Through loss, Jesmyn Ward will always return to the word

we know that TV and movies you'll want to watch this summer.

I'm excited about this film. I just know suspense, intrigue aliens,

“and I'm like, all right, Spielberg, I'm in.”

Check out the summer guide from Pop Culture Happy Hour, listen on the NPR app, or wherever you get podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Tonya Mosley. There's a small town in coastal Mississippi called Delil. Mostly black, a few thousand people.

Most of them have lived there for generations. I guess today, writer Jessman Ward was raised there. And her family has been there for more than a hundred years. And for the last two decades, she's been writing about it. Her new book is a collection of 22 non-fiction essays

that ward wrote over 17 years.

She wrote the first one in 2008.

Three years after Hurricane Katrina took her grandmother's house. She wrote the last one in 2025.

“Sitting with the loss of her brother, and her partner,”

and her grandmother, going back to the music she had grown up on, because as she writes, it was the only place that still felt like home. Ward is the first woman, and the first black American, to win the National Book Award for fiction twice, for her novels, salvage the bones, and sing unbearied sing.

She is also a MacArthur Fellow. The title of the essay collection is called "On Witness and Respaire," which is also the title of her 2020 Vanity Fair essay about the death of her spouse and the father of her children. Respaire is an English word that was nearly obsolete for a hundred years.

It means the recovery of hope after despair. Jasmine Ward, welcome back to fresh air. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me. Respaire, that old word that is the definition, the definition being fresh hope after despair.

The reader never sees it inside, and I'd love to know

for you to talk to me about that word, "respaire," a word that's from really the 1500s. How did you even find that word to be able to articulate the bigger thing that you wanted to say? I discovered the word in 2020, like during 2020, that year.

When I just lost my partner, the father of my children, but just lost him in January of that year, the pandemic began. We were sequestered from each other. I was unfortunately spending a lot of unhealthy time on Twitter. But it was serving a purpose, at the time, because we were also isolated.

Back then, Twitter was one of those places as a social media that we could go to where we could find a sense of community, a sense of togetherness, a sense of connection. One of the reasons that I spent so much time on Twitter was because I was using Twitter as a tool to discover new writers.

So I was following a poet, and this poet was talking about how they had discovered the word "respaire," and that they were spending their time meditating on it in this terrible, really difficult moment. When so many of us, no matter where we were in the world, we were dealing with the trauma of the pandemic.

Seeing the world revered into something that was very unfamiliar and scary.

“And a lot of us, I think, you know, were feeling uncertainty, and I definitely think that a lot of us”

were feeling a strong sense of despair. You know, and so this poet was sort of talking about how they discovered this word, and they were holding it close to them, and they would sort of return to it. And I was so struck by that idea, right, that there was a word that existed, that was the opposite of despair.

Before you even say this, I want to offer my condolences on the loss of your beloved as you call him, you describe him in this essay. But I also, it's really struck by you finding this word at a time that was dark for a lot of people, but it was especially dark because you had literally just lost your beloved right before we went into lockdown. So you were living at home with your children,

grieving together. Can you take me just a little bit to that moment? And the things that you were doing to try to find your way as you are really sitting in your grief in isolation.

would be just a, you know, that I would be mired in the, you know, the terrible

muck of grief, right, that I would be, that I would sort of struggle with it, that time would escape me, that I would, you know, wrestle with that, that constant pain and longing and loss. And because I'd had that the experience of losing, you know, my brother, my sibling, you know, in my early 20s, when he was 19. And so I, I knew that that, especially, you

“like, for me, that those first two years would be difficult. But I think having to navigate”

my grief during the pandemic, when, I don't know, when the world that I thought that I knew and that I had planned my life around suddenly did not exist anymore, you know, one world ended.

And, you know, I've always been, I've always sort of struggled, I think, with depression,

with despair, even before my brother died. But right before my partner died, I had reached this point in my life where, and probably, in a large part, because I was, you know, sort of successful in my vocation, you know, as far as, like, the outside markers go, right, I published, I, you know,

“had been honored in various ways. And, and so there was a part of me right before my,”

right before my, my partner died, that that was actually, you know, optimistic in a way, right, that that that believed that that I would continue to, you know, to do the work and to, you know, build my little family and nurture my little family and that things would continue to get better.

