American - Novelist | -
It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.
Jesmyn Ward
LivePeopleMeAmericaSayReally
I think that the first book that made me think that I could try to be a writer - or that made me aware that a young black woman from the South could write about the South - was Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple,' which I read for the first time when I was in junior high.
TimeWomanMeBookColorThink
I do think that people will claim a certain fatigue about talking about race. But I think that even though they do, it's still necessary - completely necessary.
PeopleThinkTalkingWillRaceEven
People are not afraid to be activists, to be vocal. And I think back to my years in college, and that wasn't the case.
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I would encounter W. E. B. Du Bois and the term double consciousness. When I read it, I thought about sitting in my mother's employer's family room, watching my mother clean while I waited for her to finish so we could go home.
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I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.
ThinkWriteThingsI ThinkReally
I feel a lot of pressure when I'm writing because I know, you know, if they looked at a synopsis of the book, what they read could only confirm all the stereotypes that they have about us and about people like us.
PeopleWritingBookPressureYouUs
That larger story in 'Salvage the Bones' is just about survival, and I think that, in the end, there are things about this novel and about these characters' experiences that make their stories universal stories.
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People don't read me and say, 'Oh, it's so clean and elegant.'
PeopleMeSayCleanElegantRead
I could stifle my voice, or strip it. I know that I could, because we can do anything we put our minds to. I know that I could, but it feels very unnatural for me to strip my prose like that, in part because place is so important to me.
MeVoicePlaceKnowImportantMinds
I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.
WorkI AmPeopleMeGrowing UpFeel
I always think about Faulkner, and I would argue that there can be a difference between the way that characters express themselves internally and externally.
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