Jesmyn WardVerified account

A 6-year-old. *A 6-year-old.* A 6-YEAR-OLD. They would put our newborns in prison if they could get away with it. Just dispense with the pretense and go right back to slavery. https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/florida-grandmother-outraged-after-6-year-old-arrested-for-tantrum/ …

Stephen Miller — who is the same age as me and looks like THAT — has a girlfriend? And I’m somehow single???? The whole system is broken.

Thank you for the support Tami! We have hoped that our film would provoke conversations around the exact sentiments you describe. The engineering of oppression is embedded in the founding of our country, and it’s scaffolding is the willful ignorance of its own existence.

Everyone must watch @OutofOmahaFilm. I’m rooting for the Trotter Twins who I want to have all good things in life. If you still don’t see how poverty is engineered and crime is a symptom of that engineering after this, I don’t know what else to tell you. #outofomaha

things in a writer’s brain: - every rejection - every project they haven’t finished - every person that’s ever been mean to them things not in a writer’s brain: - self-esteem - the password to basically everything - mental math

Did you know @nkjemisin, that @jesmimi has How Long Till Black Future Month, in her syllabus for a class she’s teaching at @Tulane?https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1170344373084741639 …

Yet at least once a day on here someone justifies the hypocrisy of our founding by pointing out first that slavery existed all over the world in 1776 and then by saying that we were the first nation to abolish it. It confirms so much about the lies this nation tells itself.

Where is this lie coming from?? In the Americas, only Cuba and Brazil took longer to abolish slavery than we did, and only one other country required a war to do so. That other country was Haiti, and the war was led by enslaved people who successfully overthrew their "masters."

One of the most pervasive, self-serving, American myths is that we lead the world in eradicating slavery. It's such an interesting revelation about how we think about ourselves despite the facts. We did not even lead the Americas in abolishing slavery & certainly not the world.

"We don't do gay weddings or mixed race": Mississippi wedding venue turns away family in viral video https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mississippi-venue-dont-do-gay-weddings-mixed-race-owner-says-in-viral-video-boone-camp-hall-sister-booneville-couple/ … via @CBSNews

It was so important for me to close the magazine with the faces of the descendants. So we found four 2019 graduates of the @howardlawschool and tasked @kenyattadb with tracing their families back to slavery to tell the story of resilience and hope. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/howard-university-law-school.html …

“When you live on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, stories of hurricanes are passed down through generations…My storm was Katrina.” On #katrinaanniversary we’re reading @jesmimi’s Salvage The Bones for a truer than life account of extreme weather and community https://www.earthday.org/2019/08/27/13-must-read-books-on-the-environment-and-climate-change/ …

In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. Matthew Desmond explains for “1619,” our new podcast from the #1619Project. https://nyti.ms/32jqIZ6 

Episode 2 of 1619 is out, featuring the inestimable ⁦@just_shelter⁩ and ⁦@jesmimi⁩ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1619/id1476928106?i=1000448223649 …

@jesmimi’s reading of her piece on the lives ruined by the 1808 ban on the importation of Africans will haunt you.

In which I love on @jesmimi for capturing our beauty. https://nyti.ms/2zuHJmQ 

Hip Hop South Seminar Playlist (A Thread) These songs and artists are paired with texts by @KieseLaymon @ProfessorCrunk Robin Boylorn @jesmimi and @zfelice These lists ain't definitive but they mine and useful for teaching. And dancing in class LOL.

Mississippi Clarion-Ledger: "ICE raid separates 4-month-old baby from breastfeeding mom" https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/08/15/ms-ice-raids-breastfeeding-mom-taken-4-month-old-baby-koch-foods-morton-deportation-detainees/2002278001/ …

It is deeply painful to me that anyone has a problem with black writers wanting to mark and commemorate the most atrocious thing that has ever happened to our people, which is the start of our enslavement here and what it has meant. How does this possibly equal erasure of others? https://twitter.com/viet_t_nguyen/status/1162223600381751299 …