Jesmyn Ward
@jesmimi
Followers
55K
Following
22K
Media
38
Statuses
10K
Writer. Sing,Unburied,Sing. The Fire This Time. Men We Reaped. Salvage the Bones. Where the Line Bleeds. National Book Award Winner (deuce!) she/her
N 30°23' 0'' / W 89°18' 0''
Joined February 2009
Thank you for your witness. Thank you for standing. Thank you for your love. I hear you. We here.
273
333
9K
“Even as we grieved, we grew.” Amanda Gorman is speaking a word. Look at her shine. 💜.
22
828
6K
Even after Salvage the Bones won the NBA, my publishing company did not want to give me 100k for my next novel. My agent and I fought and fought before we wrestled our way to that number.
122
613
5K
The novel that earned me my first 100k advance? Sing, Unburied, Sing.
49
125
4K
I love y’all. Thank y’all for reading my work. Thank you for sitting with it, for engaging with it, for letting me tell you stories. I’m grateful.
68
41
2K
It takes courage, conviction, and vulnerability to look critically at yourself, but many refuse to do so.They’d rather live in fantasy while the world burns and storms and people die, and they self-soothe with nostalgia-drunk dreams of an America that never existed for everyone.
5
284
1K
I wrote Salvage the Bones without an advance. I wrote a complete manuscript and revised it multiple times before delivering it to my agent to sell. I was lucky because I created it while I had a writing fellowship.
32
82
1K
So, um, I️ won. It was totally unexpected. I️ am amazed and so deeply grateful. Somewhere, Jojo is smiling. Somewhere, Joshua is smiling. Thank you.
51
102
1K
I can’t even write anything articulate about Cindy Hyde Smith vomiting our her racist bullshit because I know her, recognize her willful ignorance, how insidious it is, understand it’s perniciousness, it’s self-proclaimed infability. Vote this racist, close-minded woman OUT.
24
207
1K
Who wants to look at oneself, honestly? Who wants to assess their flaws, their failings, their ugly history? Who wants to face it all and own it? Who wants to see their own knee’s indent in the neck of the Black person on the sidewalk? Not a majority of white voters.
7
184
922
Day four without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Zeta. My ancestors were straight G’s because I’ve been washing dishes by boiling water on the stove, and it has exhausted me.
24
39
867
They want to believe in this idealized, innocent, noble, and exceptional version of themselves & America so badly that they disavow the babies in cages, the over 200k dead, women and men of color dead in their beds and mid-jog and mid-walk, disavow it all, and vote for 45.
14
173
857
Mr. Burton, please bring back Reading Rainbow and consider letting me read a children’s book for your show. I would do a fantastic job, and after, the seven year old in me would sob with joy.
13
92
810
I’m in a good place now. I love my team. But I wanted to share those numbers to let folks know that it took a long time to get here, even with allies in the industry fighting on my behalf.
11
31
777
Ha! They deleted it? But they posted this asinine, racist, gaslighting drivel.
30
214
753
We have power folks. I’m hella thankful, and I’m praying to all the Ancestors that hurricanes leave us the hell alone for the rest of 2020.
7
13
715
So when I do interviews and tell people that I love my characters, that I tell the stories I do because I feel a responsibility to write about my people, to amplify the voices of those of us who have been erased or flattened, to complicate us, I ain’t lying.
5
65
741
I switched publishers before Sing, Unburied, Sing was published, so my agent was able to renegotiate the sale of the book. And while that new sale was a healthy increase on the old deal, it was still barely equal to some of my writer friends’ debut novel advances.
10
39
675
Today, October 4, the announcement's out that I'm a finalist for the NBA. So grateful. Honored. Shocked.
47
58
615
I'm so honored, so grateful, so thankful for all your love and support. Thank y'all. (This is my inner Prince right now.)
34
38
542
.@JoyceCarolOates Anytime you need someone to hold your hand and broaden your worldview, I'm here for you, Joyce. Bless your heart.
12
65
412
I’ve known this my whole life because I grew up and currently live in a state and region where the people are really good at disavowing and telling themselves they are fundamentally blameless, morally superior, and exceptional. Mississippi is number one in that endeavor.
