Let Us Descend (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” — Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Magical Realism, Historical, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Race

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 2023

About the author

Jesmyn Ward is the author of Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, and Men We Reaped. She is a former Stegner Fellow (Stanford University) and Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. She is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University.

Her work has appeared in BOMB, A Public Space and The Oxford American.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesmyn Ward is brilliant and no one writes like her. This novel is lush and painful and expertly rendered. Annis’s story is so rich with detail, and the prose is suffused with a sensory vibe I found hypnotic. I loved the bonds between women, the spiritual elements, the way the women in this novel fought for dignity, sometimes in unexpected ways. Their humanity was a bright beacon in a story of how Black people were so egregiously and mercilessly subjected to profound inhumanity. This is another masterful novel from the best among us.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded down
Let Us Descend is a beautifully written book, but a hard story to read. It’s a hard book to rate as I adored the writing but felt the story was lacking.
Taking place in the years before the Civil War, it covers the sale of a black woman from a Carolina rice plantation to a sugar plantation in Louisiana. Annis is marched, along with dozens of other slaves the entire way, through every hellscape imaginable. I could feel the pain of her bones, the writing is that vivid. Life at the sugar plantation is just as hard and Annis is subjected to multiple cruelties.
I sometimes struggle with magic realism and I can’t say it was a success here. Annis has been raised on the tale of her grandmother, an African warrior sold into slavery. Her mother trained her in combat and the use of spears. Throughout the story, she is visited by the spirit who oversaw both her grandmother and mother before her. It is a demanding spirit, and also a fickle one. She also seeks out her mother in her dreams. Her reliance on the spirits for answers does help to outline her loneliness and how much has been taken away from her. But in the end, I really wanted more reality and less spirit. I felt the paranormal took away from the story of a woman trying to remain strong in the worst of conditions.
I am the outlier here as I found this much less satisfactory than her prior two books.
My thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for an advance copy of this book.

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtle and Symbolic but Needs Study Guide

The lyrical prose of Let Us Descend is absolutely spell binding, and the author narrating the audiobook is a brilliant pairing. This is particularly important with poetry where every breath, every pause is intentional.

Let Us Descend is a grim tale of Annis, a teenage girl enslaved as a housemaid in the Carolinas. When Annis is sold South, she sifts through the memories of her mother and the lessons that were passed down by her grandmother, Mama Aza.

Although initially enchanted with the prose, the long paragraphs and excessive descriptions become cumbersome around halfway through the book.

Then, I shifted my focus to the symbolism. Water is essentially a character in Let Us Descend. If you annotate, you might want to highlight words pertaining to water. The Water is a giver of life but also a taker of life. Does Water symbolize a rebirth?

The book also focuses heavily on three generations of women: Annis, her mother, and Mama Aza. What does the number three symbolize? Are there other instances of three in the book?

One of the characters in the book is referred to as the lady, no name. However, she doesn’t act in the manner of a lady. The lady’s blind mother only wants to be waited on by Mary, a slave girl who doesn’t speak. Does that symbolize that some are blind but don’t want to hear, that they don’t want to dispel themselves of their ignorance?

Ward also does an expert job of balancing the depressing topic of slavery with the lightness of community and hope. Even in the midst of suffering, others help Annis.

I could weep with the sweetness of it, of knowing that there are others in this terrible world who will touch me with kindness. – Let Us Descend

There are also plenty of people who saw slavery and went about their business, turning a blind eye to blatant suffering, not wanting to get involved.

Why do you think Annis’s mother calls her by a different name?

Why doesn’t Annis discuss a meeting place or a means of communication with her loved ones?

Is Annis just in another version of hell?

Annis’s mother tries to protect her daughter by training her and teaching her to pick herbs and mushrooms. But these things weren’t enough to protect her from the horrors of the world. Do you think that the mother should have trained her anyways? What legacy do you want to pass to your children?

Clearly, this would make a great book club pick as each participant could glean something different from this book.

Although I want to read this book again to try to pick up on all of the symbolism surrounding water/rain/mud/swamp, hunger/starving, and color (green, red, white, etc.), Let Us Descend is too slow-paced, has a few too many adjectives that don’t move the plot forward, and the ending should have been much stronger.

