Jesmyn WardCritiques

This is a fascinating book about the French art thief Stéphane Briestweiser and his girlfriend Anne Catherine Kleinkhaus. He is a lover of any form of pre-renaissance art and in 1991 steals his first small ivory statue from a museum in Antwerp. It is a sculpture of Adam and Eve and becomes his favourite piece. They return to Mulhouse, France south of Strasbourg. They live in the attic of his mother’s house, Mireille Stengel.
As a former museum security guard, Breitweiser knows the ins and outs of weaknesses in security systems and uses his knowledge and Catherine large purse to snatch anything that they fancy. He does not consider himself to be a thief as he does not profit from the stolen goods. The apartment is filled with over 200 objects that he adores for their beauty.
When he is finally caught returning to the scene of an earlier theft, police authorities in several countries collaborate to build their case and find him guilty.
Good story.

I thought I would like it more than I did. Ward is a gifted writer, with a flair for dramatic language. Each chapter is in the voice of one of three characters (alive or dead). Unfortunately, the overly dramatic language did not always ring true for some of the characters, especially Leoni. It would have been interesting to have other characters, such as Michael or Pop narrate a chapter.
The ending was a disappointment for me.

Violence of dogfighting is spotlighted in this story. Realistic and lushly detailed prose from a teenage girl with several brothers, no mother and a father still mourning the loss of his wife. Great sadness, little joy after their lives are destroyed in the storm.

Read January 2014

This novel is about a poor black/mixed race family in modern day Mississippi but there are a lot of flashbacks to earlier 1900s. The mom and kids are on a road trip to pick up dad from prison. The grandmother is dying of cancer. Many of the characters scan see ghosts and have conversations with them.

The writing is very beautiful and poetic, but the plot moved very slowly especially in the first half. The second half was much better, though a little hard to follow, at least on audiobook. Jojo and Pop saved the book; the other characters I mostly found annoying and beyond stupid, making one bad decision after another. Even the 3 year old was just annoying as hell. The story is so so sad, horrific is parts, with hemes of death, home, and family. I can't say I enjoyed the book, though I think it was well written, just not for me.½

I have long admired Jesmyn Ward’s writing, especially Sing, Unburied, Sing. Ward’s latest novel, Let Us Descend, doesn’t reach those lofty heights but is still a creative, worthwhile read. The novel centers on Annis, the daughter of an enslaved woman who was raped by the plantation owner. Annis’ mother trains her to fight, as her African warrior grandmother once did before she, too, was sold into slavery. But a strong will and fighting skills are not enough to fend off the physical and sexual abuse inflicted by white people on enslaved people.

After Annis’ mother is taken away and sold, Annis begins seeing a spirit named Aza, who takes the form of her grandmother. Annis calls on Aza to help her through a series of the hardships. Aza is inconsistent and no substitute for Annis’ mother, but their dialogue helps Annis find her way. I had difficulty suspending my disbelief over Aza’s character, and found the Aza-Annis dialogue difficult to follow at times.

Ward’s literary talents were most on display when describing the horrors Annis endured, and the violent behavior of the white community. She doesn’t mince words, but stories like these need to be told and re-told, in hopes that as a society we will someday atone for this period in history.

Ward's writing sings.

Annis is a slave on a plantation in Virginia. Her father is the plantation owner. When she rebuffs his advances she is sold further south. The journey to New Orleans is long and nearly unbearable. The scenes where the slaves are forced to cross rivers are awful. Upon reaching New Orleans, Annis is purchased by a woman who runs a sugar plantation. She is starved and worked mercilessly. She has a spirit, her grandmother Aza who watches over her. This is gut-wrenching, but probably a more true portrayal of slavery than what we usually are fed.½

Very character-driven magical realism historical fiction story with lyrical prose but very little plot.

