A group of Wake Forest students had a chance to participate in a discussion with MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Jesmyn Ward when the University’s Program for Leadership and Character invited Ward to launch a conference on “Educating Character Across Differences: Cultivating Communities of Character.”

In addition to launching the conference, Ward participated in a moderated discussion with Executive Director of Leadership and Character in the Professional Schools Kenneth Townsend as part of Wake Forest University’s Face to Face Speaker Forum.

Ward, who lives in the small town in Mississippi where she grew up, finds inspiration for her characters and stories in her family, friends and neighbors, and the struggles of life in the rural south that Ward sees as similar to the ones kids deal with in small rural towns across the country. In the discussion with students, she shared her hopes that the empathy readers feel for the characters in her books will create empathy for real people. 

A creative writing professor at Tulane University, Ward is the only woman and only African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. 

The students prepared for the gathering by reading one of Ward’s books and joining a small group discussion ahead of the event. With these students, Ward answered questions about how her life experiences have informed her writing and fielded questions on her creative decision-making process. 

Sophomores Talon Keeler from Kernersville, North Carolina, and Jessica Taylor from Memphis, Tennessee, led the moderated discussion inspired by the book group participants. 

Jasmine Logan, assistant director of Wake Forest’s Program for Leadership and Character, organized 15 reading groups and ordered more than 200 books for students, faculty and staff who wanted to read one of Ward’s books and participate in a book-club-style discussion. Groups were led by either a faculty or staff member or a student.

“When we are in community reading and discussing, we are able to better enjoy the books and have conversations that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” said Logan. When I led the “Men We Reaped” discussion group, I was surprised by the conversation around characterization and what we allow to have power in the book and in our own narratives. It was a powerful discussion about how characters can be systemic forces.” 

Sophomore Chis Langley was in the group that read and discussed “Men We Reaped.” The novel explores the deaths of five young Black men in Ward’s life over a four-year period – one of whom was Ward’s brother – and the personal and familial impact of these tragedies. The book explores race, poverty, violence, grief, resilience and community.

Langley’s experience reflects the transformative power of these book group discussions.

“We discussed what defines a character, and if a character has to be a living or tangible thing at all. After a lot of back-and-forth conversation, we eventually came to realize that a character can be something intangible,” Langley said. “From this, I’ve come to recognize the true villain of ‘Men We Reaped’ as a character many people in the world are familiar with, and that is racism.”

Logan believes that one of the benefits of students participating in reading groups, book clubs or discussion sessions is that the experience allows people “to get out of their silos and singular thoughts.”

Langley said he sees the Winston-Salem community through a new lens. 

I learned there is always more to a person than what is at the surface level, and that to truly understand them, you must know them as more than just a statistic; you have to know them as a person.

Sophomore Chris Langley

“There is so much more than what meets the eye,” he said. “The high levels of poverty, the high unemployment rates, and gun violence are all important parts of our beautiful community that we don’t immediately see. The experience with the book group and the discussion with Jesmyn Ward have pushed me to look more into the history of Winston-Salem and to think more about what I can do to help the overshadowed people of my community. I learned there is always more to a person than what is at the surface level, and that to truly understand them, you must know them as more than just a statistic; you have to know them as a person.”

One student, Kal Wuor, was particularly interested in Ward’s creative process. Wuor, a first-year student from Charlotte, North Carolina, who aspires to write a memoir someday, asked Ward how she decided which parts of her life story to include and which to omit when writing “Men We Reaped.”

Ward answered that she weighed the harm that including an event or details might cause those of her family still living against the possibility that someone might read about a tragic event and perhaps see themselves as a little less alone in the world. “But if the risk of harm outweighed the possible benefit, I didn’t include it,” she said.

“At the moment, I didn’t see Ward as the National Book Award winner for fiction. She seemed so unbelievably and incredibly human. For me, the small discussion brought a bigger sense of authenticity to her writings,” said first-year student Joely Weaver, whose book group read “Sing, Unburied, Sing” – a contemporary Mississippi family epic that explores race, poverty and the psychic scars of past violence.