Navigate Your Stars

Thank you to Scribner for the advanced copy of NAVIGATE YOUR STARS by Jesmyn Ward!

NAVIGATE YOUR STARS uses the Tulane University 2018 commencement speech given Jesmyn Ward and brings it together with illustrations by Gina Triplett to deliver a powerful message. The speech is part memoir and part inspiration, delving into the author’s history and that of her family. She encourages graduates to recognize that a degree is not an automatic ticket to success, but that each person must find their own path through hard work and opportunity.

I really enjoyed this little book and certainly its message about overcoming difficulties is especially poignant at the moment. Though our backgrounds are very different, there was much in Ward’s history that resonated with me. College was a given for me growing up, it was what one did to get ahead in life. Like me, Ward graduated college with a degree in English and had a bit of time where she wasn’t sure what came next.

Jesmyn Ward is the author of many books that I have really loved and her voice rings through in this speech. The illustrations are beautiful and capture the mood of Ward’s story, from times of hardship and grief to the triumph of finding her path.

I can see this as a wonderful graduation gift for those completing their education. As I was reading it, I especially had those in mind who are having the least normal of senior years right now that I could imagine!

This is a complicated tale to tell, but Ward makes it accessible, enjoyable, motivational and lyrical. I’m a grownup, but it had me reflecting on whether I did what she did, without understanding, whether the next generations will be as wise and as willing and whether I can find a way to nudge them to embrace the hurt and learn from it. This book is a gift.

I am new to Jesmyn Ward's writing but was very taken by her after reading a recent article. This small book captures a graduation speech. It is honest, open, direct, and very moving. One of those small books to keep on your shelf to pick up again and again - to help remember perseverance, determination, hope, and the human will. (And keep passing it onto children and friends....)

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 may find Ward's commencement address and this short book inspiring as part of a lifelong attempt to learn and to navigate one's stars.

Robin Friedman