[3.25] How I wanted this widely-acclaimed book that reimagines Dante’s “Inferno” to land on my all-to-short list of 5-star reads. It seemed to have all the ingredients. A socially and historically significant theme that creatively explores the tragedy of slavery through the eyes of a girl. A heartbreaking storyline that shines a spotlight on the resiliency of the human spirit. A talented author known for her lyrical prose. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work for me — and I’m struggling to understand why it didn’t. I think my biggest issue involved the way the story unfolded in a stream of consciousness style fashion. It was a challenge for me to navigate the narrative path. As for the magical realism – something I typically get into – this aspect of “Let Us Descend” seemed – for a lack of a better word – “contrived.” Nevertheless, the book sheds light on a harrowing era in our nation’s history. The author clearly did meticulous research and used her wordsmithing to craft a myriad of riveting vignettes.

What worked for me were the characterizations of Leonie and Jojo, how she had no understanding or empathy of what is was like to be him and what her impact on him was. How she and Michael thought it was OK to just order him around. It felt like an honest representation of parenthood. They seemed like real people.
What didn't work for me was the magic realism element; I would have liked it if it had been metaphorical but not as the hinge for the climax. Also I thought the Richie storyline with Pa's reveal of what happened to Richie was too contrived. I would have preferred Richie's story to be edited out of the book.
Even though the magic realism element didn't work for me, it did result in some beautiful imagery, especially Richie's vision of the island, but also the descriptions of his post-death experiences, the snake and the crow, his generations haunting Parchman.
Also, final point, I did not like or even understand the last chapter. I would have preferred something that came back to Jojo's coming of age story, instead of just a weird mystery.

Jesmyn Ward reimagines the antebellum Deep South as Dante’s Inferno. “Let us descend and enter this blind world.” Using this and other passages from that epic medieval poem that the protagonist, Annis, overheard the tutor teaching her master/sire’s white daughters, Ms. Ward paints a terrifying world of unthinkable horror, cruelty, and drudgery that Annis and her fellow slaves inhabit. Annis’s grandmother, Mama Aza, one of the famed female warriors in the kingdom of Dahomey, West Africa, was sold off by her husband, the king, and carried off in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the hold of a boat, already pregnant with Annis’s mother by a lover. She ended up on a plantation in North Carolina, near the Great Dismal Swamp. Annis’s mother was raped repeatedly by her master, who fathered Annis. When Annis is in her teens and her master/sire starts pawing at her, her mother steps in to interfere and she is promptly led away by a “Georgia Man” who takes her on other slaves south to the slave market in New Orleans to be sold. A year later, Annis and her friend Safi are also sold sent away with the Georgia Man and she ultimately winds up in New Orleans as well. On this forced march, Annis is guided by an untrustworthy spirit who calls herself Aza after Annis’s grandmother. The unscrupulous slave trader wants to sell her as a “fancy girl, my only worth between my legs,” but she manages to be chosen as a cook and laundress, sent to sugar cane plantation that seemed to be more hellish than the one she left. I felt lost a few times in the story and the ending seemed rather abrupt; although it was not an easy book to read, it is an important one.

This is a geitty but tender story of poverty and family in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show much concern for much else. Each and her theee brothers are stocking food, it there isn’t much to save. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets; she’s fourteen and pregnant. Her brother SkeetH is sneaking scraps for his prized oitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. This is a big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty.

Stunning and lyrical. Full of the sound and songs of the South, of Mississippi. Ghost-filled and other worldly. Beautifully told, finely rendered. A must-read.

A great book, but not one I'm not likely to read again soon. "Salvage the Bones" is, from its very beginning, an almost unbearably intense reading experience. Forget the hurricane, which finally makes its appearance in the book's final third. From the very moment we meet Esch, her life is defined by generational poverty, geographic and isolation, bad luck and, thankfully, intense love for attachment to her family. "Too much, too soon" is a cliché, but I've seldom seen it expressed in prose better -- or more poignantly -- than Ward expresses it here. In her mid-teens, we see Esch balance the roles of sister, substitute mother, provider and student. I suppose it isn't particularly surprising, then, that things fall apart by the end of the novel, though the weather event that will not be named here makes things more dramatic than they otherwise might have been.

