Poured Over: Jesmyn Ward on Let Us Descend

By Jenna Seery / October 24, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I think that messy, sort of evolving spiritual element of Black Americans’ lives … has allowed us to survive, and not only to survive, but also to thrive.”

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward balances grief and injustice with joy and reclamation in a sweeping, lyrical novel that brings often overlooked history into the light. Ward joins us to talk about exploring historical fiction, writing beyond the world we can explain, and finding the connections between literature, grief and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson. 

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.      

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.    

Featured Books (Episode):
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, the producer and host of Poured Over and Jesmyn Ward is absolutely one of my favorite writers working today, twice winner of the National Book Award, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. And yes, I’m sorry, MacArthur folks, I know you would prefer we not call them genius grants. But it’s too fun to say. There’s a new novel, Let Us Descend, and we’re not in Bois Sauvage anymore. You’ve written a historical novel, in a way. Can we talk about the roots of this book.

Jesmyn Ward

So I stumbled across the idea for this novel around seven years ago? Well, I work in teach at Tulane, I spent a lot of time in the car. And it just so happened that seven years ago, I was on my way to Tulane and I was listening to NPR and I heard a show called Tripod, which they were celebrating 300 years of New Orleans history. And I’d heard a couple of episodes before and they were about different things like bullfighting in New Orleans, or, you know, just random things that happen in New Orleans history that weren’t as well known, right. And so on the day that I stumbled across his novel idea, I was listening to the show, and that show was specifically about the slave trade in New Orleans. And it was specifically about slave pens and slave pens around the city of New Orleans. First of all, I didn’t know they call them slave pens. And second of all, I did not know that there were so many of them. Third, of course, you know, because I hadn’t taken history since high school, like I did not realize that New Orleans was basically the capital of the domestic slave trade once they outlawed transatlantic trade, right. So I didn’t know any of those things, and so I was just, you know, I have family in New Orleans, my dad lived there for years, my uncles lived there, I would go to the city all the time when I was a kid. There was nothing that I saw on the landscape of that city that indicated to me that that was the history. And so that I was listening to the program, and the historian that the journalist was speaking to, said that, as of that moment in time, seven years ago, there were only two markers in the city of New Orleans, where slave pens had been located or were located. And one of them was in the wrong location. Right? The only one, really, and that was a terrible fact, to learn. I immediately teared up. I admit, I was more emotional at the time, because at the time I was pregnant with my second child, right? But I teared up because I thought all of all of the people who came who were enslaved, and who were sent to that city and came to that city, and suffered in that way, in that particular way, all of that, that suffering in that pain has been erased, right, erased from the landscape, and then also been erased from, like public consciousness in a way. And so I thought, what if I write a story specifically about a woman? She was a woman from the very beginning. What if I write about a story about a woman who is going through that, right? In my own small way, what if I try to bring it back, bring a person like this and bring this history, this fact back into public consciousness. And so that’s where she was born. But I didn’t actually write anything about Annis, I didn’t write a word of Let Us Descend for maybe two and a half years after that, because I realized really early on that I knew that I didn’t know anything, like I knew nothing, you know. And so I spent two and a half years reading and still felt like I didn’t, of course, I could never know everything, right. But still, I didn’t know enough. But I just sort of got to a point after I’d read for so long where I thought, okay, if you wait, I talked to myself, so I was talking to myself, it’s okay. If you wait to begin the writing this book, until you feel like you know, enough. You’re never going to begin, right? Or if you wait to begin this book until you feel like you know all the facts and you won’t get anything wrong, you will never write this book because you can never know all the facts, and you’ll probably get something wrong. And so I just, I just thought, well, I’m gonna — I will start. And if there are things that pop up that I don’t know, then I’ll just continue to research as I write but I have to start because basically my fear of getting something wrong because I was writing in a completely different genre. That was that was it was terrifying to me.

