Similar Topic: CBS this morning: The Sweetness Of Water ( book club pick)
Here is a statement by Oprah Winfrey about her latest book club pick:
“I have read all of Jesmyn Ward’s books and have been a fan of her writing for years. Let Us Descend’ is a vital work for our culture and I’m so excited to have her newest offering as part of our Book Club.”
Ward has also written such nonfiction as “Men We Reaped” and “Navigate Your Stars.” In a statement Tuesday, she expressed her lifelong admiration for Winfrey and how she was “deeply moved by Ms. Winfrey’s ability to challenge herself creatively and her unabashed championing of literature and the written word.”
Here is the author, Jesmyn Ward, statement on her book being chosen in Oprah's book club:
“I tried to emulate all of this in my own life, and over the last 20 years, I worked my way through rejection and revision to now, when I find myself in a momentous point in my career. I am so honored to contribute to the discussion at the heart of her club, which over the years, has considered what it means to be American, to be human, to be alive, to hope and yearn, with each outing. What a joy to add my own voice to her chorus!”
Here is a goodreads synopsis of Let Us Descend:
From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.
“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” — Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is 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.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. 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 of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a 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, a masterwork for the ages.
source: AP