Ward's writing fits this material almost too well, treading the line between exhilarating and exhausting. It'd be difficult to argue that Esch's teenage experience is typical, at least by the standards of widely read American literature. But the author's style deftly recalls a time in which even the most insignificant events can have enormous, both emotional and otherwise. Esch's life -- and the life of all her family -- is constantly teetering on the edge, and the book's prose, which is suffused with deep feeling, sensuality, desire, fear, and memory, reflects that well. Not that this makes "Salvage the Bones" an easy read. From a certain, perhaps shallow perspective, Esch's life seems so exhausting that it's difficult for even the reader to get through its particulars. The world that "Salvage the Bones" describes often gives the impression of being disordered and borderless: everything -- nature and late capitalism, brutality and affection, hard-fought life and luckless death -- comes together in ways that are sometimes surprising and other times sadly fated. The book itself seems set in a place between past and present that's difficult to pin down: its characters live in a verdant, swampy forest that seems as old as time itself, but car speakers are discussed and Outkast earns a mention. There's sex, but not a lot of love. There are opportunities to make money and dreams of glory about, but nothing set and stone, and lots of it heartbreakingly contingent. This isn't a book to read casually. It demands your attention and fairly overwhelms your senses. I had to force myself to get through it, and I wouldn't be surprised if lots of readers simply don't make it to the last page.

Still, there were some things about "Salvage the Bones" that pleasantly surprised me. Refreshingly, Ward does not seem to be interested in having a conversation with William Faulkner, as Toni Morrison often did. This novel's main preoccupation is often the natural word, something else that Katrina also had a hand in damaging. Esch is at home in the forest, and is comfortable around many of its animal and vegetable inhabitants, and not in the way that MFA-earning poets are. There were times I felt that I was back in "As I Lay Dying" getting stuck in the Mississippi mud on yet another unbearably hot day, but this feeling proved to be fleeting. I loved Ward's descriptions of Big Henry, one of the few teenage characters here -- besides Esch -- who seems older and calmer than his years. And the family's love for Junior, their youngest son, and the care they take of him, is genuinely touching.

Ward also introduces some material from some unexpected sources: While Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" and the story of Medea is frequently mentioned, I couldn't help hearing Edenic overtones throughout "Salvage the Bones" as well. That Hamilton's retelling of Medea's experience might strike some readers as both improbable and a touch precious. There don't seem to be any other books in Esch's house. But I think that the sheer emotional force that "Salvage the Bones" imparts -- and its essentially tragic structure -- more than justifies it. But, in a sense, that represents one of this novel's problems, too. You could -- and many will -- read "Salvage the Bones" as a tragedy in the truest cosmic sense. You can't escape the notion that Esch and her relations are doomed from the very first page, and this doesn't make for a joyful reading experience. Many will call it too dark, too sad, and just too much, and they might not be wrong. It doesn't help, I suppose, that dogfighting is one of this book's major plot points. I'm hardly a dog person under the best of conditions, but I found having to read about the birth, training, and fighting of truly fierce pitbulls to be almost more than I could take. Like many other elements in "Salvage the Bones", they are fierce, bloody, undeniably strong, and, however improbably, the object of one of this novel's characters boundless affections. Uf, it's too much. It's antipodean summertime right now, and I'm off to read something a little lighter. I'll get to "Sing, Unburied, Sing" eventually. Whatever problems I may have had with it, "Salvage the Bones" is so good that Ward's work can't just be written off as Southern misery porn. She's a real-deal writer.½

This is a tale of wo stories. One is possibly the most heart-wrenching story written about the black experience in America. Whenever I think of what my family went through to arrive at today, it was always a matter of the choices we made. But for Jesmyn Ward or other black Americans whose ancestors were brought her in chains, it's an altogether different story and I couldn't imagine the heartbreak and utter rage that they must feel, knowing how their ancestors were brutalized and dehumanized. This story is an easy five start rating.
The other story, though, is a surreal dreamscape that didn't do a thing for me. I can't even tell you that much about it because I lost interest at those points and tuned it out. I know that there are people who will disagree with me and call it magical realism or whatnot but whatever you want to call it, it was lost on me.