I mean, I understand on the surface that a historical novel is not what you’ve been doing with the Bois Sauvage novels, you know, Sing Unburied, Sing, Salvage the Bones, and Where the Line Bleeds those three novels obviously sit in the same world. And its present day, and they all share an orbit. But thematically, we’re talking about grief and loss and community. And that very thin line between what we consider reality and the supernatural. So I felt like I was very much in your hands and very much in a novel written by you, even though some of the framework was different. But I see the direct line between the earlier books, and this one, certainly, and the women in this, I love them. I love Annis, I love her mama, I love who we come to see as her grandmother, Mama Aza. But you’ve started with her voice. Annis, you’ve started with her, you started with her experience. But then there’s an extra layer to this as well, which is Dante and the Inferno. And there’s a very clear connection between the sort of classic world literature which I went back to because of you, and I had not picked up that book in a really long time. And in fact, I had to buy a new copy, because I didn’t want to deal with my original copies. But this connection, right, this canvas, you have this moment, you’re in the car, you’re listening to NPR, you’re doing all the research, but ultimately, it’s story that carries you through.

Right? It is, and I think that was something that I had to muddle my way through, probably took me the first four to five years of writing, which is one reason why this book has taken me a longer amount of time to write than any of the books. Because I think I was so hung up on the fact that it was taking place in the early 1800s. You know, and, and I was still wrestling with that fear, that it was hard for me to sink into Annis as a character and live in the moment with Annis as a character and hold space for her voice and hear her voice, right. There was my fear around it all being set in the past and getting things wrong. And then also, at first, the fact that she had little to no physical agency, as an enslaved person. I was very hung up on that fact, I couldn’t move beyond, like, it’s very hard for me to figure out — how do I write about this person? How do I make her integral to the plot and like the plot feel natural like to her and who she is, without physical agency, right. And it took me a good like I said, like four years at least, of writing, unsuccessful beginning after unsuccessful beginning after unsuccessful beginning to begin to realize, you know, I need to get chapters in each time to begin to realize that there are other types of agency that she has, she has emotional agency, she has mental agent, agency, she has imaginative agency, she has a sort of spiritual agency, right? So she can be bound, you know, and someone else can be can direct her right and make her physically do things that she doesn’t want to do. But she has all of these other ways to sort of move through the world and access her own power. And, you know, I think that’s just one of the reasons that it took me again, so long to get to that is because, you know, unfortunately, with the narrative around enslaved people, I feel like often, I won’t use the word narrative, or use the word, the public conversation, I feel like that often flattens them. Absolutely. And maybe the language and slave narratives can be hard to access. So we never feel, I don’t know, it can I feel like it can often be hard for us, as people, you know, who live right now in this moment in time, to immerse ourselves in that experience and see, you know, enslaved people as like fully fledged, like, complicated complex people. And, and so I think I had to get over all of that too, at the beginning of that process.

I think part of it, you know, the way we’re taught about slavery, certainly in America, I grew up outside of Boston and the way things get taught or the emphasis that’s put on certain moments, they pick their moments when they’re teaching, right, but we’re missing so much of the historical record, right? We have names we have dates, we have physical characteristics. I mean, literally, enslaved people were not allowed and I use sort of air quotes around them, but to read or write. And if you could teach yourself or find someone to teach you that opened up an entire universe, but the idea that you were not because of who you are, in your circumstances allowed to learn to read and write, which is a very fundamental human experience. We’re missing giant chunks of information. And when we’re missing information, people kind of assume that it just didn’t exist, right. And so part of the joy for me, and I’m using joy very specifically, part of the joy for me in reading Let Us Descend was watching Annis figure out what mattered to her. And her mother just looms so large in her imagination, and I love her mother’s a character, but Annis’ fighting with Mama Aza. And just saying, well, when you know, it’s not just immediate, right? It’s not immediately that you have this thing that’s bigger than you and of course, you’re just gonna let it dictate what you’re doing. And I just, I love those moments, where she’s kind of doing this now. And it gets us into exactly what you’re talking about that agency and what she’d do.

