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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Faulkner’s characters, too, were uneducated. They were deprived, but they were allowed to have very rich inner lives. I want to advocate for that, for inner lives that are much more complicated and more poetic than we think. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
I celebrate my blackness. I love the artistic vibrancy of the culture I was born to. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I’m always thinking about time. That’s one of themes I return to in my work, the way the past bears on the present, the way that time is not linear, and how that expresses itself in people’s everyday lives. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
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 Read Quote
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
As a parent, you want to protect your children, but the fact of racism in this country, of inequality, that is still a lesson my children are going to have to learn. I can’t protect my kids from that. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