Bottom line: The story is worth reading but Ms. Ward should have considered some changes before submitting this book.

My thanks to the late Mike Sullivan, aka Lawyer, and all the folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books.

I really enjoyed Jesmyn Ward's earlier books, but this one not so much. The writing is fine, but I am just not a fan of magical realism. The hardships of slavery were relentless, but that is both the author's point and reality. But I found myself annoyed whenever the unreliable ancestor spirit Aza appeared, as well as the ones that Take and Give. It took me a really long time to struggle through it because of this.

Told in beautifull language, Arris is taken from her master's house (her father) and sent south from the fields of the Carolinas to the slave market of New Orleans and into the Louisiana sugar plantations. Her mother has schooled her on stories of her African warrior grandmother and trained her to fight with a spear in the moonlit forest at night. Establishes the grief but also the joy of the land as Annis is accompanied by the spirits of earth and water, of myth and history, spirits who manipulate and take. She eventually escapes by floating on tied together logs down a river and makes her own place in the woods near New Orleans as she waits for the birth of her child.

A page turner that is incredibly difficult to get through. The writing is raw and real - with few glimpses of hope and happiness. While predictable at times - this does not take away from the work at all. While you might say I lack a thick skin for saying this - I read this over the course of 2 days - and I found this to be so dark that I could only handle it in doses. I heard so many good things about this book that I was so glad to give it a chance.

Needs to be read by every citizen, regardless of background. Along with the letters of James Baldwin that the title references, and Baldwin's progeny -- Coates, Kenan, etc. -- this book should be a required prerequisite to any discussion of citizenship and what it means to live together as a community. Powerful collection of essays and poems directed toward not only those who bear the heaviest burden of racism's effects but also toward those who, for too long, have supported the status quo through mock outrage and a desire that everyone with a conscience keep silent about the effects of history.

Claudia Rankine sums it up perfectly in her essay "The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning," writing:

'The Charleston murders alerted us to the reality that a system so steeped in anti-black racism means that on any given day it can be open season on any black person -- old or young, man, woman or child. There exists no equivalent reality for white Americans. We can distance ourselves from this fact until the next horrific killing, but we won't be able to outrun it. History's authority over us is not broken by maintaining a silence about its continued effects" (Rankine 155).

Excellent lyrical book. Not many people will love this book but I thought it as amazing. She has a particular writing style.

I read Ward's first 2 novels that won the National Book Award. They were excellent and I gave each 4 stars. I was looking forward to this book but was very disappointed. The story about slavery in the mid 19 century was very brutal and was expected. The plot is about Annis who is a teen age slave born from a rape of. her mother by the white slave master. She is separated from her when her mother is sold and then soon after Annis is also sold. The book then depicts in brutal detail the slave trek with all of the men and women slaves chained together going from the Carolinas to New Orleans to be sold on the auction block. Ward describes this long slog in beautiful language but the subject is brutal. What I had a real problem with was her introduction of magic realism. The constant use of spirits was very distracting and kept me from engaging in the real story of Annis's struggle agains horrible conditions. This book did not add to my. knowledge of the slavery and I, like other readers, had trouble with the brutal treatment of the slaves on the march to New Orleans knowing that these slaves had great value when sold. Was Ward trying to show brutality that went beyond viewing slaves as "livestock"? We also had Annis as a narrator using beautiful English while she was using her own uneducated language in real scenes. I do understand the Ward was dealing with the sudden death of her husband from Covid when she was writing this book. For some readers the magic realism and spirit world worked. For me it did not. I strongly recommend her National Book Award winning books. In terms of slavery's brutality there are many other books that describe it in more concise terms than this book. Again, her writing is beautiful but it did not work to advance the plot in this book.½

Een duister afdalen. Door: Jesmyn Ward.