It's a powerful thing to let yourself be optimistic after experiencing loss in a way

because you experience the loss of your brother, but before that, you it lost friends and other relatives and a fair amount of loss that might be more than the average person might experience. And there's an anticipatory grief that kind of lives with that, right, where you don't quite let yourself feel wholly optimistic. And so this moment, this catastrophic thing that happens with your spouse dying. To step out of that optimism, is that what happened? Or tell me how that

what happened? Oh, I, yeah, I just, I, I didn't step out of it. I, I feel like I, I mean, I just fell right. I, I, I, I plummeted out of it. And, um, and I think that that, um, that is something that I still struggle with to this day, right? Like losing my partner like that on top of all of the other, you know, sort of losses that I, that I experience in that I have to live with. I didn't believe and I was no longer optimistic. And a part of me, a very dark part of me, just felt like,

you know, what is this, what is this for, right? Like, is this, I mean, is this,

“this is just a life is just, a, um, a senseless slide to the grave. Like, that's so dark,”

but that's what I felt like in those, you know, in those two years, especially with having children in the house. Right. Right. I mean, that was, that was one of the more difficult, um, sort of aspects of, of losing my partner, right? Because I had navigated life as a, you know, a sister who lost her brother, um, you know, a friend who's lost friends, a cousin who's lost cousins, right? Um, you know, as a granddaughter and a great granddaughter who'd lost, you know, grandparents and great

grandparents, but I had, I hadn't, I still have both of my parents just still alive, right? And, uh, and I was sort of dimly aware that that kind of loss would reverberate through my children's

Here I have to, even though I feel, you just, you know, completely devastated, right? And, um,

“and, and, and dark, yet I still have to remain present and try to, I don't know, to help my”

children to believe that, I don't know that life isn't all darkness. Let's take a short break,

but first, if you're having thoughts of suicide, help is available by calling or texting,

988, that's the national suicide and crisis lifeline. Again, that number to call or text is 988. There is, uh, there's a moment in this essay, witness and despair, where I, I guess lack of a better term, the damn breaks for you, you know, you're in the midst of the, of COVID and so to remind everyone, um, we're all at home sequestered and you turn on the TV and you see the crowds of people protesting over George Floyd's death. Can you take me to those feelings you saw watching the people

out there protesting all over the world and what you were witnessing in that moment that almost, like it, it just completely overwhelmed you with emotion. Yeah, I mean, you know, so at that time,

right, as I'm, you know, experiencing that first, like, terrible wave of grief and I am also

very aware of, um, I don't know what, of my history, my family's history, my communities history, you know, what it meant to grow up and to be a black, to grow up, black Mississippi, to be a black Mississippi and to be a, you know, a black southerner. And so one of the sort of motivations for me in, in pursuing writing was this idea that I would push back against our erasure or what I understood as our erasure, right? And, um, and, you know, that was something that was like very

clear for me, especially after, especially, you know, like after my brother died, that that was part of your purpose, right, right, right, was to, was to, um, was to say, you know, like, no, like, we're here, we, you know, we live, we love, um, you know, because I don't know, because especially, like, you know, in my brother's case, it just felt like he was, he was erased, right? I mean, by the legal system who didn't hold the person who killed him responsible for who is right,

so to let the audience who doesn't know, your, your brother died, um, by drunk driver in a car accident, and the person who was responsible for his death, um, really did not receive the punishment that you believe that he should have. Right. Well, he was charged, he wasn't charged with my brother's death at

“all, he was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, and that's it. That's what he received,”

you know, time five years forward, and some rest, in order to pay some restitution, um, and, and that's it, right? And so, and that, and that felt like extreme erasure to me, I think, in only, definitely cemented my understanding of what it meant to be, to be a, you know, a black person in the South, right, to face the erasure of our humanity again, and again, and again, and again, you know, so this is the context that I was coming to the summer of 2020 with, um, and,

you know, and I felt like in my lifetime, you know, as born in 1977, I'd never witnessed

a movement or a, you know, a collection, right, of people coming together of them, you know, sort of bearing witness to that systemic erasure, and then standing up and pushing back against it,

