Men We Reaped: A Memoir

Reading this moving, lyrical tribute, you might think the author is talking about the 1930s or even the 19th century. She's not. This is a true, unsentimental portrait of a poor African-American community in Mississippi in the 1980s and 90s. Sure, it evokes tears. But it's so imbued with poetic detail, with dignity and an unflinching sense of humanity, that it's nothing short of eye-opening. You feel the author's mixed emotions – the push-pull of nostalgia for her hometown and disgust at the seemingly hopeless fate of its inhabitants. The structure of the telling is intriguing, too, intermingling a straightforward biography/memoir with portraits of cherished souls lost to impossible circumstance. I also loved the dialogue, which rings true with authentic dialect and stands in stark counterpoint to the more formal lyrical narrative. Truly a tour de force!

I just finished reading 'Men we Reaped' and found it to be difficult to read as a memoir. I found it to be something one could not understand without living it.. I have no way to relate to friends and family members dying so young nor did I know anything about the life of African Americans living in the South. I thought I knew but this gave me a whole new perspective. It is amazing that the author had her two lives; one in private schools among the privileged, and another surrounded by poverty, crime, drug and alcohol abuse. She has a master's degree and most of those with whom she grew up were drop-outs. I'm grateful that she wrote this to give many of us an idea of a life about which we knew nothing.

This is a book all white people should read. The author tells about young black men in her life who died way too early and pretty much sums up the reason why - born into poverty, not encouraged in school nor given a proper education, always put down by police and others, not given chances in life that white boys receive. Really, we should be ashamed of ourselves in the US for allowing this kind of discrimination to keep on happening. We haven't learned very much since the days of slavery. Something has to change for the good.

Well written but the stories skipped around which was a little confusing. The author describes the setting and people so vividly I felt like I new them. I would be interested in reading her other books.

The Most Important Non-Fiction Book of 2013! Want to understand what it means to be caught in poverty and hopelessness, while still living a life full of family, friends, joy and sorrow? Jesmyn Ward got an education and could have gotten out, but chose to go home to investigate why her male siblings, cousins, and friends were dying. Hers is a distinctive and compelling voice, sharing, with us, the voices of the young and disconnected that you will not hear anywhere else. A remarkable view into the lives of Americans largely ignored. A wonderful young writer telling a story that needs to be told. Read this book, America. We need it. We need it bad!

Heartfelt and relevant. Although frustrating that the same "nothingness" feeling abounds in our society for the youth of color. Read it with those in mind and remember they all were and are something.

Jesmyn tells a beautiful story of loss and love. She is a prolific author and her love for her friends and family is the basis for her story. She helps you understand the battle to be a young black male or female in the South. She does so with such love and compassion...

Ms. Ward frankly reveals the life of the black Mississippian, still struggling to overcome the remains of slavery. Economic oppression that festers in our schools and disallows promising young black men, and women, the opportunity to pursue their dreams. Too quickly, the dreams and hopes of young black men are lost to the lack of jobs, respect, encouragement and replaced by the continued expectation that they are incapable of anything but dying young and being in trouble. So prevalent is this mind set in the larger community, the legal community, the grade school that they are pushed from their hopes into the grave, too early, too frequently leaving only more sense of loss to be carried by their families. Ms. Ward writes with such intense clarity that you taste the pain. I find the book very disturbing as it was written not about another time, but now. A difficult read, but incredibly well written and very painfully true.

The men Ms. Ward knew and loved became people the reader cares about because of her writing. She also manages to give space to her mother and father and their stories as well, while showing how circumstances beyond their control affected their lives and fortunes. While it is a hard book to take in all at once, it is powerful, affecting and revealing.

I couldn't put it down. A beautifully written memoir, sometimes difficult, always gratifying. Ms. Ward is on my must-read-whatever-she-writes list. I loved Salvage the Bones. Now I feel I understand much more of that story.