Ward leerde ik kennen door haar immens goede boek De mannen die we oogstten. Ze blies me daarmee echt van mijn sokken. Met dat boek raakte ze me meer dan met dit Een duister afdalen. Omdat het meer van nu is? Of omdat het autobiografisch is? Wat beide boeken gemeen hebben is dat ze donker, hard, rauw én teder zijn. Pijnlijk en ontroerend tegelijk.

In Een duister afdalen lezen we het verhaal van de tot slaaf gemaakte Annis. Haar leven is godsgruwelijk hard en onvoorstelbaar triest. Wat het voor mij moeilijk leesbaar maakt. De weinige schoonheid komt voornamelijk uit de kracht van de geesten/oermoeders die Annis op haar tocht bijstaan. Het is ook prachtig dat Ward iets diametraal tegenover het intergenerationeel trauma plaatst: een soort van intergenerationele moed/magie.

Het hele boek is een ode aan de kracht van verhalen en een portret van sterke, wijze, moedige vrouwen. De cover doet die ode eer aan.

Ward toont ons, boek na boek, hoe het was, hoe het nog steeds is en bovenal hoe het niet (meer) zou moeten zijn voor mensen van kleur. Ze is een moedige, heel belangrijke, krachtige verhalenverteller/schrijver.

The February-March pick for Biere Library Storytime Book Club, at ~8.5 hours this was a relatively quick audio listen (due to being on babytime, I find that I have less time for holding a book so audio worked while doing baby things).

An intimate Southern gothic portrait of a family with roots that dig into the Mississippi mud, and ghosts needing to be addressed. A bit of coming of age for Jojo's chapters, as he uncovers truths in the second half of the novel. It would be so easy to make Leonie a villain of sorts, but she's a complicated character with conflicting desires.

Parchman is a real place, and I was reminded of a similar Louisiana prison mentioned in [b:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America|55643287|How the Word Is Passed A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America|Clint Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603917194l/55643287._SY75_.jpg|86766325] when inmate labor was described. I'm also reminded of the third episode of [b:Lovecraft Country|25109947|Lovecraft Country (Lovecraft Country, #1)|Matt Ruff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426040983l/25109947._SY75_.jpg|44803674]Lovecraft Country (which pulls from the second story, "Dreams of the Which House from the book) re: literal ghosts of racist violence.

A surprising amount of vomit, viscerally described- part of what happens when you have a 3 year old on a road trip and also drug addicts, but you could almost feel that sour stickiness from the descriptions.

I really enjoyed the audio version of this- I think I would've disliked Leonie more were I reading her POV, but Rutina Wesley's narration is so cool and soothing, even while Leonie rages or ignores her children.

This is the story of Annis, her childhood enslaved on a North Carolina plantation working as a housemaid in her father's house, close to her mother, who protects and nurtures her as best she can, teaching her about her grandmother, who was brought over from Africa. Then first her mother is sold, then Annis is sold and marched to New Orleans to be sold, entering into worse circumstances with every mile deeper into the South.

Ward is a brilliant writer, her words sing from the page and her use of magic realism folds naturally into this very harsh story. I avoided this novel because although I loved Sing, Unburied, Sing, it was clear from the description that this novel would be hard to read. But eventually I did pick it up and it is a testament to how well Ward writes that a novel as unrelentingly bleak as this one would flow so beautifully. It's both horrifying and gorgeous. I will likely never want to read this book again, but so much of it is sitting with me, inhabiting my imagination now.½