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• Named one of the best books of 2023 by TheWashington Post, Vanity Fair, TheBoston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more.
"Nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving." —Vogue
"A novel of triumph." —The Washington Post
"Harrowing, immersive, and other-worldly." —People
From "one of America's finest living writers" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "heir apparent to Toni Morrison" (LitHub)—comes a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War that's destined to become a classic. Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is "[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours" (NPR).
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Annis leads readers through the descent, hers is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this "[s]earing and lyrical...raw, transcendent, and ultimately hopeful" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward's most magnificent novel yet.
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
Instant New York Times Bestseller
• Named one of the best books of 2023 by TheWashington Post, Vanity Fair, TheBoston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more.
"Nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving." —Vogue
"A novel of triumph." —The Washington Post
"Harrowing, immersive, and other-worldly." —People
From "one of America's finest living writers" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "heir apparent to Toni Morrison" (LitHub)—comes a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War that's destined to become a classic. Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is "[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours" (NPR).
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Annis leads readers through the descent, hers is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this "[s]earing and lyrical...raw, transcendent, and ultimately hopeful" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward's most magnificent novel yet.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
About the Author-
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
Reviews-
Starred review from August 21, 2023 Ward (Sing, Unburied, Sing) returns with the wrenching and beautifully told story of a young enslaved woman on a rice farm in the Carolinas. Annis picks up survival skills from her mother, Sasha: foraging herbs and mushrooms, fighting in self-defense, calling upon spirits of nature for guidance, and knowing when to run. But after Annis’s enslaver father attempts to rape her and Sasha intervenes, Sasha is sent away to be sold. Later, Annis is forcibly taken to the New Orleans slave market with Safi, another enslaved girl with whom she’s fallen in love. After Annis is made to work on a sugarcane plantation, she soothes her fear and anger with the memory of Sasha (“Didn’t Mama say I was my own weapon? That I was always enough to figure a way out?”). She also encounters Aza, a tempestuous wind spirit who has taken the name of Annis’s grandmother. When Annis learns the truth about Aza and Sasha, she must decide if she will trust Aza or heed the bewitching calls of the other spirits to give in and join them in another realm, and thereby alleviate her suffering. Throughout, Ward uses stark and striking language to describe Annis’s pain (“Every step feels like bone studding the ground: not flesh, not foot”; “My jaw aches. When I wake, my teeth are loose in my mouth”). Readers won’t be able to turn away. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, Massie & McQuilkin.
Starred review from March 1, 2024
Two-time National Book Award winner Ward (Sing, Unburied, Sing) gently but compellingly narrates the audiobook of her new historical novel, which tells the moving story of Annis, an enslaved Black teenager forced to travel from South Carolina to New Orleans after being sold by her father, a white man who had enslaved her and her mother. Before they were brutally separated, Annis's mother, Sasha, passed on ancestral wisdom, including how to fight and forage for food. During the grueling march south, Annis leans on her mother's teachings, as well as the lessons she overheard her white half sisters receive about Dante's Inferno. Annis, like Dante in the Underworld, relies on spirit guides throughout her hellish descent. Ward's delicate voice and deliberate pacing highlight her exquisite prose and vivid imagery, and her measured delivery makes the novel's descriptions of chattel slavery even more devastating. However, she evokes beauty and lightness with tributes to the strength of her characters, their willingness to help others at a high cost to themselves, and their ability to assert their dignity despite their circumstances. VERDICT Ward's fiercely engrossing but quietly told narrative personalizes the horrors of enslavement in the United States, making this an essential purchase for all collections.--Beth Farrell
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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