Descend- First Steps

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Whew. The writing is superb. I believe I have exhausted all the adjectives that describe prose, and so I’ve coined a new term that kind of encapsulates all the great things we say about prose. And that term is prosey. Yes, when you want to say the prose is fabulous, fantastic, poetic, lyrical, otherworldly, now I’ll just simply say the prose was prosey!!! And in the case of Jesmyn Ward and this book, she is at the tippy top when it comes to prose. Here we have what in some ways is a traditional slave narrative... But nothing is ever that simple with Ward. A young woman is sold by her 'sire' into the slave markets of New Orleans. As she makes the arduous walk, chained the whole way, crossing rivers and swamps, something not of this world stalks her in the woods... Novels: Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed • Hercules • Megara • Claude Frollo • Mother Gothel • Anastasia Tremaine • Madam Mim • Shere Khan • Ratigan • Yen Sid • Clayton • Lucifer • Iago • Diablo • Jasper and Horace • Flotsam and Jetsam • LeFou • Aziz • Grumpy • Pongo • Perdita • Arthur Pendragon • Mary And when it comes to Let Us Descend, I can confirm that it is worth the walk, worth the walking, and worth the WAIT, indeed.

Annis is the daughter of a slave owner and her enslaved mother. After working in their master's home, her mother takes Annis into the trees and teaches the lessons her own mother once taught her. Annis suffers heartbreak and tremendous loss after her mother is sold and is eventfully sold herself. She and other slaves set out on a gruesome and unforgiving walk from the Carolinas to New Orleans. They will suffer greatly both mentally and physically along the way. Annis is bought and taken to a Louisiana sugar plantation where her life will change once again. There's no place like home. Especially if home is the infamous Isle of the Lost. Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay haven't exactly turned their villainous noses up at the comforts of Auradon after spending their childhoods banished on the Isle. After all, meeting princes and starring on the Tourney team aren't nearly as terrible as Mal and her friends once thought they would be. In September 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the country, Jesmyn Ward wrote an essay for Vanity Fair entitled, “On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic” after the death of her 33-year-old husband just months before the murder of George Floyd. The essay gutted me; I have rarely read anything so powerful. Within the essay, she writes this: “Even in a pandemic, even in grief, I found myself commanded to amplify the voices of the dead that sing to me, from their boat to my boat, on the sea of time.”But just as important as fighting was the storytelling. When her mother told her these stories, Annis felt their narrative power. “This our secret. Mine and your’n. Can’t nobody steal this from us.” No matter what happens to her body, Annis has the stories to hold on to, fables that rise to rectitude.

Young Annis is a teenager who learned survival skills from her mother, skills to help her in this blind world of unspeakable crimes against humanity—but it was all legal then. Annis possessed some sense of agency only in these monthly sessions with her mama, in the Carolina woods where they had a large outdoor space. “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” That is the opening line of the novel. There's also, I think, a gesture towards Morrison's iconic Beloved in the concern with female genealogy and the merging of harsh realism with something more spiritual and metaphysical through the ghost-spirits which sustain and nurture Annis after her mother is ripped from her to be sold.James McGregor gets hired to investigate a sunken yacht. Only he finds out that the yacht hasn't been sunken yet and everyone is lying to him. Throw in diamond smuggling and hammerhead sharks and that's pretty much it. And that's how Michael Crichton began his writing career. One of my favourite and most read authors. The creator of Jurassic Park, Westworld and ER, among many others. Along the journey, a weather spirit carrying the name of Annis’s grandmother appears to her. At times rejecting the spirit’s guidance and at other times seeking her protection, Annis begins to learn, through a careful piecing together of memory, how to create her own version of freedom. Despite this dip in the third act and an ending that felt slightly less satisfying than I had hoped, Annis' journey is one worth taking. As Ward herself states on the cover of my advanced copy by way of introduction, "It is difficult to walk south with Annis. Her narrative descends from one hellscape to another, but I promise that if you come with me, you will rise. It will be worth the walk, worth the walking."

As Annis learns in this novel, if you call on spirit they will come. Annis is very much in tune with spirit and that sustains her in this harrowing tale of the grind of enslavement and the toll it takes on the mind body and soul of those who experienced that particular horror. The story is generally handled gently and the brutalities are kept to a minimum. Because I don't want to tire you out anymore and give you acute Crichtoniasis, I'll talk briefly about this one. In November 2008, unfortunately, Crichton passed away, so in 2013 the remaining 6 books were released. Let us Descend is the story of an enslaved girl, Annis, and her mother, and her mother before that. It is the story of generations, of myths, of spirits, and of transcendence. Like Ward says, this is a hard journey. But it is also about claiming your humanity and a sense of hope despite people trying their absolute hardest to strip someone entirely of both. As a young girl, Annis hears the white children being read Dante's Inferno. Annis compares her journey through a different type of hell with what she heard in that book alongside other illusions to bees and to water. All of this blends together to make a story that will truly take your breath away. Every sentence is a gift.I won’t say more about the plot. This is a story you should experience for yourself. I loved Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and loved the ghost there , but there was a little too much magical realism here for me. I can’t quite give it 5 stars, but overall this is a stunning read that will shake you to your core .