On Witness and Respair: Essays

The collected creative nonfiction of a singular American writer, Jesmyn Ward, including widely shared classics, three never-before-published speeches, and an introductory essay.

Respair (noun, obsolete): fresh hope after despair.

From the two-time National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Jesmyn Ward, this collection of essays documents more than a decade of work. Ward brings her keen wisdom and hauntingly lyrical prose to a range of topics, following in her grandmother Dorothy’s footsteps when she promises always to “Tell it straight. Tell it all.”

In these pages, Ward contemplates the writers and novels of her youth and adulthood, including:

• The transformative power of discovering Octavia Butler as a twenty-something
• The mirror that Richard Wright’s novels held up to her own childhood
• Her lifelong love for Toni Morrison

Ward ruminates on her approach to both fiction and life, reflecting on the power of the novel, how to raise a Black son in an era of rising divisiveness and cruelty, as well as her own personal tragedies. This includes the titular essay of the collection, which tells the story of her partner’s sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Every bit as piercing and moving as her fiction, On Witness and Respair is a testament to Ward’s powers as “one of America’s finest living writers” (San Francisco Chronicle) and is a monument to hope, beauty, and personal and collective resilience.