A review by e_flah
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

2.5

I enjoyed the two separate threads of Men We Reaped -- Ward's look at her childhood and the period of time in her twenties where she navigates a lot of grief. The two threads didn't make one cohesive narrative for me, though. There was a disconnect between the point Ward was trying to make and what the narrative actually did. Ward makes some explicit points at how poverty and racism affect life outcomes but she doesn't tie the two together as neatly as she stated in the introduction. I would have liked Men We Reaped more as a straight-up memoir. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident and Death

Moderate: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Racial slurs, Racism, and Suicide

person attacked by a dog, alcohol abuse, drug use, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, violence, parental abandonment, death by overdose