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Saeed Jones

How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir Hardcover – October 8, 2019

by Saeed Jones (Author)

4.6 1,204 ratings

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From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives—winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award—is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.

One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Elle; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; and many more.

“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 about 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.

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208 pages
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English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster
Publication date

October 8, 2019
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.8 x 8.38 inches
ISBN-10

1501132733
ISBN-13

978-1501132735
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES BY SAEED JONES

“[A] devastating memoir….Jones is fascinated by power (who has it, how and why we deploy it), but he seems equally interested in tenderness and frailty. We wound and save one another, we try our best, we leave too much unsaid….A moving, bracingly honest memoir that reads like fevered poetry.”—THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"A raw and eloquent memoir. One could say that Saeed Jones' new memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, is a classic coming-of-age story….But Jones' voice and sensibility are so distinct that he turns one of the oldest of literary genres inside out and upside down. How We Fight for Our Lives is at once explicitly raunchy, mean, nuanced, loving and melancholy. It's sometimes hard to read and harder to put down." —MAUREEN CORRIGAN, NPR'S "FRESH AIR"

"Extremely personal, emotionally gritty, and unabashedly honest, How We Fight for Our Lives is an outstanding memoir that somehow manages a perfect balance between love and violence, hope and hostility, transformation and resentment.....Jones writes with the confidence of a veteran novelist and the flare of an accomplished poet. This is an important coming-of-age story that's also a collection of tiny but significant joys. More importantly, it's a narrative that cements Jones as a new literary star — and a book that will give many an injection of hope."—NPR

“Urgent, immediate, matter of fact….The prose in Saeed Jones’s memoir How We Fight for Our Lives shines with a poet’s desire to give intellections the force of sense impressions.”—THE NEW YORKER

"Jones’ explosive and poetic memoir traces his coming-of-age as a black, queer, and Southern man in vignettes that heartbreakingly and rigorously explore the beauty of love, the weight of trauma, and the power of resilience."—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"[Jones'] tenacious honesty compels us to be honest with ourselves. His experiences—negotiating grief, family dynamics, and a forthright identity—require our reckoning."—KIRKUS PRIZE 2019 CITATION

“[This] memoir marks the emergence of a major literary voice…written with masterful control of both style and material.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)

“Powerful…Jones is a remarkable, unflinching storyteller, and his book is a rewarding page-turner.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)

"An unforgettable memoir that pulls you in and doesn’t let go until the very last page."—LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)

"A luminous, clear-eyed excavation of how we learn to define ourselves, “How We Fight for Our Lives” is both a coming-of-age story and a rumination on love and loss....a radiant memoir that meditates on the many ways we belong to each other and the many ways we are released."—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"There are moments of devastating ugliness and moments of ecstatic joy...infused with an emotional energy that only authenticity can provide."—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

"Phenomenal....In this profound, concise memoir, the 33-year-old writer isolates key moments from his youth and sharpens their points for maximum effect. We follow a young, searching Jones through his early years with his loving single mother, along a path of unrequited lust, furtive sexual experiences, and disapproving relatives, through his hard-won self-acceptance and into the grief of losing the person closest to him."—INTERVIEW MAGAZINE

"Jones’ evocative prose has a layered effect, immersing readers in his state of mind, where gorgeous turns of phrase create some distance from his more painful memories. Although its length is short (just 189 pages), How We Fight For Our Lives fairly pulses with pain and potency; there is enough turmoil and poetry and determination in it to fill whole bookshelves."—THE AV CLUB

"How We Fight for Our Lives is a primer in how to keep kicking, in how to stay afloat...Thank god we get to be part of that world with Saeed Jones’ writing in it."—LAMBDA LITERARY

"Jones' unabashed honesty and gift for self-aware humor will resonate with readers, especially those in search of a story that resembles their own."
—BOOKLIST

“Scorching…a commentary not only on what it takes to become truly and wholly oneself, but on race and LGBTQ identity, power and vulnerability, and how relationships can make and break us along the way.”
—GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“This memoir is a rhapsody in the truest sense of the word, fragments of epic poetry woven together so skillfully, so tenderly, so brutally, that you will find yourself aching in the way only masterful writing can make a person ache. How We Fight for Our Lives is that rare book that will show you what it means to be needful, to be strong, to be gloriously human and fighting for your life.”
—ROXANE GAY, author of Hunger

“This book. Oh my goodness. It is everything everyone needs right now—both love song and battle cry, brilliant as fuck and at times, heartbreaking as hell. Every single living half-grown and grownup body needs to read this book. I’m shook. I’m changed.”
—JACQUELINE WOODSON, author of Another Brooklyn

“There will be little left to say, and so much left to make after the world experiences Saeed Jones's How We Fight for Our Lives. This is that rare piece of literary art that teaches us how to read and write on every page. It's so black. So queer. So subtextual, and amazingly so sincere. Saeed changes everything we thought we knew about memoir writing, narrative structure, and heart meat. All three are obliterated. All three are tended to over and over again. All three will never ever be the same after this book. It's really that good.”
—KIESE LAYMON, author of Heavy

About the Author

Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and tweets @TheFerocity.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: May 1998

1MAY 1998LEWISVILLE, TEXAS

The waxy-faced weatherman on Channel 8 said we had been above 90 degrees for ten days in a row. Day after day of my T-shirt sticking to the sweat on my lower back, the smell of insect repellant gone slick with sunscreen, the air droning with the hum of cicadas, dead yellow grass cracking under every footstep, asphalt bubbling on the roads. It didn’t occur to me to be nervous about the occasional wall of white smoke on the horizon that summer. Everything already looked like it was scorched, dead, or well on its way.

