China. She will return, standing tall and straight, the milk burned out of her. She will look down on the circle of light we have made in the Pit, and she will know that I have kept watch, that I have fought. China will bark and call me sister. In the star-suffocated sky, there is a great waiting silence.
She will know that I am a mother.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my editor, Kathy Belden, and all the folks at Bloomsbury for championing my novel. I’d like to thank my agent, Jennifer Lyons, who believed from the first word. My time as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University gave me time to write and revise this manuscript, and I’m deeply grateful to the English and creative writing departments at Stanford for that. During my time at Stanford, Elizabeth Tallent and Tobias Wolff were insightful readers and mentors. I couldn’t have written this novel without valuable feedback and encouragement from the truly amazing writers in my Stegner workshop: Sarah Frisch, Justin St. Germain, Stephanie Soileau, Jim Gavin, Vanessa Hutchinson, Ammi Keller, Harriet Clark, Will Boast, and Rob Ehle. In addition, many other writers have provided me with essential encouragement, friendship, and feedback: Mike McGriff, J. M. Tyree, Molly Antopol, Skip Horack, Shimon Tanaka, Jeremy Chamberlain, Peter Ho Davies, and Elizabeth Ames Staudt. In DeLisle, thanks to Mark Dedeaux, the Miller family, Sarah Hatcher, Jillian Dedeaux, Aldon Dedeaux, Judy Ann Dedeaux, Dorothy Smith, and everyone in my extended family who always gave me a place to return to and be loved. Finally, I’d like to thank my immediate family: Joshua for being my heart, Nerissa and Charine for being my sister-fighters, De’Sean for being my Buddy, Kalani for being my lion, Jerry for encouraging me as an artist, and Norine for performing miracles every day and making a way out of no way.
A Note on the Author
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won five of the school’s esteemed Hopwood Awards for essays, drama, and fiction. Ward was the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and is currently the John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