How much I spent:
Hardcover text – Paid 1 credit from BOTM (Book of the Month) $15.99
Audiobook – Free with paid Everand subscription $84.99 annually

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[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
It’s brutal to read and not surprisingly. It’s about slavery after all . But that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautifully written. It’s written by Jesmyn Ward, after all . She takes us on the harrowing and horrific journey of Annis , a young slave woman as she is led, tied in ropes to other slave women, made to walk a treacherous landscape, cross rivers, while starving and wounded from from North Carolina to Louisiana. Horrific doesn’t adequately describe it, nor does gut wrenching and heartbreaking, but for lack of better words… Her wounds run deeper than on the body, deep in her heart and soul, suffering losses, and struggling to find her self. Annis’ journey is more than this brutal journey. It is a journey to be the strong woman her mother taught her to be, through stories, through her legacy to defend herself, a journey to be free.

I won’t say more about the plot. This is a story you should experience for yourself. I loved Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and loved the ghost there , but there was a little too much magical realism here for me. I can’t quite give it 5 stars, but overall this is a stunning read that will shake you to your core .

Ward’s writing is just so beautiful: “ There's a green hill, trees all around us in an overturned bowl, a waterfall tossing down into a pool the same deep green as the trees around us. It's so beautiful I feel a turning in my chest, my heart a small bird stirring in its nest. For a moment, I don't feel bound. I forget what holds me. But the ache of me, through wrist and hip and thigh, tunnels me back down into my body, along with the rope. “


I received an advanced copy of this from Scribner through NetGalley.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

had me at "a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic"!

and it is haunting, in a lot of ways! well written, draws from the inferno and spiritual sources, filled with the kind of english class-esque lengthy descriptions you can draw a bajillion themes or motif sor symbols out of.

so in that way, yes, haunting. what is not haunting, or particularly memorable, or effective: this as a novel. our narrative and our characters leave Something To Be Desired, namely believability or entertainment value or the kind of feeling of being drawn in as a reader.

but 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

bottom line: not the best jesmyn ward book, but still a jesmyn ward book.

[Maxwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

It absolutely pains me to say that I did not enjoy this book very much. I have been a fan of Jesmyn Ward for years and have thoroughly enjoyed, if not loved every book she has written. That being said, I truly think this book will find its home with the right reader, and admittedly that person is not me.

The best I can say is that if you are a fan of books like Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell or The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, I think you will enjoy this book a lot. Those particular books didn't work for me, but much like this one I can see their merit and why so many others enjoy them.

While I enjoyed the sentence-level writing in this story, something I think Ward always excels at, the narrative which draws heavily on Dante's Inferno, felt both bloated and yet surface level. I felt that I never got to really know Anise, the main character, on her journey because the story was focused on so many other elements. Perhaps being beholden to a reimagining of a great work of literature, did this novel a disservice for me. There are also magical realism elements that I felt were under-explored.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annis is a teenage daughter of a slave and the master of the house.
She is sold south from the rice fields of the Carolinas to walk the miles long march of the slaves to the slave markets of New Orleans and ends up at a Sugar Plantation in Louisiana where she and the other slaves are treated so brutally.
This story tells how many spirits guide her in her journey.
Much too much magical realism for me.
I’ve only previously read her Sing, Unburied Sing which I loved..


Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the Arc!

[Catherine (alternativelytitledbooks) - tired of sickness! · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Many thanks to Scribner and Jesmyn Ward for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.24!**

Lush and lyrical, sweeping and sorrowful, and tragically beautiful!

Annis and her mother had always planned their escape: it was only a matter of time. Growing up ensconced in the clutches of slavery, Annis' mother has given her daughter every bit of knowledge she has tucked away, from what mushrooms could be dangerous to how to use a spear. Much of this knowledge came down from yet another generation...Annis' mother Mama Aza. Athough Mama Aza has long since passed away, her spirit seems to linger, and when Annis' mother gets sold, Annis clings to the memory and strength of the women in her lineage.

Before long, Annis herself gets sold...and so begins a long trek that will take her from the Carolinas to New Orleans to end in Louisiana. With her friend Safi no longer by her side and her mother and grandmother so far out of reach, Annis begins to despair... until she hears voices in the trees and whispers in the water. She comes to learn this is the spirit of her warrior grandmother Mama Aza incarnate, urging her both to continue and at times of her greatest adversity to give in and "descend", in the words of Dante Allegheri. Can Annis discover the deep and dark secrets the earth and its spirits hold...or like her grandmother, will her indomitable spirit be forced to fade in the shadow of unspeakable cruelty around her?

