sweeping and salvaging

Jesmyn Ward is coming to my university this month (eek, I love my school!) and I have absolutely no idea where to start with my questions for her related to her craft and ability to jampack so much symbolism into so many different image systems in a seemingly effortless way. I think the way Ward's able to juggle these image systems and remind readers of them at every turn (and I quite literally mean at the line level in almost every sentence) is one of the most impressive things about her writing to me. I haven't engaged with any of her other work, but feel inspired to now. One of this novel's image systems surrounds the Greek myth of Medea. So, c'mon, I was bound to like this book at least a little. I didn't realize just how much of the story's general plot as well as characters and their development circulates Medea's myth. Ward writes in such a way that readers can think they have who's supposed to mirror Medea and Jason on one page and then question if other characters are actually functioning as the original myth's characters. There's ample room for careful analyzation that my class and I spent nearly three hours dissecting. I know we could've gone for at least another hour, too. Some of my peers felt their reading experience was bogged down by all of the similes and metaphors Ward doesn't hold back from using. I honestly felt like all this image-evoking language was used in such a fresh and new way that it only helped me enter into the story and its setting more fully. I won't insert any spoilers into this review, but the themes of motherhood, humans as animals (and vice versa), sex and love as violence, and recurring motifs like eggs, the colors black, red, and white, and death/decay make this book as visually haunting as it is heavy with symbolism and rawness. I really loved the narrator, Esch, whose eyes we look out of and, as a result, understand Skeetah, Randall, Junior, Manny, Daddy, Big Henry, and several other male characters that accentuate Esch's womanhood. I loved how she described the things around her in terms she saw and understood in her corner of the world---Bois Sauvage. I also loved how she related key parts of her life and emotions to Medea's story, notably how the anti-hero might've felt and reacted to certain parts of her story that Esch seems to relate to on a level she's not quite able to admit to herself. The similarities and comparisons between China, Skeetah's beloved fighting pitbull, and Esch astounded me, too. There was so much there from the very first to the very last page. Truly, I feel like my admiration for what this book does on so many planes is its biggest asset, and I can't wait to meet Ward and (hopefully) discuss her writing process and personal inspirations for this amazing book.



Some of my favorite quotes from Salvage the Bones:

"It is the way that all girls who only know one boy move. Centered as if the love that boy feels for them anchors them deep as a tree's roots, holds them still as the oaks, which don't uproot in hurricane wind. Love as certainty."

"In every one of the Greeks' mythology tales, there is this: a man chasing a woman, or a woman chasing a man. There is never a meeting in the middle."

"I can see her, chin to chest, straining to push Junior out, and Junior snagging on her insides, grabbing hold of what he caught on to try to stay inside her, but instead he pulled it out with him when he was born."

"This baby got plenty of daddies." 

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