Right, she’s coming into her personhood, in a way. I mean, she spent, you know, the time before we entered the novel, and the early parts of the novel. And she’s very much, you know, her mother’s daughter, you know, her mother has taught her how to navigate this oppressive system. But then, when she no longer has, you know, her mother there physically, and she still has her there, emotionally, I feel like, you know, because an in memory in her memory, so her mother does, her mother’s still looms really large, like in Annis’ consciousness, and as she’s like, bringing everything that she has with her, to help her to navigate, you know, this world, I think it’s to her mother’s credit for that. And it’s does approach this spirit as a right, I feel like she’s very smart about it. And I think that while she’s tempted to just like, it would be easier to just feel that sense of relief at not being alone, and being in the presence of this is a supernatural being right, who can definitely do things for you. She doesn’t completely capitulate, you know, she doesn’t completely sort of put herself in the hands of that spirit, you know, she still thinks critically, and comes to, you know, sort of understand that, like, you’re saying, like, what she wants is important, what how she made one day want to live that is important. You know, I think she comes to the understanding that she’s not without a certain sense of power in the world. And I think, too, like, that’s another thing, you know, that I feel like we seldom, you know, think about in reference to enslaved people, right? The kinds of powers that they had and the kinds of powers that they exercised, right, even if it’s a small thing, like brick tool, or bargaining with someone who’s trying to buy you, right, and changing the narrative around that. They did what they could.

I’m also thinking about Annis in terms of not having trust, I mean, why would you, there is somehow an expectation from outside that you would trust the situation you’re in that you keep getting ripped away from your family, you keep getting ripped away from your home, you have no concept of home, because it changes without any input from you. All of these things were — why should you trust anyone around you? I mean, yes, you have peers in a way and I use that word gently. But at the same time, you don’t know them, they don’t know you, if the ground is always shifting under your feet. So why would you actually trust a supernatural being who comes in and says, well, I can make it all better, just do what I want. Right? Do what I tell you to do. And she’s like, she’s side eyeing Aza right now.

Right? Right. And she’s heard that her whole life I mean, always right, the people in this world who have power, continuously use people like her for whatever they want, to get whatever they want, for profit for, you know, money for, you know, to provide for their families, right and legacy and so I think, from my understanding of hers, I think that you know, that that for her like she’s like, wait, you know, in that respect, you’re just like all these you know, you’re just like my Sire, you’re just like this person. You’re just like that person. You know, because you have, because you wield this power I guess they’re at that time, they at least in my understanding of this world, there’s still some resistance right to adapting, you know, or capitulating to Christianity. Right? So my understanding of her is that, that hasn’t necessarily been like, sort of drilled into her consciousness, right to accepting Christianity to accept, you know, this matrix of power. Right? And, yeah, so. So I think for her, like, there would be more pushback, more resistance. And another thing is, like, it was important for me that she would have caught like that. So not only that would cause her to distrust these supernatural beings that keep airing in her world. I thought that it would be interesting, if the supernatural world that existed here, if it did have more texture, if it was more educated, if beings weren’t all our true, altruistic, and, and just wanting to bless people just to bless them, right? Like, I don’t know, I thought that they would reflect a bit more of, of the world in a few in the messiness of humanity, I guess.

And to me, that goes directly to Greek mythology, but also what I know of African mythology, you know, and I wish there were more, certainly I feel like the Greek myths, and the Roman myths were put in front of me very clearly and very cleanly for a very long time. And just like, well, you know, there are other stories, too, but the connection, in this case, and especially that piece, where, you know, Christianity is not the dominant spiritual force in this context, why would it be? Right? We’re talking about the 1800s? We haven’t. The world isn’t the world yet, right. But we can see the outlines, right. And this idea to their moments where Aza is asking Annis for her gratitude, she’s like, you should be grateful to me, I just did this for you. And she’s like, actually, actually, that was Mary, or that was Esther, or that was my mother, teaching me something that everything has its place. But this idea that even in a world that is more familiar than not, power is going to do what power is going to do. And it’s interesting to me, you and Zadie Smith, both have written historical novels this year. And it’s kind of a first, obviously, and yes, it is a different genre, I do want to recognize that it’s a different kind of writing experience. But I love the idea that you found a way through Let Us Descend to talk about this moment that we are in, and you never lose sight of it. And I feel like even though I know I’m mentally in the 1800s, I can recognize Annis, I can recognize her mother, I can even recognize Aza and when you were saying a second ago that you were sort of struggling with making sure you had space for her voice. I was thinking about something you’d said about the writing of Sing, Unburied, Sing that Leonie gave you a little bit of trouble, that you had a hard time initially with her. And I’m thinking well, you certainly worked around both of them. I’ve read the finished books. I know you’ve worked around it. But the idea that these women are who they are, I still see a direct line between Annis and Leonie, who happens to actually be one of my favorite characters in literature, I love her. I mean, I love all the characters in Sing, Unburied, Sing, even Michael as much as I can. Like, can we talk about sort of the evolution of the characters in the in the room that you give them? Because I mean, again, we see characters pop up between all of the three Bois Sauvage novels, I feel like I can see as a reader the line between what’s happened in Let Us Descend and where we get to with your earlier novels.

