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Jesmyn Ward's Reading List

The author of, most recently, “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is a self-described “reading glutton” who reads everything: “Each genre fulfills a different need I have. Each book teaches me something.”

By the Book: Jesmyn Ward (2017)

NYT By the Book column (2017-08-31).

Source: www.nytimes.com

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Edward E. Baptist · 2014 · Buy on Amazon

"It taught me so much about slavery and how slavery enabled America to become America. Every time I left my house after reading it, I saw the world differently."

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers · Buy on Amazon

"The richness of her characters was so impressive and instructive. I loved that they had such complicated interior lives and poetic vision, but then spoke to each other in language that was real and true."

The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Kelly Barnhill · Buy on Amazon

"It's good in the best of ways: full of adventure and compelling characters and mystery and surprisingly poetic language. And it's pushed me close to tears more than a few times."

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

Alice Walker · 1983 · Buy on Amazon

"When I graduated from college as an undergraduate, my father gave me Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.""

The Hero and the Crown

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"I read it when I was 8, and then again and again throughout my childhood and adolescence. The heroine is a woman who has felt unloved and alien her whole life and yet comes of age, confronts her demons and saves the world in the end."

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