -- Nathan Harris, author of THE SWEETNESS OF WATER
Author
About Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won five Hopwood awards for essays, drama, and fiction. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford, from 2008-2010, she has been named the 2010-11 Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won five Hopwood awards for essays, drama, and fiction. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford, from 2008-2010, she has been named the 2010-11 Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. - See more at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/author/jesmyn-ward#sthash.1JR7VIwW.dpuf
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won five Hopwood awards for essays, drama, and fiction. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford, from 2008-2010, she has been named the 2010-11 Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. - See more at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/author/jesmyn-ward#sthash.1JR7VIwW.dpuf
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won five Hopwood awards for essays, drama, and fiction. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford, from 2008-2010, she has been named the 2010-11 Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. - See more at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/author/jesmyn-ward#sthash.1JR7VIwW.dpuf
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