Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward, author and narrator
There are few words I can use to describe the brilliance of this book; there is no good way for me to sum it up without revealing too much. Ward has described the horrors of slavery in such dramatic detail that the reader finds his or herself there, in the center of it all, as a witness to the barbarism. Because they were fed a starvation diet, beaten, and abused, subjected to nightmare punishments for whatever whim the owner decided to fulfill, because they were forced to suffer the breakup of their families and the loss of their friends, to endure being raped by the owner, sometimes even sold at his pleasure, many might have entertained thoughts of escape, but it always seemed foolhardy since it was so often futile with unimaginable punishment if caught. I asked myself, what kind of person could tolerate the destruction of humans, bit by bit? Who could treat humans so poorly, even worse than they treated their animals? With every new dawn, every next breath, the future was bleaker for a slave. There was no safe haven, yet there existed a desire for freedom that was unabating.
The world of Arese/Annis is a nightmare world once her mother is sold, but it was not much better when they were together. Worked to the bone, practically starved, taken by the owner to pleasure himself, Arese was born to her mother after the owner raped her. Thus, although she was half-sister to the twin girls in the manor home, their lives were totally different. Arese used to stand by their door, listening to their tutor instruct them. It was in that secret pose that she learned of the expression from Dante’s descent into Hell, that she learned the worlds let us descend. Her mother educated her in the only way she could, she trained her in self-defense and told her to rise, not to descend! Her mother taught her that water was a friend, although it was water that carried her away from her home to this place of captivity. Would water one day save her?
As Annis describes her life, one may be brought to tears or driven to anger. This, however, is a novel, and it tells the story of what took place in the past; there is no rectifying the horrifying lives of these captured people, thought of as less than, thought of as animals who felt nothing or animals that existed for the barbaric pleasure of cruel men and women. These captured humans suffered from every human indignity man could imagine.
Rarely have I felt so moved by a novel. It held such a poetic beauty, as most of Ward’s books do, but this book was magical, filled with legends and spiritual visions. This book takes the readers with it, right into the realm of the slave, and they visibly witness and feel the pain and suffering first-hand, as if it was happening to themselves, and sometimes, even the reader wants it to end a bit more quickly. The author simply takes me places that I do not want to venture, but feel I must. She illustrates life and also the loss of life. She forces the reader to come to terms with the terrible choices slaves had to make, with the terrible lives they were forced to live, with the terrible people who tortured them, but she ends by offering a sliver of hope for the future.