Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

I have not read the author's memoir, but apparently she regrets her first book, feeling like she did not look the reality of being black in the American South squarely in the eye, that she was too lenient, and therefore not true to the struggles her characters faced, and vowed to be an Old Testament God. This book goes back to the beginnings of the reality Ward has lived and written about, to the arrival of the slave ships, and the plantations where those slaves were put to work; a reality so dark it is like being taken by the hand and led into hell. Annis is the mixed-race daughter conceived through rape; she and her mother are slaves in the rapist’s house. Her grandmother, born in west Africa and given to the king of Dahomey for his army of warrior wives, was herself sold into slavery by that king when she fell in love with someone else. Annis, in between dodging the attentions of her father; she learns of Aristotle and his bees, and listens to their tutor read The Divine Comedy. Then her mother, in punishment for trying to protect her budding daughter, is sold on; then Annis, for having the temerity to love another slave, a woman, is sold on, too. She has to walk, chained to others, to get to New Orleans where she will be sold again. During the journey Annis is attended to by spirits of slaves past, including a guide who likes to take the form of Annis’s grandmother but is not her. It is a horror, but an excellent read, which I could not put down and read in a day.