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I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them.
Jesmyn Ward -
It took me a long time to write again because Katrina destroyed the home I loved, and that robbed me of hope.
Jesmyn Ward
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I can't stop thinking about the devaluation of black life, and I find it seeping into everything I write.
Jesmyn Ward -
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Jesmyn Ward -
Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and write a piece of fiction.
Jesmyn Ward -
I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.
Jesmyn Ward -
There are moments from childhood that attract heat in our memories, some for their sublime brilliance, some for their malignancy. The first time that I was treated differently because of my race is one such memory.
Jesmyn Ward -
I read the last Harry Potter, and I cried for at least the last 70 pages. Awful! I was curled into a ball and I just kept sobbing. It was embarrassing. I was loud, and I just kept wiping tears away so I could see the page.
Jesmyn Ward
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Part of me is stuck in my childhood in the Eighties. I actually watch 'The Neverending Story,' 'Labyrinth,' and 'Legend' over and over again. Also, 'Willow' and 'The Goonies.'
Jesmyn Ward -
On one hand, I can say, you know, I had many family members - I had many people in my extended family who left right after Katrina, who relocated to different cities, right? Houston, Atlanta. Right? Most of them have come back.
Jesmyn Ward -
My mom is the kind of mom, when we would go to a friend of the family's house, and they would offer us something to drink or offer us something to eat, my mother would always say, 'Tell them no.' You could be starving - you could be dehydrated - but as kids, we were supposed to tell the host, 'No.'
Jesmyn Ward -
People are not afraid to be activists, to be vocal. And I think back to my years in college, and that wasn't the case.
Jesmyn Ward -
People ask me about staying here. I think they assume that I wouldn't want to come back to a place like Mississippi, which is so backward and which frustrates me a lot. The responsibility that I feel to tell these stories about the people and the place that I'm from is what pulls me back.
Jesmyn Ward -
History and socio-economic inequality and all those things had, like, borne down upon my family and my community and really sort of narrowed our choices.
Jesmyn Ward
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I am grateful to the activists and women who created the Black Lives Matter movement because I feel like they let me know I wasn't crazy.
Jesmyn Ward -
I do think that people will claim a certain fatigue about talking about race. But I think that even though they do, it's still necessary - completely necessary.
Jesmyn Ward -
By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.
Jesmyn Ward -
Because everyone grows up together in my small hometown, everyone knows everyone else. And there are such large extended families that a lot of people are related to each other.
Jesmyn Ward -
The women here are the ones that hold the families together. So if my mom were to be unhappy with me, in a way, it would be like I would have lost my entire family.
Jesmyn Ward -
I was a freshman at Stanford University the first time someone called me a 'bama.' One of my new friends from D.C. said it, laughing, and even though I didn't know what it meant, exactly, I got that it was some kind of insult. I must have smirked or shrugged, which made him laugh harder, and then he called me 'country,' too.
Jesmyn Ward
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I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through the past and present. I loved reading that book: the first time I read the opening story, I was breathless and incoherent.
Jesmyn Ward -
I was raised in Mississippi, in a family and a community that identified as black, and I have the stories and the experiences to go with it. One of my great-great grandfathers was killed by a gang of white Prohibition patrollers.
Jesmyn Ward -
A lot of times, real life is more surreal than writing.
Jesmyn Ward -
People ask me all the time, 'Why did I move home?' As well as I can articulate it, that's why. I moved home because I love the community that I come from.
Jesmyn Ward