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.
People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.
I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my poetry. I like my persona; I often wish I were him and not me.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
We need to bring music to the people, even to those who normally do not listen to classical music.
It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.
Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.
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