Ward, Jesmyn

In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.

"Twin brothers struggle with the responsibilities of adulthood and family in the post-Katrina Mississippi Gulf coast"--Provided by publisher.

The author's 2018 commencement speech Tulane University in which she spoke of the challenges she and her family overcame, the value of hard work, the importance of respect for oneself and others, and of tenacity in the face of hardship.

Jesmyn Ward, a prize-winning author, delves into her upbringing in rural Mississippi and examines how poverty and racism contributed to the deaths of five young men in her life.

A collection of eighteen essays, memoir pieces, and poems addressing race in the United States and written in response to James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew" in which the author lamented that 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it felt like African Americans were celebrating too soon.

"A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature"--.

"Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the rele ase of his father from prison prompts a road trip of d anger andhope"--OCLC.

A collection of essays addressing the history and predicament of race in an attempt to envision a better future.

Recounts the loss of five young men in the author's life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the misfortune that can follow those who live in poverty, sharing her experiences of living through the dying as she searches through answers in her community.

Twin brothers, Joshua and Christophe DeLisle, struggle with poverty, the lack of jobs, and the responsibilities of adulthood as they fight for survival in the post-Katrina Mississippi Gulf Coast region.