Annis was born into slavery on a Carolina rice plantation, the daughter of an enslaved woman and the plantation owner, and trained as a housemaid. Her mother also passed down specialized knowledge of healing herbs, mushrooms, and the use of a spear gained from her own mother, a warrior woman brought to this country as a pregnant outcast from her African tribe. Annis was settled in her life until the day the plantation owner sent her mother away to be sold in the slave market in New Orleans. Sunk into depression by their separation, she found solace from her grief in the budding friendship with another enslaved girl. But a year later, she and Safi were given over to the slave traders and forced to make the long march to New Orleans themselves.
LET US DESCEND by Jesmyn Ward tells the story of a young girl growing up enslaved on a rice plantation. Annis and her mother share a deep mother-daughter bond, and there is a sense of family with the other enslaved men, women, and children on the plantation. There is also a feeling of permanence, which goes two ways: one is the unending repression of slavery, but the other is a sense of security that this plantation has been their home for generations. This makes Annis’s and Safi’s sudden uprooting and abandonment to the slave market all the more devastating a betrayal on top of the very practice. The trek the two girls endure to get to New Orleans is inconceivable, and the conditions on the sugar plantation where Annis lands are unimaginably cruel and inhumane.
Author Jesmyn Ward weaves her story with mesmerizing prose and adept pacing that immersed me in Annis’s surroundings and experiences. Much symbolism runs throughout the tale in the form of water and other elements. Annis is a special young woman who can commune with these elements or spirits and call upon the magic they wield. One such spirit has usurped the persona of Annis’s warrior woman grandmother, Mama Aza, whom Annis never met in life. However, Aza is a fickle and untrustworthy entity with an agenda of her own, and Annis must work to figure out who she really is and what the creature actually wants from her. The author smoothly incorporates this into the plot, and her characters deal with this otherworldliness as naturally as breathing. Aza’s motives and actions kept me on edge every time she appeared. Annis is a strong character who uses what she learns about Aza to her advantage, and the story eventually provides some hope. I was left feeling that there was more to come and a future for Annis in the end.
I recommend Jesmyn Ward’s LET US DESCEND to readers of historical fiction who enjoy magical elements in their stories and to fans of the author’s previous work.
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.
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