Jesmyn Ward Quotes

I grew up in a two-bedroom house with my grandfather, my mom and dad and four kids. I slept on the couch or on the floor, and I always wanted to have my own space.

I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.

When I was nine years old, my family lost our home, and the six of us moved into my grandparents' converted garage.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

My mom got 11 kids. We struggled.

I grew up poor. My mother raised a family of four on between $9,000 and $15,000 a year.

My brother and I slept on the couch. I didn't get my own room until I was in college. We didn't even have a telephone until I was in college.

I'm a war baby: I was brought up with rationing, and my parents always had to struggle. I remember when I was sent to boarding school - Prior Park College in Bath - my father was asked how he was going to pay the fees, and he replied: 'In arrears.'

My folks ain't graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family - and I come from a big family.

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street.

So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with.

My family were very poor. I am one of nine siblings: two girls and seven boys. Only my brother and I play in Europe, and then three more work in Europe, and another plays in Tunisia. This family is a footballing family, but our lives have not always been good.

When I was in senior year of high school, my mom lost her job, we lost our house, and we had to move in with my uncle and my aunt.

I was the seventh child in a family of eight siblings. We lost our father very young, and my mother had pretty much single-handedly brought us up.

Environment does shape you. My environment, in a pit family, in a pit village, with nine kids in total.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.

I remember my dad took my ice skates. One day I asked my mum: 'Where are my ice skates?' because I loved to skate in the winter. And she said through tears: 'Dad is selling them now… we don't have money for this week.'

I was just a toddler when my dad died in a car crash. With my mum, Eunice, being a young widow with a large family, she really struggled money-wise.

Everybody knows when you're a struggling family; you don't really know it when you're a kid. But you do know the difference between stress and moments of relief where there's, like, this happiness.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

I just grew up a poor black kid in Alabama with a single mom and two brothers.

My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right.

My mom didn't have a lot of money.

Going through economic hard times is something I know firsthand.

I have 10 brothers and sisters. My mother raised us because my father died when I was 8.