277 Quotes by Jesmyn Ward

I grew up in a lot of different homes when I was younger: my parents rented trailers and small, boxy houses set high on cement block pillars.

I think people make certain assumptions about what they're interested in reading or what others would be interested in reading, and when they think of poor black people in the South, they don't think people are interested in reading about those people.

I've always used Southern rappers in epigraphs for my novels. For 'Sing, Unburied, Sing,' I wanted to use Big K.R.I.T. - because I have so much respect for the lyrical depth of their music.

I celebrate my blackness. I love the artistic vibrancy of the culture I was born to.

I dabbled in writing, wrote really bad poetry in high school. I also took a few writing classes when I was an undergrad at Stanford. I was so intimidated.

I think that often in the United States we're very blind to the ways that history lives in the present.

There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And acknowledging that to myself helps me see that place more clearly and to bring readers to that place.

I didn't start really focusing on writing until I was 24.

My brother died when he was 19, so a part of me indulges and thinks that some part of him that made him uniquely him is out there, on another plane. So inventing the fictional afterlife in 'Sing, Unburied, Sing' was a way of making that wish real.