10
46
383
It’s been nearly impossible for me to avoid posting expletive filled howls on Twitter lately. I need to meditate or something, because lately I just want to burn everything down.
30
20
370
They will disavow the women at the border who were forcibly sterilized, disavow the children separated from their parents, disavow it all so they can continue to believe the lies this man tells them about their blamelessness, their lack of culpability.
2
76
344
On October 24th, I’m going on tour for Let Us Descend, and I’m in conversation with some of my favorite writers and booksellers. Come through.
23
79
327
Because I avoid news, I had no idea Reeves had lifted the mask mandate. I will continue to wear my my mask. Someone in my family was diagnosed with COVID two weeks ago. It’s real.
12
10
298
But I refuse to be a Drake stan; why he is texting Bobbie from Stranger Things? What the hell is going on in the music industry? Surviving RKelly has me on high alert. I’m canceling everybody.
4
16
274
It’s been many years since Salvage the Bones was published, so it’s hard for me to remember exactly how much STB sold for. But I think it was around 20k?.
13
15
277
I am proud to have signed this statement on the occasion of Juneteenth and this moment, this breath, this day, y’all, when we are all envisioning Black Freedom. Black Artists for Freedom
4
50
262
I just landed in New Orleans. Stunned silent by the temp. It’s too hot for this shit.
19
4
213
Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped, my memoir, were a pair. Men We Reaped sold for a little bit more than Salvage.
4
10
206
45 never holds them accountable, never makes them witness, and he tells them the story they want to hear. He immerses them in it. He renders it real for them, in the telling.
2
36
187
Wish I could edit my posts. Damn autocorrect. Rest assured, my friends: I know the difference between its and it’s.
7
3
166
That said: I enjoy hot water and air conditioning and all modern conveniences, and I recognize they are luxuries, but I’m still pissed at the lackluster response to this hurricane. The response post-Katrina was better than this.
3
13
168
I neglect twitter for a day and come back to find my entire state maligned and accused of illiteracy.
6
23
157
It is so hard for me to temper my anger every time this loathsome woman speaks and spews her racist bullshit. So hard, fam. I’m keeping it civil, but damn if the DeLislian doesn’t want to come out in me and read this broad for filth.
5
18
141
One time, when I was a teenager, I went strawberry picking with my grandmother (who was in her fifties then), and my great grandmother (who was in her seventies, I think). My back started hurting after around 30 minutes of harvesting.
10
5
137
.@JoyceCarolOates This may be hard to believe, but Mississippi also has some of the best independent bookstores in the country.
6
25
136
Backwards Mississippi at its best. #TaxAllTheHybridCars #TaxAllTheElectricCarsEvenMore #AndYallWonderWhyYoungPeopleLeaveThisStateInDroves #BackwardsMississippiShit
16
42
137
.@JoyceCarolOates Many Mississippians read, Joyce. We read everything from Faulkner to Margaret Walker to @angiecthomas to @KieseLaymon.
2
21
119
Pretty girls DO like trap music: Saturday Night is the business. (Just came on my shuffle play and had to share.).
3
7
125
@_SJPeace_ @boldollie Yet again, our children are never children to people like this. They’re dangerous menaces. She calls him a child but she doesn’t believe he’s one.
2
8
109
Of course they were going to vote for her. She could have waxed poetic about the glories of Satan himself, and as long as she inferred that she believes in the inferiority of Black people at the same damn time, they would have voted for her ass.
1
16
99
.@JoyceCarolOates Some Mississippians even (gasp!) WRITE. Shocking, I know! Check my previous tweets for references, Joyce.
3
10
99
And to think: I didn’t have to haul the water (I filled my bathtubs), and I don’t have to wash my clothes on a washboard, and I don’t have to grow my own food (although I do keep a garden).
0
5
94
Lol. I wasn’t talking about the show or the book. I was referring to the nightmare in Alabama right now concerning women’s reproductive health. Please see my previous tweet.
2
3
102
I just heard that y’all president told y’all to inject bleach into your body to kill coronavirus. Please please please do not do this. Please.
3
14
99
My people, my heart, my people. Riding through the country, Big Krit serenading, midnight. Y’all ask me why I moved home. This why.
