Even though I read voraciously as a child, I never saw myself in books. Without narratives to expand my ideas of who I could be, I accepted the stories others told me about myself, stories which diminished and belittled me and people like me. I want to write against that.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the importance of representation in literature and the impact of stories on self-identity.
Jesmyn Ward emphasizes the lack of representation in childhood reading, which can limit one's worldview and self-acceptance. She reflects on the narratives imposed by others that belittle marginalized individuals and expresses her desire to create stories that empower and represent those who have been overlooked.
In practice
In a book club discussing the importance of diverse narratives, this quote could highlight the need for representation.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque.
In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
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