I can’t place what I didn’t love about Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend but it was something about an uncertainty of what would be/was the trajectory of Annis’s story. Which makes sense, I know, in a book of slavery and the experience of uncertainty and alienation for those enslaved. And maybe love of a book focused on the slave experience is the wrong aspiration – something closer to appreciation and awe for the brilliant writing, the evocative and rich descriptions, the pacing and poetry.
The novel focuses on Annis and her journey of enslavement from a time with her mother to a slave market to a sugar plantation and beyond. The physical journey is marked by spirits and hauntings that make manifest (or as manifest as a ghost can be) the intergenerational trauma of slavery and violence – and the ways resilience come from the stories we have been told and tell ourselves. I suppose my uncertainty about what the novel was going to be about (like it felt like I kept waiting for the plot to begin? or the core conflict to be made clear?) misunderstands that the story is one of survival – and that the meaningful trajectory of experiencing endless uncertainty of place, people and threatened and real violence – and when and how we can claim autonomy and community amid the most abject dehumanized moments – is itself the life of Annis and the plot we are meant to follow.
So in this instance I think the problem was me as a reader – expecting or wanting something different from the story – while the book itself is an expertly crafted, compact gem.
Literary Vice 