Descend- First Steps

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Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?Here we have what in some ways is a traditional slave narrative... But nothing is ever that simple with Ward. A young woman is sold by her 'sire' into the slave markets of New Orleans. As she makes the arduous walk, chained the whole way, crossing rivers and swamps, something not of this world stalks her in the woods...

Jesmyn Ward’s central character, is a teenage girl. Annis. She is marched off to New Orleans after her Mama was sold off. Annis has hidden strengths and the eye of Aza, the goddess is always upon her. Annis resolves to make her own way in life and not to be beholden to any one. Let us Descend is the story of an enslaved girl, Annis, and her mother, and her mother before that. It is the story of generations, of myths, of spirits, and of transcendence. Like Ward says, this is a hard journey. But it is also about claiming your humanity and a sense of hope despite people trying their absolute hardest to strip someone entirely of both. As a young girl, Annis hears the white children being read Dante's Inferno. Annis compares her journey through a different type of hell with what she heard in that book alongside other illusions to bees and to water. All of this blends together to make a story that will truly take your breath away. Every sentence is a gift. In September 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the country, Jesmyn Ward wrote an essay for Vanity Fair entitled, “On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic” after the death of her 33-year-old husband just months before the murder of George Floyd. The essay gutted me; I have rarely read anything so powerful. Within the essay, she writes this: “Even in a pandemic, even in grief, I found myself commanded to amplify the voices of the dead that sing to me, from their boat to my boat, on the sea of time.”

As readers might expect, Let Us Descend is powerful. Truth-telling. Courageous. Bold. So bold, in fact, that it will likely be banned in Florida and Texas, but isn’t that the point? To proclaim, loudly and clearly, that slavery was and remains the original sin and we should never, ever forget what humans did to fellow humans – with cruelty and with impunity? Along the journey, a weather spirit carrying the name of Annis’s grandmother appears to her. At times rejecting the spirit’s guidance and at other times seeking her protection, Annis begins to learn, through a careful piecing together of memory, how to create her own version of freedom. Novels: Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed • Hercules • Megara • Claude Frollo • Mother Gothel • Anastasia Tremaine • Madam Mim • Shere Khan • Ratigan • Yen Sid • Clayton • Lucifer • Iago • Diablo • Jasper and Horace • Flotsam and Jetsam • LeFou • Aziz • Grumpy • Pongo • Perdita • Arthur Pendragon • Mary