Rating: 5/5
06/04/2020 - 06/04/2020
"I wanted to devour the world."
"As Eurydice, I wrote a poem in which I mistake the heat of the underworld for the warmth of Orpheus's body curled around my one in sleep."
"I wasn't the man of the house; I was the kid who'd finally lit his first match."
"I had come out to my mother as a gay man, but within minutes, I realized I had not come out to her as myself."
"The water is always deeper than it looks."
"It's possible for two men to become addicted to the damage they do to each other."
"I knew how to be interesting. There was power in being a spectacle, even a miserable spectacle. The punch and the line."
"If you could draw enough glances, any room could orbit around you."
Synopsis
From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’ ”
Haunted and haunting, Jones’s memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another—and to one another—as we fight to become ourselves.
Blending poetry and prose, Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and powerful—a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one of a kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.
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