Although there is plenty that remains unclear to me after finishing this book, one thing was evident after about the first 20%: Jesmyn Ward is a stunning writer. Her prose is full to bursting with lyricism, a rhythm that sways you, and characters who instantly draw you in to their worlds. I now know why so many have gravitated towards her books and why Ward has been a National Book Award winner, the YOUNGEST ever winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and MacArthur Fellow: no writer has those sort of accolades dropped in their lap. Ward's writing is effortless, searing with sadness and yet soaring with hope.

So much of this tale is bleak, as resource after resource gets taken away from Annis and she endures one hardship after another...with only spirits to guide her way. At first, I felt like I kept up well with Mama Aza as she popped in and out of the narrative. As time wore on, though, this journey does ascend a bit into muddled and muddy territory. Annis has a love interest that I thought would stick around until the end of the story...but this plot thread got cut short. Once Annis made her way out of New Orleans and on to her last destination, I felt the story took a turn from the balanced approach it had in the beginning and got into more of a transcendental bent that felt more inaccessible and less engaging. I had a harder time discerning Ward's carefully constructed allegory and longed for the 'simpler' feel the story had at the beginning, of the enduring love and strength of the women in Annis' family.

Despite this dip in the third act and an ending that felt slightly less satisfying than I had hoped, Annis' journey is one worth taking. As Ward herself states on the cover of my advanced copy by way of introduction, "It is difficult to walk south with Annis. Her narrative descends from one hellscape to another, but I promise that if you come with me, you will rise. It will be worth the walk, worth the walking."

And when it comes to Let Us Descend, I can confirm that it is worth the walk, worth the walking, and worth the WAIT, indeed.

4 stars, rounded up from 3.5

Nominated for Best Historical Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards! Now available in paperback!

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The first weapon I ever held was my Mother’s hand”

Jesmyn Ward’s central character, is a teenage girl. Annis. She is marched off to New Orleans after her Mama was sold off.
Her voice, memories, grief, loneliness, struggle, hope, connection to the spirits and teachings from Mama and Grandmother, the heartbreaking despair, her yearning, fight, personality, strength, so deeply—deeply touches our hearts.

“Let Us Descend” takes us on a journey that is thoroughly hauntingly and raw ….. from working sunup to sundown every day of the week…. pulling weeds, in the swamps, filthy, blood dirty hands, bruises, mud, grit, lack of sleep, having food to eat sometimes . . .
….and starved not only for food — but for kindness.
It would have been easy to die in those sugarcanes.

Jesmyn Ward won National awards for two of her past novels:
“Sing, Unburied, Sing”,
and
“Salvage the Bones” …..
both phenomenal novels — so it was hard to imagine Jesmyn could “just do it”, again!!
But she did. MASTERFULLY!!

“Let Us Descend” is fiercely engrossing — spellbindingly told —such major critical work — its chocked full of sublimity and
villainy.

The history, tragedy, moral indignation, incredible storytelling, ……
…..with an unforgettable character: Annis….who stretches and shimmers…..
it’s gripping with exquisite prose.

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Let Us Descend,” the title of Jesmyn Ward’s overwhelming new novel, alludes to Dante’s “Inferno,” but her story tells the tale of a real hell on earth. In one sense, that’s long been Ward’s setting. In “Salvage the Bones,” which won a National Book Award in 2011, she described a poor Black family in Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina. In “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” which won another National Book Award in 2017, she described the notorious Parchman Farm, where Southern slavery was effectively re-legalized for the 20th century.

Now, Ward has moved further back in time to focus on the United States’ original sin, the peculiar institution that managed to reify every circle of Dante’s “Inferno.” Here, in “Let Us Descend” are enslaved Black women close enough to the birth of America to have heard directly about the horrors of the Middle Passage and even the nature of life on the African continent.

And yet, for all its boundless suffering, this is a novel of triumph.

It begins, appropriately, with battle training. Young Annis, who narrates the story in an urgent hush, is the daughter of her White enslaver and her enslaved mother. Once a month, at night, when their labor is finally done, Annis and her mother practice fighting with spears in. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Debra - can't post any comments on site today grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always awed when I read a book by Jesmyn Ward! Her writing is elegant, poetic, and evokes emotion. She has an undeniable gift in both her writing and storytelling. I know when I pick up one of her books that I am in the hands of a master storyteller. I was drawn into this reimagining of slavery in America from the very beginning of the book. It is a story of family, love, loss, family history, American history, suffering, and the spirit world. Ward relies on magical realism in the telling of this harrowing and heartbreaking tale.

