The memory is a living thing – it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives – the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead. ~ Eudora Welty
In this epigraph from Eudora Welty, Jesmyn Ward attempts to encapsulate the omnipresent specter that time places over the human existence and more poignantly, the African American experience. In this July’s book from the aforementioned author, we find her characters battling with the far past of Africa, the not-so-distant past of the Jim Crow Era, the dark and uncertain present, and the vastly uncertain future. This proves to be a battle that’s never-ending, and it also is representative of Ward’s own personal critique of the slowed reality of African Americans.
To create that slowed reality Ward sets the broken family down in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi a town of Ward’s imagination on the Gulf Coast, and provides a mash-up that almost sounded unbelievable in its ability to highlight the all-too-real realities of marginalization. There’s Leonie, the mother of Ward’s most endearing character, JoJo, who is hooked on drugs and married to a white man named Michael who’s cousin changed the trajectory of her family. Jojo plays sort of a middleman, connecting the novels other characters to themselves, as well as Michaela, (Kayla) his toddler sister.
Leonie pushes the novel’s plot by gathering up Jojo and Kayla and jumping in the car with her friend from work, Misty, who she does drugs with and heading north to Parchman (Mississippi’s State Penitentiary). While the three move down the highway, through space and time to retrieve Michael from his three-year sentence, Jojo recounts chilling stories from Pop about his time there – highlighting the blurred reality prison exists in as an invisible replacement for slavery and slavery’s tactics/ideologies.
For me, I took the opportunity to enjoy this book, much like I enjoy most of my books – by reading the physical copy and listening to the audiobook on Scribd. Regardless of the medium, it’s obvious that Jojo – though only thirteen – is just as much an adult as Leonie. He operates as Kayla’s parent/caregiver and also navigates life within both the realms of the living and the dead like Leonie. Throughout the story we see ghosts haunting them both as they travel the roads of Ward’s inauspicious Mississippi, a state which seems to bear the weight of the nation on its shoulders. Much of the book echoes this weight and it’s present on all of the characters as they never seem to look up, remaining chin down and moving forward through the intergenerational trauma all too familiar to people living in Mississippi.
I highly recommend both the physical copy and the audiobook! I did my best to not give away any huge spoilers because I’m aware that this is my first piece, as well as my first book – and most people may not even have it yet. If you have read it be sure to drop your thoughts in the comments section!
Much love,
Akili Nzuri
