If I’m honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
In my family and in my community, I see people struggling with drug addiction, with poverty and the effects of generational poverty; I see people struggling with lack of access to healthcare. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
The women here are the ones that hold the families together. So if my mom were to be unhappy with me, in a way, it would be like I would have lost my entire family. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
People ask me about staying here. I think they assume that I wouldn’t want to come back to a place like Mississippi, which is so backward and which frustrates me a lot. The responsibility that I feel to tell these stories about the people and the place that I’m from is what pulls me back. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
I hope that I never have to work in a place that sells large quantities of jeans ever again. Jeans are rough! It used to kill my hands. I know that sounds prissy – I’m not prissy at all. But it did; it killed my hands. It was awful. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
My time in New York really clarified things for me. I thought, ‘What could I do with my life that would give it meaning?’ And writing was that for me. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
One of the ways my first novel failed was that I was too in love with my characters. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
People ask me all the time, ‘Why did I move home?’ As well as I can articulate it, that’s why. I moved home because I love the community that I come from. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