Annis is the daughter of a slave owner and her enslaved mother. After working in their master's home, her mother takes Annis into the trees and teaches the lessons her own mother once taught her. Annis suffers heartbreak and tremendous loss after her mother is sold and is eventfully sold herself. She and other slaves set out on a gruesome and unforgiving walk from the Carolinas to New Orleans. They will suffer greatly both mentally and physically along the way. Annis is bought and taken to a Louisiana sugar plantation where her life will change once again.

Beautifully written with vivid descriptions and imagery. I enjoyed the magical realism and the way Annis, and the spirits interacted. I enjoyed learning about the strong women in Annis's family tree. Their inner strength and determination were inspiring. This book was one big journey in a young woman's life. It is not always easy reading as the slaves suffer through starvation, mistreatment, rape, being separated from loved ones, worked hard, bought and sold, and beaten to name a few. Annis experienced so many things in her young life and showed strength, compassion, courage, fear, heartbreak, and love throughout it all.

Ward's writing is powerful and packs a punch! I have a feeling that I will be thinking about and recommending this book for years to come.

Beautifully written, moving, gripping, heartbreaking and hard to put down.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com

[Tim Null · Rating 3 out of 5]

"...she does not feel my fingers through the cloak of her sorrow,..."

"I don't cover my ears. If she must bear it, the least I can do is bear witness."

"Us made to be a herd, but we not. We not."

"You must sink in order to rise."

Although all the requisite pieces appeared to be in place, the suspenseful and dramatic conclusion I was expecting never managed to develop. Additionally, I can't claim I completely comprehended the conclusion that did develop.

In defense of the conclusion: (a) Some years ago, I was hospitalized for a ruptured aneurysm in my brain. While in the hospital, I suffered a septic infection. Due to sleep deprivation and fever, I went through a period where I was unaware of my surroundings, and I lived in a world of hallucinations created by my mind. These hallucinations felt real, and, for a period of time, they were my reality. Hallucinations can also be caused by great fear, particularly when combined with food and water deprivation. To me, being man of limited experience, the novel's conclusion seemed to be a description of a hallucination. (b) It's well established that I don't like magical realism, i.e., insanity. If you happen to see me reading another book in this genre, you have my permission to shoot me in the head and stomp on me until I'm dead.

This novel pairs well with Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Of the two, I would recommend Kindred.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean Jesmyn Ward is just a brilliant writer. She distills emotions down to the purest form and then spins fiction from there. It is incredible to read her lush sentences that then turn sharply into something pointed and direct. I didn't always follow this story but there would be moments I would feel lost and then feel my eyes tearing up. Grief and strength and finding ones on self. The ways the spirits and nature and humans played together was so smart. Whew.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh, i'm in good storytelling hands now...feels good to just sink in.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read and loved all of Jesmyn Ward’s books. She’s a masterful writer, and every story is as emotionally harrowing and powerful as the last. I’ve seen Let Us Descend referred to as a modern day classic, and I think all her books are, standing the test of time. How fortunate are we to be a contemporary of someone who lays it all bare the way she does?

Let Us Descend is the story of Annis, a young girl, enslaved to a man who is also her father. First, her mother is sold, leaving Annis bereft, and then another blow is dealt when she herself is sold “south,” to New Orleans and later a sugar plantation. Magical realism is woven into the story, in a way I will not spoil. It’s truly the heart and soul of the story. Gorgeous and brutal all at once.

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 20% really impressed me.
The writing is gorgeous!
And I thought that I was going to love this book based on that.
But, unfortunately, the beautiful writing was not enough to keep me interested.
The storyline is great, but its development lacked something for me. After a while I found it too slow and repetitive, and I just didn’t want to pick up the book again.
For such a small book (76k words) it took me too long to finish it. Several moments I felt like quitting, but I persisted, waiting for that redemption point that would wowed me, but it never came.
I read this book because it was chosen by Oprah’s Book Club for the month of October 2023.
There are plenty of high praises, so please, do not mind me.

This was my second book by this author.
“Sing, Unburied, Sing” was a 3 stars for me, in 2017.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She Who Remembers burns over the docks, watching the names of the enslaved on the scroll of her skin as she watched them stumble from the holds of the ship, blind even to the light of the city night: their tongues thick, their scalps itching, the rot of the southern voyage turning their stomachs.”

