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ally_h 's review for:
Men We Reaped
by Jesmyn Ward
3.5 stars.
“There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it.”
Jesmyn Ward took on a heavy task in writing about the unacknowledged darkness that hangs over poor black communities.
In five years, Ward lost five men in her life. This tragedy, she realized, wasn’t just a fluke or crazy happenstance. The death of black men was a bleak reality for communities like hers. So she wrote about it, in addition to writing about the mires of drug/alcohol addiction, racism, economic struggles, and common rifts in black families--and readers will be better off for listening to her experiences.
I have read more engaging memoirs, however. Those I enjoy best don’t just give a straightforward account of experiences. They include the author’s insights into how her experiences related to the present time and society. And Ward accomplished that to a degree. However, her writing style was mostly “to the point,” and I didn’t have a good picture of who she, the narrator, was until past the halfway point. Her writing was often beautiful, but it felt stilted at times, and too poised. Ward wrote about the emotions she felt during times of extreme loss, but her writing felt impersonal until the very end, where she was very raw when speaking of the loss of her brother and other personal experiences.
I did very much appreciate the times Ward took a step back and addressed the wrongs in society and the reasons for why she and the people around her acted in ways that were ultimately harmful for themselves. I found this passage extremely poignant, in which she speaks of her community’s lack of trust:
“My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: We didn't trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system, and even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us were perpetually less, we distrusted each other. We did not trust our fathers to raise us, provide for us. Because we trusted nothing, we endeavored to protect ourselves, boys becoming misogynistic and violent, girls turning duplicitous, all of us hopeless. Some of us turned sour from pressure, let it erode our sense of self until we hated what we saw, within and without. And to blunt it all, some of us turned to drugs."
Although I didn’t love the writing style, I still think Men We Reaped is well worth the read, especially if you are wanting to learn more about the hardships of life (but also the beautiful sense of affinity and shared experiences) in a rural black community.
If you’re looking for another great memoir that addresses racism, economic struggle, and relationships in the black community, I highly recommend Heavy by Kiese Laymon.
“There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it.”
Jesmyn Ward took on a heavy task in writing about the unacknowledged darkness that hangs over poor black communities.
In five years, Ward lost five men in her life. This tragedy, she realized, wasn’t just a fluke or crazy happenstance. The death of black men was a bleak reality for communities like hers. So she wrote about it, in addition to writing about the mires of drug/alcohol addiction, racism, economic struggles, and common rifts in black families--and readers will be better off for listening to her experiences.
I have read more engaging memoirs, however. Those I enjoy best don’t just give a straightforward account of experiences. They include the author’s insights into how her experiences related to the present time and society. And Ward accomplished that to a degree. However, her writing style was mostly “to the point,” and I didn’t have a good picture of who she, the narrator, was until past the halfway point. Her writing was often beautiful, but it felt stilted at times, and too poised. Ward wrote about the emotions she felt during times of extreme loss, but her writing felt impersonal until the very end, where she was very raw when speaking of the loss of her brother and other personal experiences.
I did very much appreciate the times Ward took a step back and addressed the wrongs in society and the reasons for why she and the people around her acted in ways that were ultimately harmful for themselves. I found this passage extremely poignant, in which she speaks of her community’s lack of trust:
“My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: We didn't trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system, and even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us were perpetually less, we distrusted each other. We did not trust our fathers to raise us, provide for us. Because we trusted nothing, we endeavored to protect ourselves, boys becoming misogynistic and violent, girls turning duplicitous, all of us hopeless. Some of us turned sour from pressure, let it erode our sense of self until we hated what we saw, within and without. And to blunt it all, some of us turned to drugs."
Although I didn’t love the writing style, I still think Men We Reaped is well worth the read, especially if you are wanting to learn more about the hardships of life (but also the beautiful sense of affinity and shared experiences) in a rural black community.
If you’re looking for another great memoir that addresses racism, economic struggle, and relationships in the black community, I highly recommend Heavy by Kiese Laymon.