≫ Download Men We Reaped A Memoir Jesmyn Ward 9781608195213 Books

Men We Reaped A Memoir Jesmyn Ward 9781608195213 Books

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Men We Reaped A Memoir Jesmyn Ward 9781608195213 Books

Jesmyn Ward is a literary alchemist. She has woven the lives/deaths of 5 young black men, together with her own memories of growing up among them, and applied her skills as a writer to elevate pain, poverty, racism, drugs, alcohol and a lack of meaningful employment for most of her contemporaries, particularly the men - to elevate all these tragic consequences of segregation and slavery - into a kind of universal tragedy, which nevertheless feels redemptive because of the telling of it. And the how of the telling.

I spent much of the tail end of this book weeping. For its sadness. For its depth. For the courage to face and write so many painful truths. For the beauty of her prose, the stark honesty in revealing so much of herself, her love and grief for those cut down so young. For the wisdom and strength of black women struggling to raise children under such conditions. For the human wreckage this nation permits. For this woman, rising up to memorialize searing and painful truths.

I cannot forget this book. As a writer Ms. Ward is the Hilary Mantel of Mississippi. Someone who has transformed her own personal pain into exquisite prose. Someone fearless in writing about emotions, deeply understanding of her characters, honest yet sympathetic in portraying things which might be unspeakable under most circumstances, but which in her hands become cathartic, almost religious, even when most terrible.

She is my new favorite writer. And I’m just sorry that at 73, there are only so many more of her future books I’ll live to read.


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Men We Reaped A Memoir Jesmyn Ward 9781608195213 Books Reviews

This book is why I signed on to today...to leave a heartfelt, thoughtful review.

When I began reading Ms. Ward's book, I mentally said, "I've got to send copies to my family to read." See, I am from Mississippi, the Mississippi Delta. And the poverty, hopelessness, internal and external reminders of your nothingness playing on a loop are all too familiar to me. I left the Mississippi Delta in 1990 for college and law school after that.

Through the years, my voice has been stifled by the pain and hopelessness I feel when I watch or hear of the systemic poverty and lack of hope in Mississippi.

As a lawyer people often ask me to speak on my childhood, my life after leaving Mississippi, how I feel now when I return to visit my mom, my siblings, my dwindling aunts and uncles. I have never been able to verbalized the anguish, the torment that materializes in my dreams on a monthly basis and culminates with me falling into a black hole thick with sewage.

Until now, I hadn't read of a book that gave life to my childhood, to my mom's struggles and triumphs. Until Men We Reaped, I felt alone and stuck in these memories. Thanks be to Ms. Ward for trudging through her memories and giving life to the lifeless men of her family and community.

This book is one of the best I've read in a long while, and I read quite a bit. I finished the book this morning, and I am picking it up again next week to highlight some of the lyrically poignant pieces that speak to my soul, the inner child that had to grow up very quickly in order to survive, to thrive.

Now I know this book is not only for my Mississippi family. Not only for black folk or poor folk or oppressed folk. This is a book for humanity. For the man who can't seem to find the life that settles warmly around his shoulders. For the moms who struggle to hold it together when all they really want to do is disintegrate from the inside out. For the sons who want to leave a legacy but are too xxxx to break away and fight for their right to exist, be, do. For the daughters, like me, who are, out of necessity, taught to be strong-willed, strongest, strong-bodied, strong-24/7 but who need to be allowed to be weak and wanting and vulnerable and woman.

Buy this book. Read this book. You will be different as you devour the final page of Jesmyn Ward's memoir, and it will be a good kind of different.
This memoir inspires deep empathy and cracks a window onto the experience of rural, black poverty. This isn't a scholarly overview of the problems young black people face, it's an emotional overview that captures and transmits the frustrated hopelessness and grief that crests when Ward loses yet another friend or family member.
I purchased Men We Reaped after a riveting hour-long interview Jesmyn Ward gave to NPR radio stung me with anticipation.

The book changed my life.

Ward takes you back and forth through time seamlessly, on a journey to uncover meaning behind the deaths of five men in her life. Along the way I played devil's advocate in my head. As the answers begin to appear through the Louisiana fog, I looked for 'holes' in the theory. I found no valid reasons why a critic might dismiss her case.

That's just one of the themes. There are others, but simply listing them here in a sentence would be an injustice. Ward weaves them into the memoir using the very personal thread of her own life story. Technically, the writing is a virtuoso; I found myself re-reading paragraphs and wondering, 'How did she just do that?' Emotionally, it is raw electricity.

Simply put, everyone needs to read this book. It is too important not to.
This book was very well written, and I think it's an important and easy to read representation of being poor and Black in the south. I have to be honest, it was really hard for me to read this, it has a lot of tragedy surrounding racism and income inequality has put Black people in Mississippi in a terrible situation, and how difficult it is to get out of. You're probably going to cry, but you're also going to learn a lot about the way people in our own country live, how awful it is, and how important it is that we advocate for change.
I am 70 years old, grew up in a very integrated northern urban community. I thought I knew something about race, but Jesmyn Ward and her memoir proved to me that I knew nothing. Now, I know just a little, and I thank her. If you want to know a little, read this book.
Jesmyn Ward is a literary alchemist. She has woven the lives/deaths of 5 young black men, together with her own memories of growing up among them, and applied her skills as a writer to elevate pain, poverty, racism, drugs, alcohol and a lack of meaningful employment for most of her contemporaries, particularly the men - to elevate all these tragic consequences of segregation and slavery - into a kind of universal tragedy, which nevertheless feels redemptive because of the telling of it. And the how of the telling.

I spent much of the tail end of this book weeping. For its sadness. For its depth. For the courage to face and write so many painful truths. For the beauty of her prose, the stark honesty in revealing so much of herself, her love and grief for those cut down so young. For the wisdom and strength of black women struggling to raise children under such conditions. For the human wreckage this nation permits. For this woman, rising up to memorialize searing and painful truths.

I cannot forget this book. As a writer Ms. Ward is the Hilary Mantel of Mississippi. Someone who has transformed her own personal pain into exquisite prose. Someone fearless in writing about emotions, deeply understanding of her characters, honest yet sympathetic in portraying things which might be unspeakable under most circumstances, but which in her hands become cathartic, almost religious, even when most terrible.

She is my new favorite writer. And I’m just sorry that at 73, there are only so many more of her future books I’ll live to read.