LET US DESCEND is the book that Jesmyn Ward felt roused to write, her own origin story about the original sin of slavery. I soaked it up on every page—her lush prose and the passion for her characters. Ward bleeds her themes, her heart pumps with the essence of her story. Annis is the daughter of an enslaved mother raped by the white "sire." He is planning to violate Annis, also.

The book tears open all the wounds you can imagine about being enslaved, and opens fresh ones with the casual savagery that enslaved persons suffered at the hands of their “masters” prior to the Civil War. It's sickening to even imagine what it was like to be "owned," to lose your independence because of your skin color.

Annis used to hear the white children being taught the epic Italian poem, The Divine Comedy, especially the first part, Dante’s Inferno. The first line of the Inferno is: “Let us descend, and enter this blind world.”

Young Annis is a teenager who learned survival skills from her mother, skills to help her in this blind world of unspeakable crimes against humanity—but it was all legal then. Annis possessed some sense of agency only in these monthly sessions with her mama, in the Carolina woods where they had a large outdoor space. “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” That is the opening line of the novel.

But just as important as fighting was the storytelling. When her mother told her these stories, Annis felt their narrative power. “This our secret. Mine and your’n. Can’t nobody steal this from us.” No matter what happens to her body, Annis has the stories to hold on to, fables that rise to rectitude.

When Annis’ mother is sold at the “slave market,” Annis must deal with the two worst personal obstacles ---lack of all agency, which has been a fact since birth, and sudden and profound grief of losing her mother. Compounding that is her own journey to being sold in New Orleans.

The enslaved walk to their destinations, held by ropes, punished for minor infractions, all but starved, whipped, raped, treated like livestock, but worse. She walks from the South Carolina rice fields to the New Orleans slave market and onto a Louisiana sugarcane plantation.

Prior to her forced exit, Annis met another enslaved girl, Safi, and the two had become deeply bonded. For Annis, without her mother or Safi, she is caught in a blind and bleak world of the damned. The landscape of her life is often infernal, forlorn.

But the book is not wholly dismal. The tale is also about joy, and Annis descends in order to ascend. Symbols of Water and earth are also symbols of rebirth, of reclaiming what has been stolen, a descent into history and storytelling, spirits and soil, the family you came from and the one that you give rise to through your strength and resolve.

Annis learns that her grandmother was a woman warrior married to a rich king who had many warrior wives. Every month, Annis’ mother took her to the woods and taught her to fight, to defend herself, to rise up. Mama educated Annis on the poignant saga of her family, to give her something that no slaveholder can take away—the story of her origin.

Ward’s novel is a mythic tale about Annis’ hunger to resist and rise, to put into practice her warrior legacy. To thrive, and emerge from this inferno intact and victorious. Annis’ sense of hope springs from her imagination and belief in her own strength, to be regarded, and to regard. “She taught me that the ancestors come if you call them.”

Ward used magical realism to heighten the mythical and fabulist framework of the book. I commend her for stretching the story to boundless limits, for using motifs of Dante’s poem and inserting her own magical elements. I admit to a gulf between me and the otherworldly mystique of these characters and events, perhaps the same way that the bible can distance me with hyperbole. However, I feel blessed to get my hands on anything that Jesmyn Ward writes.

SING UNBURIED SING and SALVAGE THE BONES, both winners of the National Book Award, remain two of my top contemporary novels of all time. I won’t soon forget Annis and Mama Aza and the stirring, unruly cast of characters in this story. I also feel honored that Scribner sent me an advanced copy to read and review.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will continue to read whatever Oprah tells me to because I’ve been drinking that Kool-Aid for so long I’m pretty sure the withdrawal would be absolutely KILLER, but when it comes to this one . . . .



Salvage the Bones is a story I’ll never forget and again, I’ll continue to read Ward, but aside from her being really good at words, the story here just was not for me. I’m admittedly a giant dumbdumbbaby and accidentally came across the fact this was a reimagining of Dante’s Inferno after I had already finished reading. Being unfamiliar with the original work (aside from name and the principles of “seven levels”) I can only remark on my issues with this one. Mainly, my complaint is the flow was so lacking. The plot jumped from setting to setting without much character development (truly at the beginning I had assumed Annis was a much younger girl . . . until the sex scenes – which, ummmmm, really? I’m no pearl clutcher, but was it really even necessary?) Also, I’m an idiot so I had to double-check myself more than once that Annis and Arese were the same person and not a typo. But more than anything I’ll blame my wrongreading on the fact that I (a) do not enjoy magical realism and (b) am not a spiritual person. And WTF was the all the bee shit? God I am way to stupid to read this!

