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4.41 AVERAGE
4.41 AVERAGE
“But this grief, for all its awful weight, insists that he matters.”
There's so much that this book carries and leaves me speechless
Men We Reaped is the heartbreaking memoir by Jesmyn West. She documents a time period between 2000 and 2004 where four of her male friends were killed or died. She intersperses their stories with her own telling of growing up as an African-American in the South. Whereas one might think racism has somewhat abated, we see it ugly and never-changing in West’s memoir.
It’s a truth telling version of her first book, Salvage the Bones. She mentions her writing of the book in her memoir. How she changed it so the story wasn’t as bleak wasn’t as overwhelming. She chooses to put that part in her memoir to reveal everything that an African-American male has to face growing up in the South. Everyone is suspicious of you, the only jobs are menial jobs, and the only way to get ahead is to leave the area or run with a bad crowd. She often refers to her part of DeLisle, Mississippi as the wolf. Society as the wolf, always stalking her friends, lamenting how many of them died in such a short period of time, one of them her brother.
It’s painful to see the hopelessness of these situations. Some are murdered, some kill themselves, others are killed but are blamed for their own deaths, and those responsible get a slap on the wrist. West deftly describes the feeling from everyone’s perspective. She is in it and above it, able to see the situation as a whole. She has amazing clarity into these stories. It’s not often a fiction writer can harvest her own story whole and spin it with the same power as fiction, but West accomplishes this in masterly fashion. It’s an amazing and powerful memoir.
It’s a truth telling version of her first book, Salvage the Bones. She mentions her writing of the book in her memoir. How she changed it so the story wasn’t as bleak wasn’t as overwhelming. She chooses to put that part in her memoir to reveal everything that an African-American male has to face growing up in the South. Everyone is suspicious of you, the only jobs are menial jobs, and the only way to get ahead is to leave the area or run with a bad crowd. She often refers to her part of DeLisle, Mississippi as the wolf. Society as the wolf, always stalking her friends, lamenting how many of them died in such a short period of time, one of them her brother.
It’s painful to see the hopelessness of these situations. Some are murdered, some kill themselves, others are killed but are blamed for their own deaths, and those responsible get a slap on the wrist. West deftly describes the feeling from everyone’s perspective. She is in it and above it, able to see the situation as a whole. She has amazing clarity into these stories. It’s not often a fiction writer can harvest her own story whole and spin it with the same power as fiction, but West accomplishes this in masterly fashion. It’s an amazing and powerful memoir.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
beautiful memoir, essential read
I'm crying at work and for once it's not work-related
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This book is beautiful. I have read the last paragraph to two people and cried both times. I can’t know what it is to experience the world as someone who isn’t white but being able to see through the lens of this woman was captivating and emotionally evocative. While the subject matter is obviously depressing, there is so much beauty and love here. If you don’t read this book, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to better understand some of the systemic racial issues in the United States and to experience an incredible writer with a very defined perspective.