You know, I’ve been learning as I’m going. Right. And I think while my first novel was like, specifically about, you know, two young men with important women around them — their grandma, right, their absent mother, right? I have been thinking about women, and about lineage. And I think that my thinking around that is especially, it’s like very specific to me and to where I come from, into my extended family. In DeLeo, Mississippi, in this rural place, because here for me, like the women are the ones who hold everything together. You know, they’re the ones who remember the family history, they tell those stories and pass those stories down to their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. They are also the ones who like hold the family together in the present, who make holidays happen, who, you know, when the men in their lives sometimes, you know, die or they go away or for whatever reasons, they’re not able to be present, like the women are the one who hold the family together. Right? That is something that I, it’s a concern that I’ve had in all my work. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about from the very first book. And I think that it expresses itself in every book differently. Until in, you know, in Sing, Unburied, Sing, when I got to Sing, Unburied, Sing, you know, here’s this character, Leonie, who is at the opposite end of the spectrum, as far as you know, women are concerned and you know, the being, as far as like a, you know, a woman being a caretaker for a family and a lot of people, right, she’s not doing any of that. And, you know, I’ve spoken about this before, she was a difficult character to write because I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t doing any of that. And it was only when I went in, I stepped away from the novel and I just thought about who she was as a person and I figured out where that behavior was coming from and why she wasn’t doing all that. Like when I figured out what was motivating her, then I could reenter the story. So I’ve always been sort of thinking about that, right, like, motherhood, caregivers, womanhood, you know, what it means to hold a family together to hold a community together or not? Right? And Let Us Descend really gave me the opportunity to sort of scramble the circumstances a bit, I guess, you know, because here in this world, that choice is taken away from the women, right? From Annis’ mother from Annis’ grandmother, Mama Aza. In many ways, it’s taken away from Annis herself, right, as she’s enduring what she endures in the book. And so one of the questions for me to consider was, how would Annis or the women of her line accomplish this in spite of everything that they are made to bear? Like, how do they do that? I discovered a lot of answers along the way. I mean, I think in part they were able to do it, because they hold on to their stories, because they hold on to their history, because they, you know, they pass them on and when they can’t pass them on, Annis thinks about them almost obsessively. You know, I think that they’re, that they’re able to do it, because they make family wherever they go, you know, with the people that they that they encounter, they make sort of, you know, bonds with the with the people that they encounter along the way, in order to sort of do their best to survive. And then and then I think one thing that’s really beautiful to me about Annis, she has a kind of audacity, because she dares to dream, right of one day, being able to just do whatever she wants to do like to be able to direct her own day. Right, and to just do whatever it is. And she doesn’t have words for it yet. But she wants that that is freedom for her for her. And, and at that time, that was a big dream. And she follows it. And I love that for her. You know, I don’t know, I that’s something I don’t know. I haven’t talked, I haven’t spoken about it a lot. I haven’t spoken yet. A lot. But I don’t know, sometimes things just occur to me when I’m answering questions. You know, I can’t explain that answer more. Now, I think I need to think on it some more. But I really do feel like that’s one of the things that I love most about her that she dares to dream.

I think that’s really clear having read the finished book. I love the fact that she’s feisty. I love the fact that she really does not want to have it from anyone, that she doesn’t feel forced to pull from a tradition simply because it’s a tradition. I think that’s I think what you said is really clear in everything she does. As a reader, for me, I liked the tension between her inability to actually drive things forward because she is enslaved. But she’s her own person. And it surprises everyone, including the spirit as like it just surprised. I think the only person who might not be surprised is her mom. Right?. I think Sasha might be the only person who’s like, well, of course.

Because she knows, like she knows that she’s, yeah, that she’s a fighter that she’s, you know that she loves language that she’s different that she’s all those things that Annis, Annis.