4
6
86
My great grandmother laughed at me and called me soft, and then she and my grandmother picked baskets and baskets of berries. They’d grown up in the fields, as their folks had always grown crops for food and livestock.
0
3
83
As soon as they announced the run off, I knew Mississippi was going to disappoint y’all.
6
9
95
I’m not a millennial, but I’m crying. I watched Blue’s Clues with my nephew, and we loved Steve.
7
3
84
.@JoyceCarolOates Mississippians read Natasha Tretheway, John Grisham, Greg Isles, Jack Pendarvis, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Tom Franklin, too.
2
11
71
The Literary Quilt is so beautiful. I was honored to contribute. @KieseLaymon kicked us off with that hot fire!.
1
3
78
There was actually a kid standing at the counter, shirtless, playing patty cake with the countertop. I didn’t touch anything and immediately left.
2
0
69
I have to apologize to my students. They told me the new New Orleans International Airport was too generic. I disagreed, even though I’d never been there. I’m here now, and I was wrong. Sorry, y’all.
3
0
71
This isn’t about the TX family having “the wrong color skin.” This is about them not knowing jack shit about what it will be like for these Indigenous children to grow up in a world that has robbed them of everything: their language, their culture, their history, their agency.
3
6
65
Take all my money! Make more movies with these characters! 3 is not enough! I need more, please! All the exclamation points!!!!!!!.
1
3
66
The lackluster response is specific to my area and my experience, of course: not New Orleans.
3
1
72
.@JoyceCarolOates Why? Prepare yourself for shocking news, Joyce.They thrive because Mississippians go to them to (deep breath!) buy books!.
1
10
71
@GovernorKayIvey “Alabamans deeply held belief that every life is precious”—LMAO. I think Kay needs to check the definition of “every,” because I know plenty of Alabamans Kay and her ilk don’t give two fucks about.
0
0
58
.@JoyceCarolOates Want some receipts? @SquareBooks @LemuriaBooks @TurnrowBooks They're thriving community bookstores, Joyce.
1
5
64
Happy Prince Day. He would have been 59. I will always love the man who said "albums, like books and black lives, matter." Sob!.
1
10
59
Prince Nothing Compares 2 U Listen - Hear Prince's Original Version of Nothing Compares 2 U
2
11
58
When did Mississippi begin doing “things that make Mississippi a better place to live and do business?”.
3
9
50
I’d resigned my fanatical love for N.E.R.D. to my youth, and then they decide to come out with a new album and every single bangs.
1
1
51
Contrary to what the city of Biloxi, MS recently insisted, this is not "Great Americans Day." We fought for this holiday. You can't erase it.
5
13
48
It's bittersweet. October 2 is my brother's death anniversary. October 3 is my own private anniversary, the day my dad told me he died.
7
0
43
Announcing the 2021 African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund grant recipients! More than $3 mill was awarded to 40 sites & organizations that exemplify centuries of Black resilience, activism & achievement. #TellTheFullStory #AACHAF via @savingplaces.
2
15
49
Even after that woman’s comments about public hanging. Even after her endorsement of voter suppression. Even after.
2
8
43
@tnwhiskeywoman How am I just finding out about ThirstAidKit? I need to get my podcast-listening life together! The Tom Hardy episode was fire! And can you please write that romance novel??? Please?.
0
1
42
.@JoyceCarolOates Also, that wasn't a complete list of all the great writers from Mississippi.
1
4
41
Lost my voice, feet feel broken, but I don’t have nan regret. #ThatsHowIFeel #KingSlimeDrizzyDamn #ScorpionTour.
2
1
46
Simply Beautiful off that If Beale Street Could Talk Chopped and Screwed gave me chills. Chills! The Chopstars and Barry Jenkins took me to church! *hear that in a Pimp C voice.
1
12
41
Maze and Frankie Beverly are performing, child! Putting us younger folks to SHAME. And then lifting us up. #EssenceFest.
0
2
34
And then once my brain is working again, I want that book instead. That fantasy with a black girl protagonist that I want to write one day.
5
3
38
@decca0830 @prisonculture @emkayanders I try to use susurrus in every one of my books. My editor blocks that shit like Lebron every single time. 😂.
3
2
38