Jesmyn Ward is a force. The impressions and emotions left by her novel "Salvage the Bones" have stayed with me for years. This book is a collection of very personal stories of herself and men from her community who died young and undeservedly. Ward's language is precise--she conjures up the setting of her Mississippi Gulf hometown, making me feel that I knew the land, the climate, the view in a place I've never been. Her tone is understated and deliberate. She tells her own story and those of the five men from her community who died within a few short years. She does not embellish or sugarcoat, and it is clear that she has carefully weighed the details she uses to outline each story. While retelling this often harsh history as she experienced it, Ward also weaves in the broader history and context of poverty, of blackness, of the south that enable her to interpret this story in broader ways. I would add this memoir and essay collection to "The New Jim Crow" and "The Warmth of Other Suns"--essential reading to better understand the layered history and realities of life for black Americans. Jesmyn Ward has pulled my heartstrings, yet again. This time its through her memoir of growing up in poverty in DeLisle, Mississippi. She examines the problems of growing up impoverished and what it means to be young, male and African American in the South; and of the deaths of five men she loved and adored; especially her beloved brother Joshua, who was killed by a drunk driver. This time, however, the love she shares with the reader is for the family she has lost, and the heartache of losing loved ones that shaped her art and her persona of who she is. Gritty and unsentimental, she pulls no punches and this is quite possibly her best work.
What do You think about The Men We Reaped (2000)?
I can't put into words how amazing this was.
—laylay
This gorgeous memoir = Black Lives Matter.
—Archanicwolf