“right? Like I think that definitely happened, you know, during the, in the, so rise movement,”

and then in the '70s, right, with the black palm movement, but I didn't, and I'd never seen it, I'd never witnessed it. And so, it was, I think, shocking for me to see, you know, to see people

people from all, you know, all kinds of people, right, who had nothing in common with George Floyd,

“but people suddenly, like, sitting with that history, sitting with that fact, sitting with that erasure,”

and saying, "We, we see you." Yeah, that was a very overwhelming experience for you, for maybe

the black American who has really lived in this country, always having to prove and show and say,

"This is real," and so people are actually saying, "This is real," we see it. We are, we are standing out in, we are standing as witnesses, and that part of that essay was really powerful to me, because now we're in this moment, and I wonder how do you hold the truth now that the grieving we saw is collective action in a way has turned against itself and kind of helped trigger and

“create this massive campaign to end civil rights, right? You know, it's just difficult for me to”

talk about, because I haven't, you know, on the day that the Tennessee legislature was erasing the

seat, you know, the one seat that was occupied by a black congressperson in Memphis. I just, I don't, it was, it was so difficult. I found myself crying, and I mean, I know that I, I wasn't the only one, right, who felt this sense of loss, and this felt, felt this sense of devastation to know that, you know, that this, that, you know, so many people who fought, you know, for this legislation, and for, you know, for these rights, like, you know, with, with one,

with a vote like they were, that, that work was undone, unraveled, and I don't know, it's, it's some, it is, it's difficult for me to navigate, and I can almost hear your thoughts as you're trying to find them, because like when you're sitting there and you're, you're watching all these people, it's like, you, it just lost your spouse and, and dove deep into a depression and despair after losing him after being so optimistic, and then there's this other moment of optimism, right?

And is it now another well of despair or are we in rest? You know, I, you know, I, you know, I, in the past year and a half, I continued to return to the work, but then that's what I've done my entire life, right? So when I lost my brother, I did that, losing my brother, actually, was actually one of the things that made me commit to pursuing this, right, to, to writing, um, and then, you know, after

“her King Katrina, when I was in another moment, I think, where I thought about quitting, right?”

I returned to the, to the, to the, to the writing, right, and to to what I think, like the good that I think that the writing is accomplishing in the, in the world, right? And, um, and then after my partner died, again, like I almost quit and then I returned to the writing, um, and, and I, I feel that way, I feel that very strongly now, right, that, you know, because so much about what is happening right now feels, just as it did, you know, in 2020, it feels like it's outside of my

control, right? There are powerful actors everywhere who do not have my best interests, or, you know,

people who are like me, our best interests at heart, and what I can do in order to push back against that is I can return to the word, um, and, and believe in the power of storytelling and believe that storytelling, um, leads us to empathy and leads us to connection, and that, and that is a good thing. Um, and, and then I can just sit down every day and do the work. I've worked harder in the past, you know, year and a half, then I've worked in a long time.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. From Spider-Man to a new Steven Spielberg movie,

we know that TV and movies you'll want to watch this summer. I'm excited about this film. I just know suspense, intrigue aliens, and I'm like, all right, Spielberg, I'm in. Check out the summer guide from Pop Culture Happy Hour, listen on the NPR app, or wherever you get podcasts. I want to talk about the essay raising a black son in the US. You wrote this in, uh, it was published

“in 2017 for the Guardian. Um, and, at the time of this essay, you were, I think you were 40 years old,”

and you had a two-year-old daughter, and you were pregnant with your son. And in this excerpt, I'd like to have you read, you were about to undergo a battery of tests, and also learn the gender of your child. As the months progressed, I developed gestational diabetes and agonized over the

prospect of another premature birth. I wanted my second child to have the time and the womb my first

didn't. I wanted to give the second the safety and time my body failed to give the first. I also underwent an entire battery of tests for genetic abnormalities. Abonus of one of the tests was that I would learn the sex of the child I was carrying. When the nurse called to deliver marked test results, I was nervous. When she told me I was having a boy, my stomach turned to stone and sighed me and sank. Oh God, I thought, I'm going to bear black boy into the world. I fake

joy to the whiteners and drop the phone after the call ended. Then I cried.