While the ending was satisfactory (especially when it came to the relationship between Annis and Aza), really I think a novel about the swamp and those who managed to escape and live there would have been a much bigger success for me.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 🌡️🌡️🌡️
Mixed emotions here. Ward's writing is sublime, the story she tells gut wrenching. haunting, and unforgettable. My issue is with the half of the story in the realm of magical realism and spirits which was overdone for me and interfered with the satisfaction I want from reading, especially with such dark subject matter.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you choose to read a novel about slavery, you know it won’t be uplifting. It will be brutal. It will be full of cruelty, abuse, injustice. It will be agonizing and heart-wrenching, emotionally draining. Jesmyn Ward’s newest book is difficult to read but in the hands of such a gifted writer, the experience is worthwhile, even rewarding. Filled with more than a sprinkling of the supernatural (which I don’t usually care for), the story of Annis left me drained but hopeful and gratified.

Annis is a young girl not yet twenty when she and her mother are sold and separated. Their very close and loving relationship becomes just a memory. All she has left are the survival skills her mother secretly taught her and the stories of her African grandmother’s days as a skilled warrior. These stories
sustain her as she trudges through her hours of labor. To paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston in her book Barracoon, knowing your ancestors gives you a connect. These memories help her endure the arduous journey from the tobacco fields of North Carolina to the sugarcane of Louisiana and to an even crueler and more inhuman planter.

For me, this read like a gruesome fairytale, the kind you would not read to your children or grandchildren.The evil stepmother or stepsisters are those living in the grand houses or hired to oversee the slaves and work them to near death. The fairy godmothers are the supernatural spirits that looked out for Annis. They offer hope and freedom even though the price is love and worship. And that hope results in her determination to reclaim what should never have been denied.

Ward is a powerful and lyrical writer. I felt the cold, the sores and bruises, the hunger pangs, the humiliation, and the loss of loved ones. I felt them to my core. It was empathy on steroids. This two- time winner of the National Book Award may have many more awards in her future. If you haven’t yet experienced her novels, I would recommend beginning with Salvage the Bones; but be forewarned of a
devastating encounter with Hurricane Katrina.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, gorgeous writing which serves to draw even more attention to the unconscionable brutality and ravaging of slavery. Was Ward thinking definitively of Dante's Divine Comedy? Certainly I was as this moves through circles of hell ('let us descend') and we also follow the moral degradation of everyone involved in chattel slavery from the slave ships to the slave markets and auctions to the plantations themselves.

There's also, I think, a gesture towards Morrison's iconic Beloved in the concern with female genealogy and the merging of harsh realism with something more spiritual and metaphysical through the ghost-spirits which sustain and nurture Annis after her mother is ripped from her to be sold.

Harrowing and yet beautiful.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting tie-in to this book is Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons”, about escaped slaves who lived in hiding (sometimes near the plantations from which they had escaped). Unfortunately, “Let us Descend” had too much magical realism in it for me to enjoy it. The story of Annis was really quite compelling, however every time I was drawn into what was happening to her I got pushed away by her engagement with her ancestors, or trees or some other fantasy. I know people love this book, but it is just not my style.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will I get crucified for this? Probably. Oh well. I don’t think magical realism is Ward’s strong suit. Some of it didn’t fully work for me. Salvage the Bones is still her best work, IMO. But let’s focus on the good stuff: it’s a captivating and emotionally-charged story. Ethereal and deeply moving at times, with a strong main character at its center. And despite its brutal subject matter, ends up being surprisingly uplifting. A solid read, but not a slam dunk. A lot of people adore this one, so go listen to them.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesmyn Ward takes her readers back to the American South in the years before the Civil War in her new novel, Let Us Descend. Here we meet young Annis as a child, learn she was the child of the rape of her mother by their owner, Sire. Annis also learns family history passed down by her mother from her grandmother, Mama Aza, that grounds their origins in Africa. The story is one of slavery, the daily wages paid by each slave to attempt to earn the right to eat, to sleep, to stay with family, to stay alive.

