Let Us Descend

The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand.On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother's resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother - how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness.When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth. A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation - a masterwork for the ages. Review I have read all of Jesmyn Ward's books and have been a fan of her writing for years. Let Us Descend is a vital work for our culture and I'm so excited to have her newest offering as part of our Book Club -- Oprah WinfreyAn extraordinary novel ... As in all of Ward's novels, the writing is both lyrical and sharply controlled ― GuardianA poetic book about slavery . Ward's writing is like a spirit that flits and flies ... While also going deep into the rich inner world that sustains [Annis] ― Financial Times, Critic's Pick: Best Books of 2023This harrowing, extravagantly beautiful novel at times seems to hover halfway between the real world and the spirit one. A sublime work ― Daily MailElegiac ... Let Us Descend is recounted with a lyrical economy ― Times Literary SupplementWard's specificity about the horrors of that journey - the beatings, the rapes, the near drownings, the actual drownings - is brutal. But there is also beauty: she has a poet's ear and her repetition of phrases and conjunctions is hypnotic ... Just as Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead used black spiritual traditions in their writing, so does Ward ... This skein of hope is what keeps one reading' ― SpectatorJesmyn Ward is one of the greatest writers of all time. And Let Us Descend, once again, proves it -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of RED AT THE BONEExquisite, harrowing, elemental, transcendent and ultimately hopeful. The best book I've read in years. What a writer Jesmyn Ward is! -- Louise Kennedy, author of TRESPASSESWard resurrects an enslaved girl out of the lost folds of the antebellum South, twists magic through every raindrop, mushroom and stalk of sugarcane, and drops you into the middle of her harrowing, unendurable, magnificent song. This is a gripping, mythic, bone-pulverizing descent into the grim darkness of American slavery - and yet somehow this novel simultaneously leaves you in awe of the human capacity to not only endure, but to ascend back to the light. A spectacular achievement -- Anthony Doerr, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEEA stunning achievement. Will grip you from the first word to the last -- Nathan Harris, author of THE SWEETNESS OF WATERA visceral chronicle of one young woman's bondage ... This is a sensual book ― EconomistA lush and harrowing journey through the American antebellum South ... Beautifully alive and luminous ― Irish Times   About the Author Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleedsand Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Timeand the author of the memoir Men We Reaped,which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008-2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.