I was twelve years old and I had just finished the sixth grade. Most days, after Mom headed to her job at the airport, I would stay inside our apartment, stationed by the window. Cody and his younger brother, Sam, two white boys who lived a few apartment buildings over from us, were always playing catch in the parking lot, though I never joined them. I wasn’t good at throwing the ball and it was too hot for me to go out and pretend.

When I wasn’t at my perch, acting like I wasn’t watching them, I would flip through Mom’s old paperback books. So far, I had tried out Tar Baby and The Color Purple, both unsuccessfully. Toni Morrison’s sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didn’t obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldn’t see my feet; I retreated back to the shore. Alice Walker lost me because, a few pages in, some girl was talking about the color of her pussy. I figured the book didn’t have much more to offer me after that.

Today I tried again. I picked up a worn copy of Another Country by James Baldwin, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and started reading. A sad man walks through the streets of New York City late one winter night. He goes into a jazz club looking for someone or something but doesn’t say why.

Minutes pooled into hours. Black people sleeping with white people. Men kissing men, then kissing women, then kissing men again. Every few pages, I would look up from the book and peek at our apartment’s front door. Mom wasn’t home from work yet and I felt like I would get in trouble if she saw me reading this book. I went into my bedroom, with our cocker spaniel, Kingsley, trailing behind me, and I closed the door.

The novel turned me on. I didn’t know books were capable of anything like this. Until now, I had liked reading but it was just something you did. A good thing, like drinking water on a hot day, but nothing special. Holding Another Country in my hands, I felt that the book was actually holding me. Sad, sexy, and reeking of jazz, the story had its arm around my waist. I could walk right into the scene, take off my clothes, and join one of the couples in bed. I could taste their tongues.

About a third of the way into the novel, I found a Polaroid tucked between the pages like a bookmark. It was a picture of a man I had never seen before. He didn’t resemble anyone in my family, but, for all I knew, he could have been a distant cousin or uncle. He was leaning against a sedan with his arms crossed and an odd smile on his face, as if the person holding the camera had just told him an inside joke. Or maybe this man was doing the telling. The smile felt intimate, inappropriate, like a hand sliding down where it should not be.

Someone had written “Jackson, Mississippi, 1982” on the back, but I could’ve figured that out on my own. The man was dressed like an extra in a Michael Jackson video. He had on a knit sweater and black, acid-washed jeans that were way too tight. I could see the whites of his socks. And I knew he was in Mississippi because of the red dust all over his sneakers. On a trip to Mississippi with my aunt once, I’d seen that dirty redness on every car, lapping at the sides of houses like flood tides, and all over the loafers I was wearing. “That’s what Mississippi does to you,” my aunt had said when she saw my shoes. I kept on trying to use one foot to brush red dirt off the other, only making things worse.

I decided I didn’t like the man in the picture. The dirt on his shoes irritated me, and the longer I looked at his smile, the more I felt like he was looking directly at me. Not at the camera in 1982, but at me, sixteen years later. He grinned like he knew something about me, a punch line I hadn’t figured out yet.

When Mom came home from work, she headed straight into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water from the Ozark jug. That was part of her routine. She’d drink the entire glass right there in front of the fridge. Then she’d walk into her room and stare at the TV for a little bit, listening to the weatherman deliver a forecast—more heat—she already knew.

Mom was beautiful but always on the edge of exhaustion. When she was in her twenties, she had worked briefly as a fashion model. Sometimes she’d let me look at pictures of her from those days, hair in box braids, her lithe frame draped in gowns her sister had designed, posing on runways. Even a long day of work couldn’t deny her the colors her black hair flashed, like raven feathers, when the light hit it just so. I was proud of her beauty, my first diva. Even as my body felt mangled by puberty, I took consolation in the fact that I came from a woman like her: a woman who read three newspapers every day, who could make everyone in a room light up with laughter, who would tuck notes into my lunch box daily, signing off, “I love you more than the air I breathe.”

After working at the airport all day, Mom was too tired for any of my questions, so I waited until she’d had a cigarette. After a smoke, she would be ready to talk.

She saw the Polaroid in my hand when I walked up to her. “I’d been wondering what happened to that.” She held the photo in her hand gently, as if it would crumble to dust if she wasn’t careful. Her face softened just a little.

“Who is he?” I asked.

