I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.
Interpretation
The quote speaks to the writer's desire to create relatable and realistic characters in their writing.
Jesmyn Ward highlights the importance of depth and humanity in character creation. By stating that her goal is to humanize her characters, she emphasizes the writer's responsibility to portray complex emotions and experiences, allowing readers to connect with the characters on a personal level.
In practice
In a workshop on creative writing, you could use this quote to illustrate the importance of character development.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.
I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day.
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
A good producer brings out the best in the artist he's working with. You shouldn't be able to listen to something and say, 'So-and-so produced this album.'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.