And the manifestations of grief, when you’re pulled from your family, when you’re not given a chance to stay put and have a life and grow and all these things. You use ghosts in Sing, Unburied, Sing, it was much more sort of clear in Sing, Unburied, Sing that it was happening. And here you’ve taken it to yet another sort of level with the supernatural and bringing in a new chorus of voices. And I think it was Kiese Laymon who has been talking about how you write hoodoo. And I love that, I love that phrase. And I just, I really do want to sit with that for a second with you. And just because it feels like it was in Salvage the Bones to less so I think that the first novel for me, but I mean, Salvage the Bones,obviously, we’re coming out of Katrina, and all of that, I’m just can we riff on hoodoo for a second? Because I love the idea that this is underlying, right.

I think we can’t explain everything in the world. Right. And I think that, or at least I like to think that especially when I was working on this novel, right? I don’t think that I could have written this novel if there wasn’t something more to the world, if there wasn’t more besides the physical world, right? Like the fact of the chain, the fact of the fact of the brand, like those are such hard, brutal facts, that I think to write this book without recognition of the spiritual and of like, living, evolving spirituality. I had to use that in in this book, because this book without that would just be horror, right? And then what am I doing, like, you know, that’s not, it’s not my genre, it’s not my mission. It’s not what I’m trying to accomplish in my books. And so I think that that messy, sort of evolving spiritual element of Black American’s lives like, I think that that has allowed us to survive, and not only to survive, but also to thrive through the centuries in this country. I want to incorporate more of that in my work. And I remember feeling that way, when I was writing the rough draft of Salvage the Bones. And there’s this part in Salvage the Bones, which you probably will not remember, which no one will remember. But I always, you know, I think about it, often, because so there’s this part where Esch is at the house and Skeetah and China are out in the woods somewhere and Skeetah is training China, he’s training the dog. And all of a sudden, you hear this chorus of barks, like one dog starts barking, and then another, and then another, and another. They’re all around, right? So it’s not just, they’re not all gathered by China, somewhere out in the woods. It’s like, there’s like this. They’re coming from everywhere, right? And when I was writing that moment, I stopped and I was like, I wonder what’s happening, like something weird is happening right now. And I wonder what it is, I wanted to go wherever that barking was, I wanted to figure out which change, unusual, weird, what sort of felt supernatural thing was like happening at that moment. But I couldn’t write it because my story was right here. And so I stayed. But I think that that was like, I think the first time that I realize there was more like something else existing in the world that I was writing about. And a part of me, you know, was very interested in finding out what that other thing was. And so I think that it’s something that I’ve always loved in literature, you know, since I’m a high schooler, or in middle school, right? I love magic in literature, I took that limit off of myself, because I realized in a way, like I was, it was a self imposed limit. I think. I felt like if I was writing, you know, serious literary fiction, there could be no magic. You know, like when I think about the people in my family, right, we have all these stories that we tell about my grandmother. My grandmother is older now she has issues with her memory, that makes it even more important for me to tell the stories that I tell and to acknowledge stuff like, when my grandmother was born, she was one of a set of twins, and she was born with what they call the caul over her face. And so down here, back then, in the, you know, late 1930s, early 1940s, it was said that when a when a child was born with a caul over their face, that meant that they would have a second sort of vision, right? To know things and they would have certain like abilities, right? I grew up with this as a fact of my life several times in my life when my grandmother had like, predicted things, said things, had dreams, etc, right? And we just take it as it, you know, we’re just like, okay, yep, that’s facts, right? But none of that has been reflected in my work. My great grandmother on my mom’s side, my mom’s dad’s side, it’s complicated. She would always tell us a story when I was a little girl, about her husband dying, and then her husband coming back one night, and talking and speaking to her. And I just asked my mom about it, like a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, supposedly, he came back. And he told her not to remarry and she never did. And she really, you know, like, that was her experience, it was true to her. Right? She minded by that for the rest of her life. And so when Annis’ mother says, the world is wet with spirit, like, it’s fair sopping with it, I felt that like, I’ve felt like that is more of a reflection of my understanding of the world. Sort of the understanding of like, that people around me have about the world. And also, I think reflects some of that, you know, who do that adaptive, you know, expansive, like, spiritual understanding that I think Black Americans have developed.

