Jesmyn Ward

In a Nutshell: A literary-style short fiction focussing on the extent to which people can go to ensure survival. Good story, okay ending.

Story Synopsis:

Afice is the only one left from nine generations of women who escaped from slavery, and survived in the swamp. Each woman battled animals, sickness and hunger, and ensured the continuity of her line through a special arrangement with another group of male survivors. But now, Afice is all alone. And at seventeen, she has reached the age where she must set out on the path of survival, honouring her forebears and ensuring survival.
The story comes to us in the first person perspective of Afice.

Most of this historical fiction short story is compelling. It depicts the battles fought by a strong woman while escaping from slavery and her decision to continue amid the swamps with her line of daughters. Each generation highlights women power in various ways.

The writing is poetic, evoking myriad feelings ranging from helplessness to hope, from despondency to determination. The way the mothers and daughters followed the dictates of First Mother and the minor rebellions that crept up along the way in the matrilineal society – everything is written in a stark yet vivid manner.

It is tough to believe that this story is just about 24 pages long. Despite the elaborate imagery, the story is quick in pace and powerful in impact. What elevated the experience even more was the detailed author’s note, which highlights the facts behind this fictional work.

I wasn’t in agreement with the characters’ choices many a time, but mine is not to decide if a character is right or wrong. Mine is to see if the author portrayed the situation convincingly, and she did.

The ending, however, dissatisfied me. While somewhat hopeful and bittersweet, it left me wanting a lot more in terms of information as well as closure. Also, nine generations to be covered within 24 pages (including the author’s note) means that the whole flow feels very hurried and most of the characters are touched upon only at a surface level..

This short story isn’t for those who seek a traditional plot with a clear start-middle-end progression. The structure herein is more of a go-with-the-flow, moving back and forth across the various mothers and daughters, with a dash of magical realism to boot.

Recommended, but to a limited audience.

3.5 stars.


This is the seventh standalone story from the ‘A Point in Time’ collection, and is available for free to Amazon Prime subscribers.




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I have read both of Jesmyn Ward 's National Book Award winning novels and loved them. I think she embodies the legacy of Toni Morrison in telling important stories in luminous ways. In this novel we read the first person narrative of Anise, whose grandmother was an Amazon warrior who fled to find a better world for the baby she was carrying, whose mother was raped by the plantation owner and then sent away to auction, and who herself is sold to auction. Her journey from the Carolinas to New Orleans is not unlike Dante's journey to the underworld - Let Us Descend comes from that reference. Anise is a resourceful fighter, forager, and seeker of pleasure. Her world is populated with various spirits, the recreation of her grandmother, and natures own "They Who Take and Give".
The writing is poetic and atmospheric, magical realism that provides historical markers to the Placage women in NOLA and the life of St. Malo. At times for me the spirits slowed the pace of the plot but I don't pretend to not appreciate the talent of the author. I would recommend listening to her interviews regarding the years of exploration and revision of this work.

Lines:
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 sulfur lantern as she leads me through the world’s darkness, a woman who gives me a gift when she unsheathes herself in teaching me to fight once a month.

They sleep with their mouths open, pink scraped across their cheeks, their eyelids twitching like fish who swim in the shallows.

And everywhere, us stolen. Some in rope and chains. Some walking in clusters together, sacks on their backs or on their heads. Some stand in lines at the edge of the road, all dressed in the same rough clothing: long, dark dresses and white aprons, and dark suits and hats for the men, but I know they are bound by the white men, accented with gold and guns, who watch them. I know they are bound by the way they stand all in a row, not talking to one another, fresh cuts marking their hands and necks. I know they are bound by the way they wear their sorrow, by the way they look over an invisible horizon into their ruin.

The digging fingers of another as he assesses us for mating, brags about his bucks, about the fine ’ninnies we can make, about how much each would fetch, his words a steady bad wind carrying the stench of an animal carcass slaughtered and left to rot in the woods.

“What’s a plaçage woman?”

I sob into the earth. I offer to They Who Take and Give until I’m a hollow gourd: dry of sorrow, spiked with the dregs of memory.

Esther’s brother’s nose is a fin in his face, his eyes the bottom of the deepest part of a river, the black cool where the current cannot reach, where driftwood, whole trunks, sink to silt. His neck, even though he is almost as lean as us, is solid as a young pine.

“Blessing,” she says, and then she’s silent. I count the days since my last bleeding, and suddenly, I know what my reach for pleasure with Esther’s brother has done. I know what the soreness in my chest means. I know that there is a seed, a song, a babe coming to me. I put my hands on my stomach and rock.… (plus d'informations)

Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward, author and narrator
There are few words I can use to describe the brilliance of this book; there is no good way for me to sum it up without revealing too much. Ward has described the horrors of slavery in such dramatic detail that the reader finds his or herself there, in the center of it all, as a witness to the barbarism. Because they were fed a starvation diet, beaten, and abused, subjected to nightmare punishments for whatever whim the owner decided to fulfill, because they were forced to suffer the breakup of their families and the loss of their friends, to endure being raped by the owner, sometimes even sold at his pleasure, many might have entertained thoughts of escape, but it always seemed foolhardy since it was so often futile with unimaginable punishment if caught. I asked myself, what kind of person could tolerate the destruction of humans, bit by bit? Who could treat humans so poorly, even worse than they treated their animals? With every new dawn, every next breath, the future was bleaker for a slave. There was no safe haven, yet there existed a desire for freedom that was unabating.
The world of Arese/Annis is a nightmare world once her mother is sold, but it was not much better when they were together. Worked to the bone, practically starved, taken by the owner to pleasure himself, Arese was born to her mother after the owner raped her. Thus, although she was half-sister to the twin girls in the manor home, their lives were totally different. Arese used to stand by their door, listening to their tutor instruct them. It was in that secret pose that she learned of the expression from Dante’s descent into Hell, that she learned the worlds let us descend. Her mother educated her in the only way she could, she trained her in self-defense and told her to rise, not to descend! Her mother taught her that water was a friend, although it was water that carried her away from her home to this place of captivity. Would water one day save her?
As Annis describes her life, one may be brought to tears or driven to anger. This, however, is a novel, and it tells the story of what took place in the past; there is no rectifying the horrifying lives of these captured people, thought of as less than, thought of as animals who felt nothing or animals that existed for the barbaric pleasure of cruel men and women. These captured humans suffered from every human indignity man could imagine.
Rarely have I felt so moved by a novel. It held such a poetic beauty, as most of Ward’s books do, but this book was magical, filled with legends and spiritual visions. This book takes the readers with it, right into the realm of the slave, and they visibly witness and feel the pain and suffering first-hand, as if it was happening to themselves, and sometimes, even the reader wants it to end a bit more quickly. The author simply takes me places that I do not want to venture, but feel I must. She illustrates life and also the loss of life. She forces the reader to come to terms with the terrible choices slaves had to make, with the terrible lives they were forced to live, with the terrible people who tortured them, but she ends by offering a sliver of hope for the future.… (plus d'informations)