On Witness and Respair: Essays
A collection of essays, profiles, introductions and speeches ... Hit-or-miss, as such assortments usually are ... Her writing about blue-collar Black life in the South, and about her family, comes alive because it is shrewd and vexed; Ward’s feathers are ruffled and she is more present on the page. She keeps everyone in the frame, and deals out facts and impressions so deftly that she makes you recall Saul Bellow’s comment that a fact is a wire though which one sends a current.
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An invaluable collection for Ward’s fans and a terrific introduction to one of the most powerful, and graceful, voices in American literature today ... There’s a few skippable essays here: promotional profiles of Regina King, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ava DuVernay. Though engaging when they first appeared in print, they feel inessential years later ... We should all bear witness to Ward’s words. Read and respair.
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Few contemporary writers express the agony and beauty of Black American life as evocatively as Ward ... Marvelous and unforgettable.
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