Oct 31

Oct 31 Let Us Descend

Author: Jesmyn Ward
Publisher: Scribner
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

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.

TL;DR Review

Sensory and immersive, brutal and beautiful, Let Us Descend is another masterpiece from our queen Jesmyn Ward.

For you if: You like historical literary novels that use magical realism as a device.

Full Review

Don’t listen to the couple of naysayers about this book — listen to the vast majority of (both professional and hobby) reviewers. Or listen to Oprah. Or you can just listen to the chills you get when you read the opening line: “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.”

Jesmyn Ward has indeed done it again.

Sensory and immersive, brutal and beautiful, Let Us Descend is about an enslaved girl whose mother is sold away from her, who is made to march many miles to a new brutal life, who dares to defy enslaver and and spirits both. It’s both like and unlike Ward’s other books — most similar on the sentence level, where she will break your heart and sweep you away. But perhaps least similar in the amount of magical realism here. That’s always a big plus in my book — I loved The Underground Railroad, The Water Dancer, Hamnet, etc — but it also just fits perfectly with these characters, this time period, and this story. I also loved the thematic focuses on mothers and daughters, bonds between women, and the spirit and self.

Screw the New York Times. This book is a masterpiece.