My thoughts
I got this as one of my BOTM picks. It's a very deep book. A very emotional one. At least for me it was. This is truly a heartbreaking account of one young ladies journey through being a slave. Time with her mother. Watching as her mother was sold and she was left behind. Alone. Scared. In the bosses sights. Her own biological father who wanted her in a bad way. A white man. A slave owner.
How horrible it was in those days. Bought like you was nothing more than an animal. Like you was the property of a superior being. Like you was nothing. How could this happen. How could a race of people who claim to love. Claim to believe in a god, do such a thing. I do not understand. I don't even pretend too. I just don't get it. I don't believe we are superior to anyone else. That was not the thing I was taught from my grandmother as a child. She tried to teach me empathy, caring, love, and most of all that we as human beings were equal. She was born in the last of 1899 but she was also a very smart woman. She taught me right. Not a lot of us were taught that though. There is still so much racism in this world. It hurts my soul. It breaks my heart. I know I'll never understand who other people feel. How brown skinned people feel but I do believe we are all equal.....
This story of a young girl is very well written. It's lyrical in so many ways. It's eye opening. It's truly beautiful but in a very sad way. What this girl, Annis, goes through is sad. It is abhorrent. It's unjust and so unfair. She's sold off to what she calls Georgia Men. I've never heard that term. I didn't know a lot about what happened slaves. I've seen movies but never read many books about it. I will want to know more now. She lands as a slave to a woman who is very cruel. Who blames the girls if her husband eyes them. Of course from what I've learned that is quite normal for the time. Not ok...
Just like the books I've read about the Nazis, this is important. Not to be forgotten or covered up. Not to be swept under the rug. We certainly don't want this kind of thing to happen again. Not for anyone. History needs to be learned by us all. Not buried so some don't look bad.
While this book is sad it's also very good. It tells you about things that happened. Things that were real. You learn a lot about Annis and her life. How she ended up. Her determination to survive. Her many ups and downs. Other women she met and befriended.
Five huge stars from me and I do recommend this book to everyone. Read and learn.
About
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.
“‘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.
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