Latest Jesmyn Ward Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I've never been the president of anything, but I would imagine that in ways it could be a very isolating experience, because you're ensconced in the halls of power and every stop and visit is so orchestrated and someone is choosing what you're going to see.

  Jesmyn Ward

  President, Imagine, Imagine That

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Most people just aren't clear-eyed about the rural South. We think that the urban centers are the problem, and the rural areas across the country are idyllic, suffused with good old American values, social values, religious values, moral values. It's what we tell ourselves to keep this political power structure in place, and it's what we see in pop culture, too.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Country, Religious, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Living in the rural South, you sometimes feel trapped, like you don't have any options. It grinds people down, and of course it leads to substance abuse. I see it all around me. So many people in my family, probably more than 50 percent, have had substance abuse problems, either currently or in the past. It's so personal and immediate to me.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Past, People, Abuse

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Some people think that Southern hip-hop doesn't have any depth. They think it's just noise, all about people having a good time in the club. And some of it doesn't have a lot of depth, it's true, but some does. I wanted to work against that stereotype. These are verses by Southern artists who are really wrestling with what it means to be here, young black men who are trying to figure out how to live in the South. So I wanted the epigraphs in my novels to reflect that.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Mean, Wrestling, Artist

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• There are things about the South - the politics, the classism, the racism - that I hate, and I want to be here to fight those things. I don't want to be in California or Michigan just complaining about them. I'm here trying to make a difference in the way I can, writing about it. And I want younger people, especially kids from my community, to see that being successful doesn't have to mean leaving a place like this. You don't have to trade in your family or your sense of belonging for that.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Hate, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I felt like if I didn't write about what happened to the young men here in the South of America, the same things would keep occurring. Here in the South, young black men just keep dying - young black women, too. I couldn't live with myself if I hadn't been as honest as possible about that.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Writing, Men, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Black people in the US are told all the time, from all aspects, that they're nothing, that they're less than. And of course that bears fruit, but no one wants to shoulder part of the blame. A lot of people here can't see around their own family's history. They don't want to see that where they come from and the people they surround themselves with might have played a role in all this. This is all part of our national myth about the individual. We think that a lack of success comes from the individual not working hard enough. A lot of people in this country really believe that.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Country, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• In the past, I've felt like an outsider, with New York the center of everything literary, but right now, there are new opportunities being created that let us tell stories in the South, whether the medium is writing or TV or reality TV.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Writing, Past, Opportunity

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I see so many talented writers of color struggling to get their work out to an audience. I know that's the case for all writers - everyone's struggling for attention - but I do think that for writers of color it's harder, and for women it's harder, and for regional writers it's harder, too.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Struggle, Thinking, Work Out

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I have to concentrate my efforts on writing something that will really engage people's humanity and will tie readers to my characters regardless of race. I have to prove that I can connect with a wider audience.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Book, Writing, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Mother, Running, Growing Up

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Thinking, Trying, Hopefully

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I hope that if the people who read my work encounter people in the real world who are like the characters that I write about, that maybe that might make them feel empathy for those people. I know it sounds idealistic in a way, but I do hope that my work maybe changes some minds, and that my work makes readers see people as human that maybe before they read my work they might not have seen as humans, and those people include me and my family and my kids, people in my community.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Real, Writing, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that we need to be more aware of how we are all interconnected, and how we actually need to invest in safety nets and in education, and that we need to come to the realization that health care is a human right and try to provide that for people.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Thinking, People, Safety

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all potential millionaires if only we put in the work. I think that's destructive and ignores history and is one of the reasons we as a state are consistently at the bottom of all the lists because we handicap ourselves.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Thinking, Reason, Millionaire

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I consider myself a progressive, so my answer would be that we need to be progressive. For some reason the people in power in Mississippi still seem to be invested in these very American myths."The individual is alone." "We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps." "We create success for ourselves, and if we work hard enough then we will succeed and have success beyond our wildest dreams." I think that we need to do away with that kind of thinking and be more aware of history and how the history of this place bears in the present and how it affects people.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Dream, Hard Work, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Writing, People, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta, and maybe that's because sharecropping was a fairly recent phenomena. I feel like the past is closer and it bears even more heavily on the present there than it does in the rest of the state.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Past, Slavery, Delta

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• My understanding of voodoo is that it was important to the people who practiced it because it helped them survive. There are practical ways it enabled survival. It used herbal medicine to heal, to aid in childbirth. It was a spiritual system. It made room for hope and for magic and for possibility. For people who struggle and fight to survive and who fight to live, those are really important things.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Spiritual, Struggle, Fighting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and write a character who practiced that spiritual tradition who was not evil and intent on creating zombies or causing pain through voodoo dolls or whatever.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Spiritual, Pain, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I feel like if you aren't honest and if you don't let go and ease up off of the narrator, then the story doesn't take up a life of its own, and the characters can't take up a life of their own. You handicap the story when you try to protect your characters.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Letting Go, Character, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I have never written a novel that volleys back and forth between a couple of different first person perspectives. It's definitely a challenge because I had to think about who knows what, when do they know it, when are they sharing what they know or what they think they know, how the reader's perspective affects things. Telling the story in that way is challenging. It does require a lot of revision.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Couple, Thinking, Perspective

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Character, Unique, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I came to the realization that I had failed in some respects because I had been more of a benevolent narrator than the world I saw reflected around me, and in the lives of the people in my community, and in my family. There was no benevolent God sparing us pain and loss and grief and struggle. If I was going to continue to write about the place where I am from, and the kind of people who live in my community and who are in my family, I owed it to them to be honest with what our lives are like.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Pain, Grief, Struggle

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again for a few pages. I got to live with my brother again for the entire book. Of course as I'm writing the book, I'm getting closer and closer to the end and I know what that means. I knew exactly where I was heading. It was really difficult, but it was nice to make them come alive for those scenes. It was good.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Brother, Nice, Book

  Source: therumpus.net