Review
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"Men We Reaped reaffirms Ms. Ward's substantial talent. It's an
elegiac book that's rangy at the same time. She thinks back about
her brother, and about her old dead friends, and about their
nighttime adventures in cars. Then she declares, 'I don't ride
with anyone like that anymore.'" - Dwight Garner, New York Times
"Jesmyn Ward left her Gulf Coast home for education and
experience, but it called her back. It called on her in most
painful ways, to mourn. In Men We Reaped, Jesmyn unburies her
dead, that they may live again. And through this emotional
excavation, she forces us to see the problems of place and race
that led these men to their early graves. Full of beauty, love,
and dignity, Men We Reaped is a haunting and essential read." -
Natasha Trethewey, US Poet Laureate , author of THRALL and NATIVE
GUARD, winner of the Pulitizer Prize
"An assured yet ifying memoir by young, supremely gifted
novelist [Jesmyn] Ward... With more gumption than many, Ward
battled not only the indifferent odds of rural poverty, but also
the endless racism of her classmates... A modern rejoinder to
Black Like Me, Beloved and other stories of struggle and
redemption - beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Jesmyn Ward is simply sui generis. I am reminded of Miles Davis'
quote: 'Don't play what's there, play what's not here,' after
reading her memoirMen We Reaped. This is one might virtuosic,
bluesy hymn. Beautiful."- O Hijuelos, author of THOUGHTS
WITHOUT S
"Jesmyn Ward is an alchemist. She transmutes pain and loss into
gold. Men We Reaped illustrates hardships but thankfully,
vitally, it's just as clear about the humor, the intelligence,
the tenderness, the brilliance of the folks in DeLisle,
Mississippi. A community that's usually wiped off the literary
can't be erased when it's in a book this good." - Victor
LaValle, author of THE DEVIL IN SILVER
"Men We Reaped is a fiercely felt meditation on the value of life
that at once reminds us of its infinite worth and indicts us - as
a society - for our selective, casual complicity in devaluing it.
Ward's account of these losses is founded in a compelling
emotional honesty, and graced with moments of stark poetry." -
Peter Ho Davies, author of THE WELSH GIRL
"Jesmyn Ward returns to the world of her first two books, but
here in the mode of non-fiction. A clear-eyed witness to the
harrowing stories of 'men we reaped,' she quickens the dead and
brings them, vividly alive again. An eloquent, grief-steeped
account." - Nicholas Delbanco, author of LASTINGNESS: The Art of
Old Age
"Jesmyn Ward's memoir is a miracle. In it, she writes with such
clarity and beauty that her discoveries and revelations could
very well change the way her readers understand the world. She
also makes the unbearable nearly bearable with her poetic prose
and her life-affirming passion. This is fierce, brave
exploration, but it is also art - timeless, universal, and
unrelentingly inspired." - Laura Kasischke, author of THE RAISING
"This is a beautifully written homage, with a pathos and
understanding that come from being a part of the culture
described." - Booklist
"Jesmyn Ward's heart-wrenching new memoir, Men We Reaped, is a
brilliant book about beauty and death. The beauty is in the
bodies and the voices of the young men she grew up with in the
towns of coastal Mississippi, where a kind of de facto
segregation persists." - LA Times
"Ward has a soft touch, making these stories heartbreakingly real
through vivid portrayal and dialogue." - Publishers Weekly
Winner of the National Book Award, Winner of the ALA Alex Award,
Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Literary Award, Finalist for
the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Nominee for the IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award. - Salvage the s
"The novel's hugeness of heart and fierceness of family grip and
hold on like [a] pit bull." - O, the Oprah Magazine on Salvage
the s
"Searing.... Despite the brutal world it depicts, Salvage the
s is a beautiful read. Ward's redolent prose conjures the
magic and menace of the southern landscape." - Dallas Morning
News
"Ward uses fearless, toughly lyrical language to convey this
family's close-knit tenderness, the sheer bloody-minded
difficulty of rural African American life...You owe it to
yourself to read this book." - Library Journal on Salvage the
s
"Salvage the s is an engaging novel that, on the surface,
seems like a sorrowful tale of a broken household, yet holds
beneath it the cherished story of family and loyalty." - The Root
"Men We Reaped is an important, and perhaps essential, book, in
large part because this accomplished and deservedly lauded
novelist somehow summoned the strength to bring us all home with
her to the white-hot center of her pain, to the place where that
wolf resides." - San Francisco Chronicle
"The good news, at least for readers, is that Ward tells a rotten
fucking story fucking brilliantly. Her prose is conversational
and unadorned. It's deceptively simple, until a moment of
wrenching tragedy - or surprisingly often, one of astounding
beauty - arrives with dangerous propulsion, knocking you off the
foot that had seemed to care." - Willamette Weekly
"Ward creates nuanced and loving portraits of African-American
men and boys...a must read." - The Dallas Morning News
"At a time when many cl America has moved into a post-racial
era...Ward uses her family history to reach a personal, yet
universal, understanding of the effects that race, class, and
gender have had on her life, her community, and her generation."
- BUST
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About the Author
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Jesmyn Ward received her M.F.A. from the University of
Michigan and is currently an associate professor of creative
writing at Tulane University. She is the editor of the anthology
The Fire This Time and the author of the novel Where the Line
Bleeds as well as two National Book Award-winning novels, Salvage
the s and Sing, Unburied, Sing. A 2017 MacArthur Fellow in
Fiction, Ward lives in DeLisle, Mississippi.
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