Full Description
This collection of essays provides a thorough and probing account of an author who is quickly becoming one of the most read, studied and taught contemporary writers, but whose work remains underrepresented in scholarship. It is broad and ambitious in scope, mirroring the richness of Ward's oeuvre, and it brings together a diverse and dynamic range of approaches that reflect the scholarly conversations in which Ward is embedded.
Contents
Contributors
Introduction: The Restless Social Vision of Jesmyn Ward
Sheri-Marie Harrison, Arin Keeble and Maria Elena
Torres-Quevedo
1. Bois Sauvage as Biotope in the Novels of Jesmyn Ward
Wendy McMahon
2. Wayward Kinship and Malleable Intimacies
Jay N. Shelat
3. Determination in the Wake of Dispossession: Jesmyn Ward's Literary Depiction of Black Resistance to Outmigration
Donald Brown
4. Local and Global Scales of Racial Neoliberalism in Where
the Line Bleeds
Martyn Bone
5. Mapping the 'Ungeographic' in Jesmyn Ward's Where the
Line Bleeds
Beth Beatrice Smith
6. Salvaging Vulnerabilities: Climate Crisis and Marginalised Bodies in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones
Leah Van Dyk
7. 'We are left to seed another year': Nature and Neglect in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones
Devon Anderson
8. The Weather and the Wake: Maternal Embodiment and Peril in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones
Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka
9. 'Something to save': Rewriting Black Teenage Motherhood in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones
Chiara Margiotta
10. Being Touched by Cloth: Imprints on Community, Body and Self
Melanie Petch
11. 'Life had promised me something when I was younger': Biopolitics and the Rags to Riches Narrative in Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped
Maria Elena Torres-Quevedo
12. Releasing the Heavy Repercussions of Black Death in Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped
Candice N. Hale
13. A Prophetic Tension: Bearing Witness Against Black Nihilism in Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped
Mary McCampbell
14. 'Something like praying': Syncretic Spirituality and Racial Justice in Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing
Lucy Arnold
15. Ghosts in Mississippi: Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing
Christopher Lloyd
16. Experiencing the Environment from the Car: Human and More-than-Human Road Trippers in Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing
Michelle Stork
17. Reclaiming the Ghosts of Trauma's Past: Witnessing and Testimony as Healing in Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing
Apryl Lewis
18. Carceral Ecologies: Incarceration and Hydrological Haunting in Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing
Cydney Phillip
19. Pilgrimages to the Past in Jesmyn Ward and Toni Morrison
Lara Narcisi
20. 'I need the story to go': Sing, Unburied, Sing, Afropessimism and Black Narratives of Redemption
Marco Petrelli
Afterword. 'The most beautiful song': Jesmyn Ward and Diasporic Recognition
Sheri-Marie Harrison
Index