Through Annis we see what price is paid when a slave is sold South. With men chained together and women roped together, these people who are property are herded hundreds of miles from the Carolinas to the New Orleans slave markets to learn a new type of servitude on a sugar plantation. During that long, harrowing ordeal, Annis begins to experience the natural world in a new, sometimes frightening, sometimes familiar, way. Here is where the magical realism enters her life and world. For me, this felt like a link in some ways to the magical ending of Sing, Unburied, Sing, although the voices are different here. This worked very well for me as I read. It became a part of Annis’s daily existence, dealing with non-human, natural entities as well as the people around her.

I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy historical fiction but with the caveat that it contains a large element of magical realism. I found that fit in beautifully with the character and actions of Annis and her story of trying to exist in a world that doesn’t see her as a person at all.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an eARC of this book. This review is my own.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesmyn Ward depicts the horror of slavery in a world haunted with spirits using imaginative lyrical prose. The title comes from Dante's Inferno - "Let us descend and enter this blind world" - and the story tells about a hell on earth.

Teenager Annis is the daughter of a North Carolina plantation owner father and a slave mother. Her grandmother was a warrior in Africa, and her mother passed down her knowledge of fighting and resilience to Annis. Their enslaver sells her mother first, and Annis later, to be marched on a long journey to the slave markets of New Orleans. The grief of separation, and the physical pain of the journey with the slaves roped together are overwhelming. Annis turns to the spirits of her ancestors and the spirits in nature. It is a way of coping to create another reality. Annis uses her own strength and the help of the spirits in her struggles.

The first person narration by Annis adds to the intensity of the story. The descriptions involve all the senses so the reader gets a vivid picture. The connection with the spirit world worked well in this story, but I would have preferred less magical realism. The spirits gave Annis encouragement when it seemed like she had no one in the real world. The spirits in nature - the earth, the rain, the wind, and the water - lead Annis to a more hopeful place. This is an emotionally difficult book to read because of its subject, but Ward's writing is beautiful.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me so many mixed emotions. It is beautifully written with lyrical prose that pulls you into the heart of the book and the body of Annis as she makes her way through life.

But the simple truth is that the book made me weep for the utter horror of those lives that Jesmyn Ward brings to life. Annis is the daughter of a slave who has been raped by her master. In turn the master casts his eye on Annis but her mother stands in the way. The answer - to sell her mother and leave Annis without protection.

But Annis finds a new love in Safi, another slave girl. The answer to the master's wrath upon the discovery is to sell Annis and Safi which is where the real story begins. Annis is marched away by the same Georgia Man who took her mother. The march is long and deadly and at the end is another plantation and more misery.

I think it is this that broke my heart over and over -- the fact that this is the way one human being is treated by another because of the colour of their skin. This inequality makes me sick to my stomach and the imagining of Annis's chained march through swamps and rivers with little food and less rest is so brutal. Her whole life has been brutal as was her mother's and her grandmother's.

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.

What Jesmyn Ward has written is a beautiful and heartbreaking tale of female strength and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Annis is a fantastic character - not unbreakable but tough and not afraid to fight back.

I loved this book despite the tears and the disgust at the truths it holds. Read it. Every word is worth your time.

Thankyou so much to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for the advance review copy.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and horrific, yes, both of those. I can only imagine how hard this must have been for Ward to write. Every word steeped in blood, it felt like. Annis was quite the heroine of her own story. Her mother always told her she'd have to save herself.

For me personally, too much of the magical realism made it hard to connect with.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books teach us about the things we cling to and those we lose. The things we inherit that we know about and those we learn about. The history we know and how we need to be reminded.

This book is about tenacious women, about the love that fuels mothers and daughters, about the blood that flows through familial veins and becomes searing hot from forcible separation, about so many children forced into motherless existence and shackled in slavery.

I know with a sinking of my stomach that part of me will always be here, in this endless place, mired to the neck: held tight in the grip of these bristling green fields, this black earth, this perpetual burning of my body, the open petals of my hands, the bruised stems of my feet, this hunger that hollows me from the inside as the land hollows me without.

Let Us Descend into the grime of slavery, its effects that transforms a mere 28 days in February into such historical necessity.

They call her Annis, the name given by her father and slave owner, but I prefer her birth name: Arese. This is the name bestowed by her mother, a descendant of African warrior women trained to protect a king who treated them like possessions meant to enrich his life. Her mother is thrown out of the palace because she dares to fall in love. She is thrown into slavery and taken across oceans, where generations of women in her family would become slaves. Arese's mother loses her mother. Arese loses her mother. And so the cycle begins, wealth of history depleted. All that is left is generational trauma.