And then you layer in The Odyssey. Right? There’s, I know, Dante is where we’re starting with Let Us Descend, but we can’t ignore The Odyssey. And we can’t ignore Oh, right, the magic and the spirituality. Like, you’re building on all of these world traditions, and layering in Black American experience. Right, which I don’t want to lose sight of that that’s part of what makes the book so powerful, because it’s not it’s pulling from every possible source that made you you. And, and it’s partially why I know when I’m reading a book by you, I’m reading a book by you, whether it’s, you know, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which personal top 10 always, you know, somehow sometimes things switch, shift right now, that never leaves, that’s always it’s a book that I hold really, really close. I mean, you can feel the echoes of Faulkner, you’re a Mississippi writer too so here, Dante and The Odyssey in Greek mythology, and hoodoo and African mythology as well. But also, we can’t really ignore Faulkner. And I heard you have his Nobel speech, taped near your desk.

So I did. I was recently looking through my, I have so much paperwork, but I was like, you know, I have photo albums, and I have files where I’ve like secreted stuff and hidden it from myself. So I came across a folder that had everything that I had tacked to the wall above my desk, when I was working on Where the Line Bleeds. And I was working on Where the Line Bleeds, like writing that rough draft, when I was an MFA student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, right? So here, I’m in my sort of first educational experience where I’m just devoting myself to studying creative writing, reading literature, and then trying to do my best to create some compelling literature. And right now, I don’t know how I came across that speech. But I remember coming across it, reading it and thinking, this is it. Like I can’t even I don’t fully, I can’t fully articulate. There were several sentences in that speech, where he was saying, you know, like, our duty as writers is to like, write about the human heart in conflict with itself. There’s something about that sentence and that idea, right, like, of the essential work that we should be doing that I thought I need to remember this in every moment when I’m writing, right? So I printed it out the important parts, I thought, in bold, tacked it to the wall above my desk, and I think about that speech that he gives, his Nobel speech, I think about that speech a lot. And I think about his work a lot, there were so many writers who are important to me. And they taught me how to write, because there are so many things that I find compelling or beautiful or moving about their work. And then I bring it to my own work, and I go, well, how can I do that, but not do that? You know, they’re my elders. So they’re farther ahead than I, right? But I feel like I’m always sort of shouting to them or calling to them over a distance. And, I don’t know, hoping they hear me in a way, I don’t know. It was important to me in this book, to incorporate other texts, specifically, you know, to incorporate Dante’s Inferno there was that bit about you know, Aristotle, like I just I feel like that desire carried through to the kinds of spirits that Annis encounters on her journey, because in the same way that it was important for me to like incorporate these other elements because they’re all a part of me they are you right like that, you know, I am, I am having an American experience, I’m telling American story, right? So why not like why can’t I pull in the Odyssey? Why can’t I pull in Dante’s Inferno? Why can’t I pull in all of these, incorporate all these other cultural touchstones into my work. I also wanted the kind of spirits that Annis met to reflect that too, like, because in the beginning, like in the rough draft, I thought, oh, you know, I maybe I can incorporate some spirits that are regarded in Benin, right in that specific kind of voodoo, traditional religion that they practice there. I should incorporate them like, these are the spirits that she’ll encounter in this story, but it didn’t work and then sudden, and then finally, I realized, okay, it’s not working, because these spirits should be specific to this place, right, to this moment in time and so I had to find them, I had to open myself up so that they would appear.

