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The hell of the antebellum South: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward, reviewed

Teenage Annis and her enslaved mother endure beatings and rape as they are marched in chains to New Orleans to be sold to the latest brutal plantation owner

21 October 2023

9:00 AM

21 October 2023

9:00 AM

Let Us Descend Jesmyn Ward

Bloomsbury, pp.320, 18.99

Jesmyn Ward, America’s only female two-time National Book Award winner, has had more than her share of hellish experiences to fuel her literary life. Her Mississippi-based family endured Hurricane Katrina. Salvage the Bones (2011), set during the catastrophe, was Ward’s response. Her memoir, Men We Reaped (2013), tackled her grief at losing five men close to her, including her brother, who was killed, aged 19, by a drunk driver.

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