Thank you for, for writing that and for reading it. And I will say, Jasmine, that I have never read

that in a way that captures this feeling. Um, the moment that you heard those words that it's a boy that the first emotion was grief and why was it important for you to find the language

“to name it? Um, you know, I think one of the reasons it was important for me to find the language”

to name it was because, well, one, because I was being honest about that experience, right? And and what it felt like to hear those words and to, you know, given what I know of this country, and of this region, to bring a child into that, right? And a boy and a boy, right? And I think I, you know, one of the reasons that it's important for me to write towards what hurts, to write towards grief, to, you know, to, to write towards pain, really, is because I know that other

people are experiencing this, right? I mean, you know, whatever, when I'm writing towards, you know, grief or hurt or loss, I know that other people are struggling. I mean, maybe it may be in, you know, a different version, right? But I know people are struggling with that same thing. And I, you know, think back to, especially to when I lost my brother, right? And I was, in my early 20s and I knew next to nothing, right? And, and I was searching for art that could help me understand what I was

living through and that could help me, to help me better bear it. And I couldn't, I was, it was difficult for me to find work that did that. And so, you know, that's part of what I want to do, right? I want to write about these issues because, because I know that people are living through them

“and I think about, you know, what I want it someone to share with me, right? How I want it someone”

to connect with me when I was living through whatever I was living through. And so, you know, that's one of the reasons that was important for me to write that as a, even though, you know, it, it, it, it feels uncomfortable. It can't feel uncomfortable. This, this essay goes on to talk about how, when you found out you're having a boy, you also thought about your brother. And I, I'm, I'm curious, what have you told your children about their uncle, your brother? I, I bring them up,

a lot, you know, they know that he died before they were born. You know, they've seen pictures of him. I will, the reason part of the reason that I bring him up is because, you know, with them often,

he said to me, you know, or some experience that we had together, like, I'll just relate it,

“you know, and in doing so, you know, and I think I do it because, you know, there are some stories,”

there are some experiences that I had with my brother that we had together. Like, it was just the two of us, right, only you all know them. Right. Yeah. Right. Only we know them. And when I die, I don't want those stories to, to dissolve with me or to disappear with me. And, yeah, so I share them with my, with my kids. And there are some stories, there are some things that I know about my, or that I experienced with my brother that maybe my younger siblings were too young, you know,

to remember. And so, while, you know, share those stories with them. Like, it's important for me,

you know, that even though he isn't here and even though my children will never have the chance to meet him,

you know, that I, that I try, you know, to communicate something of who he was and of how much I loved him and just enjoyed him, you know, to them. You write that you hope that your son sees 12 and 21 and 40 and 62 that he and his sister is there to bury you. And that part just moved me so much because I don't even know even as a mom if I've thought about that, that moment where I will be gone for them. You know, I think I think about it. I think about it a lot, you know, and maybe that's

“I think given my past, you know, that's, it's a logical, I think, response for me, right?”

Because, you know, when, when I was in my early 20s and, you know, my brother, again, was hit and killed by a drunk driver when he was 19, right? When you're early 20s, like you just think,

you never think that anything bad will happen to you and to the people that you love, right?

I mean, unless you've already experienced it even earlier, right? But I mean, at that time, I just didn't, I thought bad things will happen to other people. They won't happen, you know, I don't know, they won't happen to us. And, um, and then my brother died and then my cousin died. And, and then I, I don't know, I sort of understood, uh, you know, I understood that, you know, when you're young, sometimes, uh, you take life for granted and you take the continuation of life