As in her other books, Ward gives a vivid presentation of her community. This is more, however, this is personal. Because of that I think she leaves the realm of realistic depiction and goes into the realm of social analysis. Being a Mississippian, I can't argue with the continued influence of racism in Mississippi, or for that matter in the rest of the U.S. But I don't think these young men died primarily because they were victims of racism. What about being out of wedlock children of single mothers with little education and few other resources to give their sons, or from families that didn't teach them the kind of values that help you succeed in spite of racism? What about all of the drugs and alcohol these young people imbibed and sold? What about watching the important adults in their live quit school, live on public assistance, or have lifetime drug habits.
I found it amazing that she could so frankly acknowledge and present these less than flattering facts with such clarity, but just seemed to accept them as part of the culture of these young men, not as factors that largely contributed to their deaths. I appreciated the raw emotion that she so frankly let show in this book, but I think her view of the causes of these deaths that were so personal and painful to her is a little skewed.

Ward's account of growing up in southern Mississippi is one that devotees of autobiographies and memoirs will not soon forget. My full review of it is posted at https://jlauckhouston1.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/why-we-cant-leave/, and I think you'll find it helpful. Her book, tracing as it does the lives of her mother, her father, her brother Joshua, her sisters Nerissa and Charine, and their extended families and friends, many of whom have died young, is vivid, honest to a fault, and heartbreaking, but it is also redeeming in the ways that it explains, as few other books do, why Ward and her contemporaries are so bound to the anguished lives they've led.

This is a really important book about people whose stories do not often get told. It took a lot of courage to live through these events, much less write about them. I read several books in the last six months as I was ill and home from work and this one is the one I'll remember.

Ward's account of growing up in southern Mississippi is one that devotees of autobiographies and memoirs will not soon forget. My full review of it is posted at https://jlauckhouston1.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/why-we-cant-leave/, and I think you'll find it helpful. Her book, tracing as it does the lives of her mother, her father, her brother Joshua, her sisters Nerissa and Charine, and their extended families and friends, many of whom have died young, is vivid, honest to a fault, and heartbreaking, but it is also redeeming in the ways that it explains, as few other books do, why Ward and her contemporaries are so bound to the anguished lives they've led.

This is a really important book about people whose stories do not often get told. It took a lot of courage to live through these events, much less write about them. I read several books in the last six months as I was ill and home from work and this one is the one I'll remember.

Hard for me to imagine, seconds after having finished it, a more necessary book for everyone in this country to read. Nor one that could be nearly as moving. Ward manages somehow to write beautifully about endless slow grinding horror. I can't begin to fathom how she does this...it's a miracle of writerly power. And her memoir is unrivaled in the revelatory power it has over the reader's mind, opening (in this case, "his" and "white") eyes to the underlying social, political, historical causes that consign so many American lives to despair and premature oblivion. All of this told not in anger but in sorrow, with some of the most evocative descriptions of people and their physical/spiritual/psychological conditions ever written.

I heard Ms. Ward being interviewed on PBS and felt compelled to hear her story.
Her richly descriptive and visceral narrative puts the reader in the modern Deep South.
Despite the death and tragedy of her experience, her unfailing love for her family and
her "home" speak loudly to the person she has become.

This should be a must read for most Americans today - both those who live this reality (to see their lives on paper, published) and those who live far far away. An incredible memoir with an incredibly rhythm and beauty to its pace and it's story. Hard to not gasp for air at much of it but an important reminder of what work needs doing in the country.

I tried to have one of my classes (college level) read this. Ultimately, they lost interest and the project fizzled out. I thought perhaps students would draw parallels between their urban experiences and those of the young men profiled in this book. For that purpose, it was a hard read. In the end I cam away wondering how Ms. Ward escaped, and if indeed she has really escaped from Mississippi and all that is right and wrong there. the stories of the young men are poignant, the landscape that is painted is pained; just something didn't fully click with me. Ms. Ward, I respect you and your prowess as an author! Perhaps your writing is a tad too brutal for me, but you have a way with words.

This is a beautifully written memoir. The author speaks of how she used words and literature to escape the bleakness of her life, and her skill with them is evident. She fleshed out her characters, giving us a glimpse into the lives of all these young men close to her who died. This is really a collection of eulogies. What struck me most was her analysis that all the self-destructive behaviors described were rooted in feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy; of never being good enough. If there is any key to resiliency it may lie in preventing those feelings from taking root.While many of her experiences were clearly unique to growing up black in rural Mississippi, some of those experiences are generational. People in their thirties and under are likely to have lost far more friends at a young age to suicide, drugs, and other violence than their parents' generation experienced--excluding war casualties. Racism is a problem, obviously, but not the sole explanation.