Ward learned the term "respair" â meaning the recovery of hope after despair â during the pandemic. Her new book On Witness and Respair is an essay collection on grief, motherhood and survival.
Writer Jesmyn Ward calls her maternal grandmother, Dorothy, the "first storyteller of my life." Dorothy was a twin, but her sister was stillborn. Her mother, Ward's great-grandmother, was so devastat⌠[+7082 chars]