Author: Saeed Jones
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: October 8, 2019
Book Description: “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, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir. Jones 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 family, 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.
An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is 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.
Rating: 4 1/2 Stars
Review: How We Fight For Our Lives is a slim memoir by the poet Saeed Jones. The prose alone is worth reading. This memoir is about Jones as a African American man coming out in the South and all it’s implications.
More than a coming out story this is a very beautiful story of the relationship he has with his single mother. There were multiple times that Jones captured that relationship with such care and tenderness that I sighed.
This memoir is just plain good. If you just love reading about people, which I do, then this book is just perfect. I personally love getting a glimpse of other people’s lives and this definitely hit that spot.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an Advanced Reader’s Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Obsessed Bookaholic 