Let Us Descend

As a two-time National Book Award winner, Jesmyn Ward is the only woman and the only African American to win this award twice. Although born in Berkeley in 1977, Ward’s family was originally from De Lisle, Mississippi, and they returned to their hometown when Ward and her siblings were still young. As a girl, she was bullied, first for being a quiet, bookish student at her public school and then because she was the lone Black student at the private school to which she transferred. She left Mississippi after high school to pursue a BA and an MA at Stanford University, and she also earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. Although she had been firm in her decision to leave coastal Mississippi, she became homesick during the years that she spent in school and consequently returned home upon the completion of her degrees. Wanting to give her children the same rural childhood that she experienced, she has since remained in De Lisle. In 2000, her brother was killed by a drunk driver, and in 2005, she and her family were caught up in Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous aftermath. In 2020, just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, she suddenly and unexpectedly lost her husband to acute respiratory distress syndrome.