Jesmyn Ward

Please join us for a special evening when National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward comes to Octavia Books to present and sign her new book, Men we reaped.

In this stirring memoir, Jesmyn Ward contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the still great risk of being a black man in the rural South. “We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

“Jesmyn Ward's memoir is a miracle. In it, she writes with such clarity and beauty that her discoveries and revelations could very well change the way her readers understand the world. She also makes the unbearable nearly bearable with her poetic prose and her life-affirming passion. This is fierce, brave exploration, but it is also art - timeless, universal, and unrelentingly inspired.” – Laura Kasischke, author of THE RAISING

“Jesmyn Ward left her Gulf Coast home for education and experience, but it called her back. It called on her in most painful ways, to mourn. In Men we reaped, Jesmyn unburies her dead, that they may live again. And through this emotional excavation, she forces us to see the problems of place and race that led these men to their early graves. Full of beauty, love, and dignity, Men we reaped is a haunting and essential read.” – Natasha Trethewey, US Poet Laureate , author of THRALL and NATIVE GUARD, winner of the Pulitizer Prize

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the bones, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Location: Street: 513 Octavia St City: New Orleans, Province: Louisiana Postal Code: 70115-2055 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

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“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

About the Author

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the Univ. of Michigan and has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the Univ. of Mississippi. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the Univ. of South Alabama. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Location: Street: 265 Aragon Ave City: Coral Gables, Province: Florida Postal Code: 33134-5008 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

Who Asked You? Terry McMillan Terry McMillan is the no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including two that have been adapted into acclaimed feature films: Waiting to Exhale—a watershed work in contemporary fiction about black women—and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, “a sexy handbook of self-realization” (The New Yorker). The recipient of the Essence Award for Excellence in Literature, McMillan is also the author of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, Disappearing Acts, Getting to Happy, and her American Book Award-winning first novel, Mama. With signature exuberance, Who Asked You takes a bracing look at the burdens and blessings of family in a multi-racial Los Angeles neighborhood. Men We Reaped: A Memoir Jesmyn Ward Jesmyn Ward amazed the literary world when she won the 2011 National Book Award for her second novel, Salvage the Bones, a “strikingly beautiful, taut, relentless and, by its end, indelible” book (San Francisco Chronicle) that follows a pregnant teenage girl and her family in the Mississippi coastal backwoods in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina and during the immediate aftermath of the storm. A Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama, Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Men We Reaped is a piercing memoir about five young men in her life lost to drug addiction, accidents, and suicide, and a shattering account of the overarching pressures of poverty and racism. Parkway Central Library 1901 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway) TICKETS ON SALE AUGUST 23rd, 2013 at 10:00 AM This is a TICKETED event; $15 General Admission, $7 Students. For more information, please call 215-567-4341, or click here

Location: Street: Free Library of Philadelphia Additional: 1901 Vine Street City: Philadelphia, Province: Pennsylvania Postal Code: 19103-5207 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

Description

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I know why the caged bird sings. About the Author

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the Univ. of Michigan and has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the Univ. of Mississippi. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the Univ. of South Alabama. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the bones, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Location: Street: 160 Courthouse Sq City: Oxford, Province: Mississippi Postal Code: 38655-3914 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

The Octavia Books Book Club invites you to a discussion of Jesmym Ward's National Book Award-winning novel, Salvage the bones.

A big-hearted novel about familiallove and community against all odds and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, "Salvage the bones" is revelatory, real, and muscled with poetry. The Octavia Books Book Club meets at 10:30AM on the 3rd Saturday morning of each month (except December) and is open to book lovers. Please feel welcome to join us!

Location: Street: 513 Octavia St City: New Orleans, Province: Louisiana Postal Code: 70115-2055 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

Salvage the bones by Jesmyn Ward

A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real. Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction.

We usually meet every 4th Tuesday and we welcome new members. Please join us!

Location: Street: 5501 N Lamar Blvd Additional: #A-105 City: Austin, Province: Texas Postal Code: 78751-1029 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)

Our Mystery Book Discussion Group meets the third Friday of every month. This month the group discusses Salvage the bones by Jesmyn Ward. Reminder: If you're a member of our book discussion group, you'll get this book at a discount!

Location: Street: 428 Main Street City: Bethlehem, Province: Pennsylvania Postal Code: 18018-5809 Country: United States (toegevoegd uit IndieBound)… (meer)