I love where I'm from. I love the landscape because it is so beautiful, and I also love the people of my community, the people whose stories I'm trying to tell.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep affection for one's homeland and community, highlighting both its beauty and the value of its people.
In this quote, Jesmyn Ward demonstrates a profound connection to her roots, appreciating both the physical landscape and the narratives woven into the lives of the individuals within her community. This love is not only for the area itself but also for the stories and experiences that shape the fabric of the community, suggesting that our environment and the people within it significantly impact our identity and purpose.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of local culture during a community event.
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.
The universe is intentional. It is always moving in the direction of greater love, regardless whether or not we consciously align with that love.
If I am perturbed by the reproach and misunderstanding that may follow action taken for the good of souls for whom I must give account; if I cannot commit the matter and go on in peace and in silence, remembering Gethsemane and the cross, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!
These two criteria are like the pillars of true love: deeds, and the gift of self.
It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.
Life's a game made for everyone, and love is the prize.
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