As an adult, I learned this: persist. Work hard. Face rejection, weather the setbacks, until you meet the gatekeeper who will open a door for you. Jesmyn Ward grew up in a poor, rural community in Mississippi. Today, as the first woman to win the National Book Award twice, she is celebrated as one of America's greatest living writers. Navigate Your Stars is a stirring reflection on the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. First delivered as a 2018 commencement address at Tulane ...
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As an adult, I learned this: persist. Work hard. Face rejection, weather the setbacks, until you meet the gatekeeper who will open a door for you. Jesmyn Ward grew up in a poor, rural community in Mississippi. Today, as the first woman to win the National Book Award twice, she is celebrated as one of America's greatest living writers. Navigate Your Stars is a stirring reflection on the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. First delivered as a 2018 commencement address at Tulane University, it captures Ward's inimitable voice as she reflects on her experiences as a Southern black woman, addressing the themes of grit, adversity and the importance of family bonds. Beautifully illustrated in full colour, this is a meditative and profound book that will inspire all readers preparing for the next chapter in their lives.
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Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award in 2011 for her second novel, "Salvage the Bones". In 2017, Ward received a MacArthur "genius" grant together with her second National Book Award for her third novel "Sing, Unburied, Sing". Ward delivered the commencement address at Tulane University, where she is a professor of creative writing, in 2018. Her speech has been published in this beautiful short book, "Navigate your Stars" with illustrations by the Philadelphia artist, Gina Triplett. I loved Ward's novels and read her address both for itself and for the insight it might offer into her life and her writings.
The Tulane graduates were fortunate to hear Ward speak. But readers are, perhaps, more fortunate to be able to have the book in hand to read and to think about what she said. Ward's speech offers a brief autobiography in which she reflects on her family, her education, and her decision to become a writer. She also offers wise, inspiring counsel to her audience and to her readers.
I found much to ponder in this little book, prepared for a formalized occasion. Ward describes how she learned that education was a life-long project, rather than a process which ended with a diploma. She describes how she came over life to an appreciation of her family members who were uneducated and who made what they could of the situations that life presented to them. Perhaps the most important lesson Ward learned occurred when she returned to rural Mississippi upon received her degree. When her brother was killed in an automobile accident, Ward "questioned all that I thought I knew, shocked at the unpredictability of life, the irrefutable fact of death." Ward tells a story of perseverance and of the long, difficult path of finding and realizing her dream in becoming a writer:
"Sometimes you are twenty when you stumble upon an open doorway. Sometimes, you are thirty. Sometimes you are forty, or fifty, or sixty. I remembered this when I felt like giving up, when I thought I'd pack all my notebooks and stories into plastic bags and put them away, when I thought I would resign them to the recycling bin."
Readers will find Ward's address and this short book inspiring as part of a lifelong attempt to learn and to navigate one's stars.
