June 25, 2026
On Witness and Respair, by Jesmyn Ward
“Come take a ride with me, them Southern boys said, them bluesmen made new. For sure, we answered, we coming, and for a song, a poem, a line, this country and history and the universe rearranged itself, and we were outside of time and space in a different place, crafted and built, paint stroke by poem and prose line by song lyric by music note by shutter click, in another dimension, where we were safe and seen and heard, where our hearts beat wildly and surely with the rhythm, with the rush of the water, with our ancestors at the oars of the boat, their own vessel, cutting through the waters of time, navigating the universes as they would.”
In her latest book, a collection of essays and articles written and published over the last 20 years, Jesmyn Ward resists the simplicity of a single story—about Mississippi, America, Black culture and more—and manages to hold it all, the tragedy and the ecstasy, the devastation and the building, the sadness and the joy, the cruelty and injustice and the overwhelming love.
