Jesmyn Ward

Inferno is the first book of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century 3-part narrative poem The Divine Comedy. Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalized version of Dante downward through the circles of Hell. He is guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who says to Dante in Canto IV, "Let us descend now into the blind world. . . . Let us go on, for the long way impels us.”

In Let Us Descend Jesmyn Ward describes the long walk of slaves from North Carolina to the slave markets show more in New Orleans as a descent through Hell, as seen through the eyes of a young Black slave named Annis. Annis was born after her white master’s repeated raping of her mother, as Annis tells us by explaining that it is he who has given her “the middle mud” of her skin.

She heard parts of Dante’s poem by eavesdropping on the tutor to her two half-sisters, who of course were educated, while she worked for this white family from before sun-up until after sun down. When Annis started to grow up, the master sold off the mother intending to replace her with Annis for his sexual predations. But when he saw Annis kissing Safi - another female slave, he was repulsed, and sold off both Annis and Safi.

Annis and Safi turned to each other as “love-hungry, hurt-full children . . . ”

The two were herded together with others by “The Georgia Man”:

“. . . this white man looping and fastening me to the other women on this line . . . who moves us south to New Orleans in the cheapest way, the old way, terrible and nasty: he chains the men, binds the women with ropes, leaving the children to walk behind as far as they can, not caring if they drop dead at the side of the road in this red-earthed place. This wide, cry-choked hell.”

She observed:

“We are expected to walk and drop filth like horses.”

“Us walking cattle, us goats. Us made to be a herd, but we not. We not.”

“We are shuffling slowly, leaning back against our chains and ropes. The tutor’s words ring through my head: Let us descend.”

And again, she recalled from the tutor’s reading of Dante: “I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost.’”

Upon arrival, Annis and the others were put into the horse stalls that served as the New Orleans slave market, where they were unprotected from “the men that would sell them, buy them, rape them.” [As Wikipedia explains, “New Orleans, Louisiana was a major, if not the major, slave market of the lower Mississippi River valley of the United States from approximately 1830 until the American Civil War. Slaves from the upper south were trafficked by land and by sea to New Orleans where they were sold at a markup to the cotton and sugar plantation barons of the region.”]

Annis ended up on a sugar plantation, where the work was grueling. But she knew what happened to slaves who tried to escape:

“The thieves gather their men, their thick-saliva’d, hang-toothed dogs, and run after them to steal them back. When the men find them that fled, they wrap the ropes around their hands and feet and necks. They beat them with leather, with boards. They heat steel orange hot, and then they brand the people: their cheeks, their backs. They collar them with spiked metal. They encircle their ankles with iron and chains; they make pregnant people shuffle their way to delivery.”

Though Annis does not explicitly contemplate the unfairness of her lot vis-a-vis those who were born with white skin, it is instructive for readers to continue along with Dante’s fourth canto, because where Virgil first takes Dante is Limbo, where the suffering of people there is through no fault of their own. Virgil explains:

“Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther,
That they sinned not; and if they merit had,
'Tis not enough, because they had not baptism
Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest;
And if they were before Christianity,
In the right manner they adored not God;
And among such as these am I myself.
For such defects, and not for other guilt,
Lost are we and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”

Annis was unschooled in the god of Christianity. But she had been taught a religion of sorts by her mother, who told her about spirits worshipped in Africa. Annis, in her attempt to endure the horror of her descent, turned to these spirits, one of whom she envisioned as wearing the face of her grandmother Aza. She perceived this spirit as not only wanting to guide her, but be worshipped by her. But Annis was reluctant; at several points she asked Aza why she had not intervened to stop their suffering. Aza had no answer. And thus Annis turned away from her. She would make her own way. She averred:

“I want to rise. I want stars.”

“I want. I want to grow my hair long, to find food and feed myself without hiding, to sit in the sunlight and scratch the worry out of my scalp, to breathe without fear and terror choking me, to choose my seconds, to choose my minutes, to choose my days.”

And indeed, she improbably found a way to do that.

She ended: “I am, My own.”

Discussion: In this book, the voice of Annis varies from a slave dialect to high literacy, and in the latter mode, she frequently employs Homeric epithets (as is, most famously, “the wine-dark sea”). [Totally Unrelated Aside: For an interesting analysis of why Homer would have referred to the blue-green Aegean as “wine-dark” see this New York Times article.]