“for granted. And so, I always think about, I think about death a lot, because I know how,”

how abrupt and unexpected it can be. You know, Jasmine, I know that you've, you've gotten some criticism for, living in this space, for, for sitting in these hard things that are just reality, but they're, that they're hard. I mean, I think I saw one criticism of someone saying trauma porn, but what does it do for you in practical terms? When you're out in the world, for people to know you at such an intimate level through your most vulnerable, most painful

parts of yourself, through your writing, how does being seen, witnessed to this level, feel what does it do for you in managing what is very hard stuff? That's a difficult question to answer. I mean, I, you know, it's good to feel like you're seen, right? Like it's good to be witnessed. It's good to feel like your story resonates with people, and it makes them feel. I'm very invested in being honest, and, you know, and so this

worked as that, and even though it can make me feel uncomfortable and sometimes very vulnerable, because it's so intimate, still, I, you know, I believe that I'm fulfilling my responsibility to the people into the place that I'm writing about, and I think that I meet readers, right, and one of the, you know, most moving experiences for me was definitely when I was on book tour

friends, right? And this is a very like individual, particular story, right? As far as like the details are concerned, and I began to meet readers, to meet people who would, you know, come up to the, you know, table, and as I'm, you know, signing their books, and we're having a conversation, and, and they would, you know, they would get very emotional, and they would say, I heard this over and over again, they would say, I felt like you were writing my life, right,

because they had, you know, they were struggling with some loss, some grief, right, some person who

they love that they're, you know, just trying to figure out how to, how to navigate it. And at first,

it was like hearing that it's a little jarring because, you know, a memoir is so particular to the person who writes it, and it's so particular to you. But then I realized, I was so grateful that they, that readers, you know, shared that sentiment with me, because it made me feel less alone. You know, Jasmine, my mother lost her brother at 19 two, so I'm kind of like your children, you know, and I asked her once, and I usually, as a young adult, I asked her, how often she thinks about him,

and she said every day. And she told me that sometimes when she meets people, she wants to say,

I had a brother, because can you really know me unless you know that? And I've been sitting with

“that for years, because I think like, wow, my mom never talked about her brother to me, and did I ever,”

you know, this whole part of her that I just didn't know that every day that was the thought that was running through her mind is her brother. And you're writing just really puts that in such focus for me, that you writing about these things allows me to understand you to see you in such a fuller way. And then to understand your mother in a different way, right? And to understand, I don't know, what that, you know, that continues like wrestling with grief, like what that experience was like,

you know, for her, and the fact that that was a private battle that she fought every day, you know, to sit with that loss, but then still figure out a way to live with it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Our guest today is award-winning author, Jessman Ward. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is fresh air. Your parents had the same relationship with Mississippi that you do. They, I find this fascinating.

They left, and then they came back. And Mississippi is such a, the state has hurt your family

“for generations. And every generation has gone back. What is it about Mississippi that pulls you home?”

You know, we've had conversations about Mississippi and about California. And you know, my mom, she really, you know, like my mom won't leave, I think, in part, for the reason that me and my sisters, I think struggle with leaving because it was the last place that we knew our brother, right, and that she knew her son. So I think that that makes it really difficult, right, for us to, I don't know, to, to live in another place, right, away from this place where, you know,

where this is the last place that he was alive. But, but my mom has also said that if she could do it over again, that she would not have returned to Mississippi when we moved back when I was three,

and she was pregnant with my, with my younger brother, right, and who's her second child.

You know, that she was a state and California. My mother, she really loved it there in the Bay Area.

“You know, I think she felt a sense of sort of freedom, a lifting of a of that weight, right.”

There's also the possibility of another story, you know, especially with your brother, right, like, you know, and I'm pretty sure she thinks about that, too, right, like, would he have lived past 19, what was it, what would his life, you know, look like now, would she have been able to create sort of more opportunities and in different choices for him if we would have remained in the Bay Area? I don't know. I, so I chose to return because I, you know, this is the place that inspires

like they inspire this, my work and inform the stories, you know, that I tell. And so I just,

I want it to be in that place and to see if I could create in that place. And then also I felt like working as a writer and living as a writer and in Mississippi would keep me honest because I'm living around the people who I'm writing about. So it's more difficult for me to, you know, for me to gloss over the details and for me to, you know, make the story easy and for me to, you know, like, I think if I were farther away and did more disconnected from that, my family,

and my community in this place that, you know, that, that, you know, that it might make it easier,

“right, for me to begin to gloss over the facts on, you know, of what life is like for the people”

who I love. The closing essay in this book, it's called "You Tell Your Story Your Survive."

