Selected works by Jesmyn Ward

It’s always exciting when I find an author whose writing makes me want to burn through his or her bibliography like a dangerous fever. I grabbed the three books I could lay my hands on at the library, and dove head first into Sing, Unburied, Sing, I followed with Salvage the Bones, and concluded with The Men We Reaped. Each story is powerful and compelling, but as a body of work, they are a vivid testimony of growing up Black and poor in the rural south.

Salvage the Bones is Jesmyn Ward’s second novel, and a visceral snap shot of a family, which itself is a microcosm of the greater systemic disenfranchisement of Blacks in the book’s fictitious town of Bois Sauvage. Told over twelve days in rural Mississippi, and climaxing as Hurricane Katrina moves inland, Esch’s story will break your heart. Fourteen year-old Esch “grew up” (as  a child who has only ever known deprivation and struggle can) putting the needs of her brothers first: Randall (a serious basketball star, already proving to be a far better father to his little brother Junior, than their dad ever has been), Skeetah (who, while trying to “make them know,” ends up finding the love of his life…of a kind), and their baby brother Junior (a sweet boy, the last boy, the birthing of whom killed their mother). Junior, whose clinginess binds them, but also reminds them of how fierce and tenuous they all feel without their mother. Within this backdrop, while a hurricane threatens on the horizon, Esch struggles with a secret that scares her more than calamity.

In Sing, Unburied, Sing, we meet a thirteen-year-old boy named Jojo, a young boy growing up in a house/family that is haunted by racism, the poison of it spreading to each member of the family like a cancer, body, mind, and soul. Jojo is at that age where he is dreaming about being a man. And those dreams take on the straight lines of Pap, Junior’s grandpa. Junior, his baby sister Kayla, and their mom Leonie all live with Pap and Mam. When Leonie decides to take Jojo and Kayla on a three day odyssey to pick up her man Michael from prison.(Michael is, to a much lesser degree, their father. But Jojo learned early what baby Kayla is just now feeling: Michael has eyes and ears only for Leoni.) Without Pap’s imperious presence on the trip, Jojo feels unmoored, and worries that Leoni can’t keep them safe. Running both parallel and through Jojo’s experiences, are Richie’s. But the same eye Jojo turned so sweetly upon Kayla, sweaty and hot on a too-long car ride back from the prison, becomes baleful when it lands upon Richie, slumped impossibly on the floorboard beside him.  Well, maybe it’s not so impossible if you understand that Richie is a ghost that roams forward and back in time, tethered to a plantation that had many a PR facelift during its time. The owners may change in name, but never in deed, and those fields may now be growing Parchment Penitentiary cotton instead of that old slavery cotton, but it’s the same damn field. And the Black men and boys, rounded up for charges ranging from petty to imagined, as prisoners, may now be legally yoked to the field once again. The master/jailer’s face may change, but the same enslavement flows through and around time like a snake eating itself.

I finished my holiday reading with The Men We Reap. This volume of Jesmyn Ward’s memoirs tracks the fatal arcs of five boys’ lives. Stars that dropped right out of her family’s sky. Jesmyn begins her telling with the freshest loss, family friend, Demon Cook. Cook was the boy from an unbroken family, a dedicated provider and conscientious neighbor, who was murdered on his front lawn. A crime still unsolved. He was preceded in death by Charles Joseph Martin, a lithe acrobatic marvel and chivalrous and beloved cousin. Death came calling next for Ronald Way Lizana, a dazzling and charming friend; and lastly, Jesmyn discusses the loss of her little brother, Joshua Adam Dedeaux. Alternating with each heartbreaking memorial, are autobiographical chapters chronicling the history of Jesmyn and her family. She paints a bleak picture of what a young boy can expect when he’s young, Black, and poor in rural America. She describes in haunting detail what it looked like when the light dimmed in the eyes of a brother, a friend, or a loved one as they realized, with their eyes wide open, that the American Dream isn’t an option for every sleeper.