But she is quite poetic even aside from the use of epithets, as in this passage describing the effects of working in the sugar cane fields:

“I shrink: the work wrings me to ropes. The walking, lifting, throwing, washing, clearing, and trudging pare my face. I am less. We are all less. The bones of Mary’s hips jut from her skin in a bowl. Esther’s cheekbones are overturned spoons.”

The rich lyricism of the prose is of course in stark contrast to the content, but that paradox serves to set in greater relief her Hell on Earth.

Evaluation: I hope this book engenders readers to question how such evil was possible, and might still occur without the constraints of law, even among those who profess to be “Christians.” It boggles the mind. But the blood, sweat, and tears of slavery, not to mention the profound injustice, is in fact as much or more of the foundation of this country as the “Founding Fathers,” about whom we prefer to contemplate. (And even in our contemplation we like to elide over their slave-holding and slave-abusing behaviors.) Highly recommended. show less

This is the story of Annis, her childhood enslaved on a North Carolina plantation working as a housemaid in her father's house, close to her mother, who protects and nurtures her as best she can, teaching her about her grandmother, who was brought over from Africa. Then first her mother is sold, then Annis is sold and marched to New Orleans to be sold, entering into worse circumstances with every mile deeper into the South.

Ward is a brilliant writer, her words sing from the page and her use show more of magic realism folds naturally into this very harsh story. I avoided this novel because although I loved Sing, Unburied, Sing, it was clear from the description that this novel would be hard to read. But eventually I did pick it up and it is a testament to how well Ward writes that a novel as unrelentingly bleak as this one would flow so beautifully. It's both horrifying and gorgeous. I will likely never want to read this book again, but so much of it is sitting with me, inhabiting my imagination now. show less

Sing, Unburied, Sing by author Jesmyn Ward tells the story of the struggles of an African American family in modern day rural Mississippi. Thirteen-year-old Jojo and his sister, Kayla, are being raised by their grandparents. Their grandmother is in the last stages of cancer and their grandfather (Pop) is coping with the farm while caring for her and the kids. Their mother, Leonie, addicted to methamphetamines, drops in and out of their lives. Their white father is about to be released from show more prison and Leonie decides to take the two children along to meet him resulting in a road trip marked by the presence of another addict, Kayla's car sickness, unexpected and unwanted side trips, and Jojo's constant alertness to any dangers as well as protection of his toddler sister from their mother's seeming indifference to their needs.

It is no surprise that Sing, Unburied Sing won the National Book Award for Fiction and was named as one of the top books of 2017. It is a beautifully written novel with lyrical prose and complex and interesting characters. The narration is split between Jojo and Leonie and later in the book, Richie, a ghost from Pop's past. Jojo is certainly the most likeable of these characters but Leonie is, by far, the most complex - on the surface, she is selfish and needy and indifferent to anyone but Michael, her white lover, and often showing almost hatred towards Jojo who, in turn, dislikes and distrusts her. But in her internal dialogue, we see a more nuanced character, one who has never gotten over the death of her brother; who knows that her actions and reactions to her son are wrong; who is willing to take an action that will aid her mother, knowing how it will likely look to the rest of the family; and who is aware of her obsession for Michael and wishes she were able to give just a little of that love to her children but knows that she can't. This is also a tale about how memory and the past colours the presence, that the dead are never fully gone from our lives but are rather there 'pulling the weight of history behind them'. These ghosts of the past are there in Pop's stories about his time in the notorious Parchman prison and what happened to Richie, something that remains a mystery until the very end of the story; in Leonie's inability to let go of what happened to her brother; in the actual ghosts that Jojo, Kayla, and Leonie can see; and in the road trip which makes it clear that the injustices and inequalities of the past has never gone away even if we want to believe they have. show less

How can someone write this well? I had heard raves about this book and her new one, Sing, Unburied Sing which I will undoubtedly read very soon. The story takes place in a poor coastal Mississippi community leading up to and through Katrina. The author takes you right there with her vivid descriptions and context for all that follows. I feel that anything I write about this book could not possibly do it justice. Ward’s writing is raw, gripping and moving. The characters she created are so show more well developed I want to read an entire book about each one. She pulls you into the story and catapults you to the height of the action before gently setting you down in the aftermath, looking towards the future. I want more! The theme that most engaged me is that of siblings caring for each other in the absence of parental guidance. Not an easy read because the subject matter is very rough. Trigger for dog fighting. show less