50 Jesmyn Ward Quotes for You to Enjoy

Jesmyn Ward

American Novelist

About Community Me People Think Writing

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

There is power in naming racism for what it is, in shining a bright light on it, brighter than any torch or flashlight. A thing as simple as naming it allows us to root it out of the darkness and hushed conversation where it likes to breed like roaches. It makes us acknowledge it. Confront it. Jesmyn Ward

Conversation Racism Darkness Simple Light Power Torch Out Like Naming Likes Makes Shining Than Any Where Acknowledge Confront Us Root Breed Bright Brighter Thing

Sometimes, you get tired of fighting. I think you just sort of come to this realization that yes, that you will get tired, but that doesn't mean that you can give up the fight. Jesmyn Ward

Tired You Fight Sometimes Will Fighting Think Give Come Sort Up Yes Get Just Mean Realization

I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was? Jesmyn Ward

Me Thought Men Free Others Ancestry Tell Immigrants Gulf Gulf Coast About Colonists Free Men Color Proportion Like French Always Understood Tangle American African Native Native Americans Spanish Might Coast Who Many Slaves British

I celebrate my blackness. I love the artistic vibrancy of the culture I was born to. Jesmyn Ward

Love Celebrate Culture Born Blackness Artistic

I knew it would be painful to write a memoir. Jesmyn Ward

Memoir Would Would-Be Write Knew Painful

As an artist, I feel a certain responsibility to write about difficult subject matter. Jesmyn Ward

Matter Responsibility Difficult About Write Feel Subject Subject Matter Artist Certain

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.' Jesmyn Ward

Work Me Black White Other Claim Classic Lay Writers Female Texts American Authors While American Writers Universal

My mom worked as a housekeeper, and I saw her relationship with her employers - how on the one hand she spent more time with these women than with a lot of her friends, and how in certain ways they were friends. But then they weren't. Jesmyn Ward

Writing 'Men We Reaped' broke me in different ways at different spots in the drafting process. The first draft was hard because I was just getting it out. In some ways, that draft failed. I was really just telling the story, not making assessments - this happened, then this. Just putting those facts down on paper was really painful. Jesmyn Ward

Me Writing Men First Down Paper Ways Those Broke Out Telling Some Facts Failed Putting Because Spots Making Getting Just Different Happened Process Story Then Really Hard Painful Different Ways Draft Drafting

Biblical myth is as integral to the spirit of the South as the heat and humidity. Jesmyn Ward

Bible Myth Spirit Integral South Heat Humidity

After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more honest about the realities of the community I was writing about. Jesmyn Ward

Writing Political Finished First Community Enough About More Had Felt Salvage After Realities Draft Honest Bones

While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader. Jesmyn Ward

I've heard some writers say that they are obsessed with certain ideas and that they find themselves writing around the same obsession again and again, but telling different stories to get at that same idea. I'm beginning to think that I suffer from this syndrome, too. Jesmyn Ward

Writing Beginning Think Too Syndrome Say Telling Find Some Writers Idea Obsessed Obsession Ideas Around Heard Get Same Different Stories Again Themselves Certain Suffer

I can't stop thinking about the devaluation of black life, and I find it seeping into everything I write. Jesmyn Ward

Life Black Thinking Everything Find About Write Stop

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

Mom Family You Mother Starving Say Kids Tell Kind Would Eat Something Drink Could Host Supposed House Always Go Were Friend Offer Them Us

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

Together People Other Related Else Everyone Everyone Else Small Knows Because Lot Up Families Large Each Hometown Grows Extended

Confidence definitely did not get me here! More of, like, desperation. Jesmyn Ward

Me Confidence Desperation Definitely More Like Get Did Here

I think people make certain assumptions about what they're interested in reading or what others would be interested in reading, and when they think of poor black people in the South, they don't think people are interested in reading about those people. Jesmyn Ward

People Black Reading Think Assumptions Others Those Would Would-Be About Make South Interested Poor Certain

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