Reviews by Jennifer Wilson

wilsonj@delphilibrary.org

Our Short History

Single mother Karen is dying of ovarian cancer. This is not a spoiler, because it's no surprise to the reader from the very beginning. Karen and her son Jake are visiting Karen's sister Allison on Mercer Island, WA, as part of Karen's plan for preparing Jake to live with his Aunt Allie and her family after Karen passes on. Another part of her plan is to write this book for Jake, to tell him about his early life and give him some guidance for the future. Jake is a great kid. He's funny, smart, and very warm and loving towards his mom. But he surprises her, and throws a bit of a tantrum about wanting to meet the man who is his father. Karen is torn between wanting to keep Jake for herself, and wanting to give him what he wants. This book is not only a love letter to Jake, but an exploration of the complicated feelings that are involved in all relationships, especially those from which a child is born. The author has a way of poking at things gently and then peeling back the layers to get at what Karen is feeling, and what we all might feel at critical junctures in our lives. Highly recommended for those readers who enjoy character-driven stories that make you think.

Review by Kelly Currie

The History of Great Things

Structured as an interweaving of two faux-biographies, The History of Great Things by Elizabeth Crane is the most refreshingly honest portrayal of a mother and daughter relationship that I've read in years. Lois's career as an opera singer has always been her driving force in life. Unfortunately, this force has left little time for developing a close relationship with her daughter, aspiring writer, Betsy. When Lois falls ill, it appears the clock is ticking on this strained relationship, inspiring Betsy to perform an experiment - the two will write each other's life story, as they imagine it would have happened. Piecing together the facts they know about each other and filling in the holes with the fiction they believe could have happened, a mother's and daughter's true feelings about each other begin to shine through.

Taking the story one step further, Crane brilliantly structures the novel as if each author is taking her turn reading their chapter to their subject, and adds in the conversational objections, questions, and clarifications the mother-daughter duo interject at their defenses. This takes the reader beyond a simple view of the women through each other's eyes and actually shows them the depth of their strained relationship via their interactions. It becomes clear very early in the novel which character has paid more attention to their subject's actual life and personality - or at least which one imagines they have - though the reader can certainly sense a shift in the women's understanding of each other as their stories unfold to reveal Lois's illness and continue on to reveal their predictions for the future.

This novel was at times touching, hilarious, and frustrating. Sometimes it was all of these at the same time as I tried to sift through the fiction to reveal the facts and decide for which character I should feel more sorry or more hopeful. However, as wonderfully as Crane portrays this mother-daughter dynamic, what she does even better is force the reader to further evaluate their own relationship with their parents. A must-read, if you aren't afraid of what you may discover.

Revival by Stephen King

One of the things I’ve always liked about Stephen King novels, is the suspension of disbelief they inevitably engender.  Pragmatic by nature, I’m the last one to throw spilled salt, or avoid cracks on the sidewalk. However, give me five hundred pages of a good King novel and I’m turning on the hallway lights, checking door locks, and just generally feeling a little creeped out (in the most pleasant of ways I assure you).  The power his books have over me lies, in large part, with his ability to create such fully-fleshed characters, women and men I can well imagine I have met, in line at the BMV, on a crowded bus, or at an extended family reunion.  Flawed, but decent folk, too much like the rest of us for me not to be invested in their well-being.  King’s newest novel, proves to be no exception to this.  The novel’s main character, Jamie Morton, opens the novel with a nostalgic look-back into his childhood, to a time when the catalyst to alluded horrors, his “fifth business” first entered his life.  The Reverend Charles Jacob and his charming family arrive in the small Maine town of Harlow in 1962, where they become fatefully intertwined with the Morton family, until a horrific tragedy drives them apart.  Jamie and Charles meet again, several times over the ensuing decades, with lasting effects on Jamie, both good and ill. In his fifties, Jamie, at last apprehending that the long-sought realization of Charlie’s obsession (the source and application of De Vermis, a “secret” electricity) may be more terrifying than miraculous.  The last 200 pages of this novel virtually read themselves.  A cross between a Mary Shelley gothic novel and a Bill Bryson memoir, Revival, is sure to go down as yet another King classic.

Same kind of different!

Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, is a true story told by two guys who didn't know they were being set up by God.

I can't say enough good about this book. It is the best! Why? Because it touches you in a deep place and wakes you up to seeing what you probably missed.

This is a story about a homeless drifter who grew up in virtual slavery in the 50's. His name is Denver and you will fall in love with him and he will bless you with the wisdom from within a man who never went to school. It is also about a profitable art dealer accustomed to the good life. This is Ron. We grow along with Ron. And then it is about a gutsy lady...I like gutsy.....who is moved and inspired by God to see something unlikely happen with these two men.

A story of friendship, faith, homelessness and pain! Don't pass this one over because we are the same kind of different.