Hidden among the darkness is love. Love plays such a subtle but entrenched role in this novel. The love shared by a mother and daughter, the love that consoles women lovers, the love that fuels a brother and sister. The love that they carry with them throughout the narrative, even when they lose each other. The story is heavy, the transition made lighter by lyricism and metaphoric language.

You may lose things that teach you about you, like the warrior's spear carried for generations, buried in secret places, but left behind when Arese is swiftly sold by her father and slave owner. You may cling to some symbolic figure of your past, like the piece of tusk Arese carries in her hair. You may lose what makes you uniquely talented, like the warrior training Arese has but cannot use, due to a system molded to keep her held down by people of power. However, you never lose what's within: the spiritual world, the songs, the grit, an internal fire that consumes, devours and keeps you ablaze and alive even during the direst of circumstances.

I have not bathed since harvest started, have had no time to detangle and twist my hair, to soothe my skin with water and fat. I know I am cut-ridden, fulsome, my bones poking out from my skin like the spines of feathers from a thin pillow. Know that my tongue is large and cotton-heavy from thirst in my mouth, but if I go to him and put my hands on his shoulders, wait for his assent, I can be soft when I lean forward and nuzzle his neck.

After loss, Arese goes inward. She starts to communicate with the spirit, Aza, who is symbolic of so many things. This is what makes this slave narrative so different than others I have read. There is a multi-layered meaning to this spirit (and other spirits) embedded in the narrative. Just as Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende do in their popular works of fiction, Ward does in this novel. She beckons her ancestral history: from the spiritual worlds of the motherland to the spiritual world of New Orleans. She remains one of my favorite writers for how she writes sadness soothingly and still remains artistically bold—Salvage the Bones comes to mind.

My reading experience is deepened when books acknowledge historical concepts and parallel books I have read. The first section of this book brought memories of the women warriors from Mengiste's The Shadow King. The mention of the plaçage system, where women of African or Native American origins found themselves in civil arrangements, reminds me of reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl As Arese questions the Great Dismal Swamp as a possibility, it not only evoked memories of The Bridge of Beyond but also made me want to research the topic more. My research led me to this piece from archaeologists, who discovered "deep in the swamps, how fugitive slaves kept their freedom."

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea for this novel was sparked by a segment on a New Orleans' public radio station about the city's grievous history as a center of the American slave trade. Jesmyn Ward, who had spent part of her childhood in New Orleans and was teaching at Tulane when she heard the radio segment, was not fully aware of the city's horrific past. Exploring this history forced to look at her home in a new and bitter way.

Writing this open wound of a novel would take place years later as the author was pulling herself through a swamp of grief after the sudden death of her young husband, just months before the Covid-19 pandemic would terrify us all. Her mourning is a visceral aspect of Let Us Descend, her longing and grief expressed through the character of Annis, a young woman who journeys through hell from North Carolina to Louisiana, sold by one master to another in an inhuman barter with the devil.

Annis was born into slavery, the child of rape by a white master, beloved by her mother Sasha, who secretly trains her in self-defense, teaches her to forage for mushrooms and herbs, to keep bees, and keeps the history of her African warrior ancestry alive. When Sasha is sold from the plantation, another slave girl, Safi, pulls Annis from a pit of despair. Then the girls themselves are sold and forced with a group of men and women to make the long march from North Carolina to the slave lots of New Orleans. The journey is indescribable, and yet Ward finds the words.

This is a wrenching read. Jesmyn Ward spares us nothing and the cruelty is agonizing to witness and hard to comprehend, no matter how many novels, memoirs, histories of slavery one may have read. Ward weaves allegory, mythology, classical literature, and vernacular to create a narrative that reads more like a prose poem, a stream of consciousness as a young woman comes of age in bondage and yet her heart and her mind fly free. The prose is stunningly lyrical, rich with metaphor and images that disturb and awe.

I was enchanted at first by the ferocious wind spirit that weaves its way into Annis' vision and accompanies her along her nightmarish journey and into the hell of her continued enslavement, but after a spell, this spirit — who seemed at times to be a guardian angel, others to be a malevolent trickster — became a distraction. I understood the need to represent a history and culture Annis' African forebears had been torn from, and the songs of generational trauma these spirits could sing, but the repetition of appearances, joined later by other spirits, pulled me out of Annis' story and emptied her of agency. Others may appreciate the interludes and respite from the sustained pain.

Let Us Descend is not without beauty and ascendence and ultimately, hope. But there is no changing the ending to this terrible story of our nation.