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On witness and respair essays

"Beginning with her upbringing in a multigenerational household in rural Mississippi, the cradle of both her youth and her gift for storytelling, Ward brings her keen wisdom and hauntingly lyrical prose to a range of topics, following in her grandmother Dorothy's footsteps when she promises always t...

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Main Author: Ward, Jesmyn (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Scribner, 2026.
Edition:First Scribner hardcover edition.
Subjects:
African American women authors > Books and reading.
African American women > Books and reading.
Books and reading > Psychological aspects.
Resilience (Personality trait)
Essays.
Creative nonfiction.
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Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Why fiction matters (address at the Library of Congress, 2023)
  • No mercy in motion (Guernica, 2013)
  • My true south: why I decided to return home (Time, 2018)
  • Open minds, open books: as a child in a small town in Mississippi, the library is where I learned about empathy--and identity (Harper's Bazaar, 2023)
  • Growing up and grasping Gone with the Wind (NPR, 2012)
  • Toni Morrison memorial speech (address at Toni Morrison memorial, St. John the Divine, 2019)
  • We do not swim in our cemeteries: a legacy of not evacuating (Oxford American, 2008)
  • A conflicted, imperfect love (introduction, As I Lay Dying, Vintage International edition, 2025)
  • Cracking the code (New Yorker, 2015)
  • Head rush: a love for Prince emboldened Jesmyn Ward's father to defy the world's narrow expectations of him (Vogue, 2017)
  • On discovering-for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (introduction, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Scribner edition, 2022)
  • Regina King in Her Element (Vanity Fair, September 2021)
  • I love you: please don't forget it (introduction, The Fire This Time, Scribner edition, 2016)
  • Raising a Black son in the US (Guardian, 2017)
  • The beautiful power of Ta-Nehisi Coates (Vanity Fair, August 2019)
  • Ava DuVernay's visionary filmmaking is reshaping Hollywood (Smithsonian, 2017)
  • Jay Gatsby: doomed dreamer (introduction, The Great Gatsby, Scribner edition, 2018)
  • How to survive in broken worlds: on Octavia Butler's empathy and optimism (introduction, Bloodchild, Seven Stories Press edition, 2022)
  • On witness and respair: a personal tragedy followed by a pandemic (Vanity Fair, 2020)
  • Cocoon of sound (Orion, 2025)
  • You tell your story: you survive (Eudora Welty Lecture, address at the National Press Club, 2019).

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