You set me up to actually toss out something that I was thinking about as I read, Let Us Descend. And part of that is how ghosts are manifestations of grief and loss, right. I mean, you talk about this very clearly in The Men We Reaped, which is the memoir that you wrote, sort of in between Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones. The idea that ghosts — also like Leonie in Sing, Unburied, Sing ghosts, are a piece of her story and a part of Joe Joe’s story, and that we can’t actually, you actually say, hold on, I was looking for my notes earlier, because I destroy galleys. Occasionally, it makes it difficult. violence begets remaining is one of the lines that I think is now officially tattooed on the back of my brain. And violence doesn’t necessarily imply death, it can be a violent act to remove someone from their home, it can be a violent act, to remove them from their community, but that a piece of you stays behind, and that you haunt whoever is behind, or they haunt you, right. And so the idea that we’re pretending that there’s this piece of the world that’s exactly what we see in front of us, and you know, walking down the street and all of that, that there isn’t some sort of current or echo beneath, it seems like literature is the best place to play with that idea. And you’re doing it and you have been doing it, I sort of feel like this is going to become more and more of the work. I mean, I realized it took you longer to write Let Us Descendthen to the other books, but this feels really right for where you are. But I see it as a launching pad for something else. Like I just I don’t know, like, I don’t know what you’re working, I have no idea what you’re working on. But you’re really comfortable in this world, you’re really comfortable with the characters, you’re really comfortable with the story. It’s just, and I’ve read it twice now. Once just because I could and then once when I’m prepping for the show, and it’s two different reading experiences. Obviously, you’re doing that. But yeah, there’s something really special about this book, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Like the language is gorgeous, the characters are great. But it’s the whole thing. It’s the whole experience, I think, is what makes it really remarkable. As a bookseller, I get to read everything early, which is great. I’m wondering though, what you are working on next, because I may have just put my foot in my mouth…

Oh no, I want to remember that you said that to me, because it will give me confidence moving forward. Because actually, I’m in a weird moment right now where because of the amount of work that I have to do, you know, before that I have not been able to work on anything new. The next thing that you will see from me is actually a middle grade or YA book. I have a contract to write said middle grade or YA book, I have not written a word yet. But I been reading a lot, you know, because again, I’m challenging myself as a writer because I’m not — I’ve never written anything for that particular audience. So that’s what you’ll see from me next. And it, too, I think will exist in this in this world right there. There’s always more, you know, than what you see with your five senses. So yeah, so that’s the next thing that I’m working on. And then after that, I don’t know, there are a couple of different novel ideas that I’ve sort of been kicking around for, for maybe the past year, year and a half, maybe, I don’t know if they’ll come to fruition now. Or, you know, I’ll kick them around for 10 more years, and then tackle them. But I know that I have to write them out, right, the middle grade book first, and it’s about a girl, there are things that she can do, right. She can access that World Beyond or that world that we normally don’t access in our every day. Now, I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, I’m trying to figure that out. I have lots of notes.

If anyone can figure it out, I’m not worried about you figuring out what a world is going to look like, for middle grade or YA. I’m not worried about that, at least, what I am enjoying is the idea, though, of you bouncing back and forth between age groups, I think, you know, when I was coming up, as a young reader, there just wasn’t a lot, right? You kind of you read everything you could and then suddenly, it was like, well, where’s the adult section of the library? Because I literally have read everything in this room multiple times. Like YA just didn’t exist in the way that it does, now. All props to ME Kerr and Judy Blume, you know, those who were doing it, that there just wasn’t what we see now. And you know, so we started punching above our weight, pretty young.

Not all of it was good.

But at the same time, you know, to know that we’re in a place in books right now, where you can be Jesmyn Ward for shorter set. And Jesmyn Ward, you know, for those of us who want all of it, because you know, Jojo may not, I love that kid so much. I realize I’m talking about a fictional character, like he’s real. But I love that kid so much. Jojo might not want to read Let Us Descend. Okay. All right. Let’s give him something where he sees himself represented, where he sees stories that makes sense. I mean, I constantly think about this image of you and your brother driving around, listening to southern rap and Ghostface Killah. You didn’t have this world. And I mean, I have spent many hours in the car with my little brother as well. Not listening to Ghostface. That I’ll totally own. But the idea that we can find story in music that we can find story between the covers of a book are that we find story in unexpected places. And then unexpected ways. I think that’s just really important.

Really, really important.

You know, and I’m looking at the clock and I knew this was going to happen, but we ran out of time. I knew this was gonna happen. Jesmyn Ward, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for all of the work and joining us on the show. Let Us Descend is out. Now if for some reason you have not read the Bois Sauvage novels and Salvage the Bones and Where the Line Bleeds and also, of course, Sing, Unburied, Sing, really. There’s that there’s also nonfiction too. There’s The Men We Reaped, which is a powerhouse of a memoir. And I really do recommend that and also The Fire This Timewhich is a collection of essays from lots of folks that you know, and maybe a couple of you don’t but it’s all fantastic. Thank you so much.