A review by emilyrosebooks
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

slow-paced

2.5

I wanted to love this and the character, but I found the subject to be unfocused, and hard to follow the point of this story. The book opens with Annis doing combat moves with her mother that had been passed down for generations, but then she never uses these skills against her slaveholders. The theme of lost family, and generational suffering at the hands of slavery is interesting and the most poignant, but the spirits that are intertwined with the story, namely Aza, distract me from what I think is the more important and powerful story. There are definitely things worth dissecting in this book, but I really didn't love it.