Jill's Reviews > Let Us Descend

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.”

This may be a strange way to start a review on this courageous author’s new book, Let Us Descend. But I cannot help but believe that the roots of this book grew from that horrible time when literally and figuratively, none of us could breathe – least of all the families who knew that in America, Black lives have the same value as a plow horse or a grizzled donkey.

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?

Here she does indeed amplify the voices of those who were forced to undergo a Dante’s Inferno of tragedy, in the person of young Annis, who is sold south by her white sire. Nothing is held back from her harrowing journey from the rice fields of North Carolina to the slave market of New Orleans and the punishing sugar plantation. One wonders how those in Annis’ place could bear and endure the punishments inflicted on them – the ropes and chains, the continual hunger and thirst, the enforced march, the exposure to the elements, the lashings and rapes, the reduction of fellow human beings to little more than cattle.

How did Annis and others retain their sense of self and their sense of hope when day in and day out, both were constantly negated? To understand how, Jesmyn Ward introduces the element of magical realism, in the form of her African warrior grandmother, who Annis simultaneously embraces and rejects in her darkest hours. Through her journey, she discovers that the world is filled with spirits –those who nurture and give and those who manipulate and take – and she becomes familiar with both kinds.

Does the magical realism work? It will depend on the reader. To me, I admired more than loved the technique, and felt it distanced me more from the narrative. For that reason, it was not a five-star for me. Still, I felt as if I were reading something remarkable and for that reason, I urge others to walk south with Annis. I am so grateful to Scribner for providing me with an early copy of this book written by one of my literary goddesses in exchange for an honest review. I will not soon forget it.