And you first delivered this as a lecture in 2019. You give a name to a verb that you've been reaching

for, kind of, I, I, I feel like you've been reaching for it, salvage. And the word is from your National Book of War, Winning Naval, salvage the bones. And you write a very particular and interesting reason why you love that word. Can you read a little bit of why? Sure. When I settled on the title for salvage the bones, one of the reasons I was so invested in using

“the word "savage" is because it is so close phonetically to the word "savage." At home,”

young people in my community have redefined the word, have stripped it of its racist meaning and instead recast it. They call themselves savages and declare that they are resourceful. They call themselves savages and declare that they have the courage necessary to fight the systems that seek to devalue them and not only will they survive, they will thrive in spite of it. Wow, that connection. You in words, you know, you're finding these connections here

between salvage and savage which is also a word that has been sort of taken and owned

in a pretty powerful way as well. Yeah, I mean, I feel like them sort of remaking and using the

word "savage" just says something about their resilience. It says something about their scrappingness. It's really all of it, right? I mean, you know, because one of the things that I

“hold onto and that I attempt to return to throughout my life is this understanding that we have”

survived what we have, through generations, because we are scrappy, right? Because we are resilient, because we embrace hope, because we hold onto the belief that life is worth living, it is worth fighting for, that we can work our way to a better tomorrow. You know, and I see that in their reclamation of that word, right? It's like the latest iteration of it to me. Jessman Ward, thank you so much. Thank you. Jessman Ward's new essay collection is

called "On Witness and Respect." Coming up, Jazz Critic Martin Johnson reviews a new album from "Chelest and Composer to Make a Read." This is fresh air. "Chelest and Composer to Make a Read has a distinctive sound, both as a player and a writer." Jazz Critic Martin Johnson says, "Her instrument is uncommon in jazz, though no longer rare." Read, who won a MacArthur in 2022, has two new recordings out. One is a sidewoman to pianist Greg Taborn, also a MacArthur winner,

and another with her longstanding quartet. Martin says her music often has a bounce to it, as if her cello can exaggerate and accelerate the sound of a walking bass. But the bounce he says, "It's only the beginning."

with either a aggressively loud dissonance or a steer, meditative music, but to make a read

“would like to change that. Her quartet makes music full of movement inspirations, whether modern”

dance, or child's play. The cascading figure there on the title track of her new recording, dance, skip, hop, feels like sunny afternoon hopscotch. And later in the track, you can hear the magic of the band's arrangements, no one played or dominated the others, all four members of the quartet contribute equally to in a peeling hole.

Read first recorded with this band 11 years ago, and the rapport and instrumentation allows

“an exceptional range. That 2019 MacArthur scholar Mary Halvers and Angatar, drummer Toma Fujiwara”

and bassist Jason Rubkey. At times they sound like a string trio with a perceptive percussionist, and at others they have an austere intensity of a chamber ensemble as they illustrated on a ways for CC and CC.

Read has appeared on several dozen recordings and recent years, but one of the most compelling

was a release this January. Dream Archives is by the pianist and composer Craig Taborne and

“it features the Charleston drummer Chess Smith. On this track, feeding maps to the fire,”

we can hear Reed's distinctive accents to Taborne's rhythmic keyboard playing. We're up in the greater Washington DC area, but her career really took off when she moved to Chicago in the 2000s. She emerged herself in both classical and jazz scenes and found her voice as an improviser. She was inspired by classic works like the bassist Oscar Petraford's 1960 departure, my little cello, and by contemporary players like Deirdre Murray. Now Tomaika read belongs to

an array of Charleston jazz such as a Kua Dixon, Marika Hughes, and Fred Longpork home, who are expanding the sonic possibilities in the genre. Jazz critic Martin Johnson writes for the Wall Street Journal and Downbeat. He reviewed dance skip hop, the new album by Charleston composer Tamika Reed. Tomorrow on fresh air, how can a politician lie to the electorate and not face legal consequences? Even a lie as

consequential as President Trump's claim that he won the 2020 election, and a new book, Andrew Weissman explains how he got here and suggests ways to hold politicians accountable. Weissman was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh air. Fresh air is executive producer Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey

Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and Marie Boldenado, Lauren Crimson, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thia Chaliner, Susan Yacundi, and Abelman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespere. Roberta Sharach directs the show. With Cherry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.