She looked out the window at the oak tree right outside the living room. She stared at it long and hard, like she was waiting for some signal. Moments like this had taught me how to shut up and wait for an answer. When I was younger, I would give up during Mom’s pauses because I thought the answer wasn’t going to come. Eventually I learned that she was just testing me, to see how serious I was about finding out.

I stared at the window with her, then arched one eyebrow.

She sighed.

“A friend from school. We’d go on road trips together now and then. We went to Jackson once.”

She paused again, still looking at the tree. For a moment, it was quiet inside the apartment and out, like the heat was making the entire town hold its breath. Then Cody and Sam started yelling at each other in the parking lot.

Mom frowned and turned back to me.

“Not too long after that, he found out he was sick and… and he killed himself.”

She was already walking back to the kitchen for more water, which was her way of saying that the conversation was over. It was too hot, the day too long.

I wanted to see the man’s picture again. He had looked healthy to me. He was young, early twenties. And what did being sick have to do with killing yourself?

“Sick with what?” I called out, even as I felt bad for asking.

I had stepped into someone else’s house without their permission, but now that I was inside I couldn’t help looking around.

“AIDS,” she said.

She breezed into her bedroom and closed the door. I could hear her open a drawer and turn the TV on. I tried to listen for the weatherman’s predictions, but the volume was down too low.

I went back into my room and pulled Another Country out from under my pillow. After reading and rereading the same paragraph several times, I set the book back down.

AIDS, I thought. Shit.

She hadn’t even said her friend’s name.

“GAY” WASN’T A word I could imagine actually hearing my mom say out loud. If I pictured her moving her lips, “AIDS” came out instead. But in the days following our conversation about the photograph, I could feel the word “gay”—or maybe the word’s conspicuous absence—vibrating in the air between us.

I’d read in one of my nature books that there are some sounds that occur at a frequency only dogs and special radios can pick up on. Sounds that can only be heard if you were designed to hear them. I could hear that word ringing high above every conversation, every moment, because I thought about being gay all the time.

I heard it vibrating in the air when I watched Cody and his friends playing pickup in the park, sweat making their shirts transparent and heavy, their nipples poking at the fabric. I could hear it too when I thought about the man in the photograph. I wished I still had the Polaroid, but it would’ve been weird to ask Mom if I could look at it again. I wanted to see his smile; I thought I would understand it better now.

I carried that man’s smile in my head for three days until the smirk became a laugh, a taunt, a howl. One morning as Mom got ready to leave for work, I stared at the ceiling, then closed my eyes when she opened my bedroom door to let the dog in. Whenever she left, Kingsley would panic, pressing his face against the window so he could watch her car pull away. It happened five days a week; but each morning he was just as frantic, as if this would be the day she left, never to return.

With Kingsley yipping at my ankles, I ventured into Mom’s room. The picture wasn’t on her dresser and I thought about going through her drawers to find it. The last time I had done that, though, I’d found her vibrator. The discovery had been its own punishment.

Still, I knew that there was a place I could go to get the answers I wouldn’t find at home. Throwing on clothes without even eating, I opened the front door and locked it behind me. Kingsley barked and scratched at the sill as if he were trying to warn me.

IN THE PUBLIC library’s air-conditioned coolness, I decided I knew better than to ask the wrinkled woman at the circulation desk where to find books about being gay. Instead, I slowly walked up and down each aisle, scanning book spines until I found what I was looking for. The first book that stopped me was for parents dealing with gay children. The introduction was worded like it was intended for readers coping with a late-stage cancer diagnosis. I put the book back on the shelf, wrong side out.

Eventually, I gathered five or six books and sat down on the floor with them in my lap. Like any teenage boy trained at reading things he shouldn’t be, I looked both ways before opening any, then got up and grabbed a decoy off the shelf. It was a book about the “sociology of boys.” I kept it open on the second chapter and within reach in case someone I knew came down the aisle and I needed a quick alibi.

While I was reading a book about “defining homosexuality,” my dick started to get hard. The writing certainly wasn’t sexy; the language was outdated and dry. Still my body responded.

That changed as I read further into the books in my pile. All the books I found about being gay were also about AIDS. Gay men dying of AIDS like it was a logical sequence of events, a mathematical formula, or a life cycle. Caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly; gay boy, gay man, AIDS. It was certain. Mom’s friend got AIDS because he was gay. Because he was gay, he killed himself. Because he knew he was dying anyway.

I read about gay men who were abandoned by their families when they came out. Or worse, who didn’t tell anyone that they were gay, even when lesions started to blossom on their skin like awful flowers. Either way, the men in those books always seemed to die alone. I took some comfort in the fact that Mom knew about her friend’s illness. Maybe he had been able to tell the people close to him. Maybe Mom was the kind of person you could tell.

When I stood up to put the books back on the shelf, I realized my hands were shaking. I felt like I had made the mistake of asking a fortune-teller to look into my future, and now I was being punished for trying to look too far ahead. Walking outside, the blast of hot air was a relief.

I passed the park on the way home, and the usual boys were on the basketball court. Shirts and skins. I looked at their bodies, but only for a moment. I couldn’t really focus. In every man’s expression, shimmering amid the heat waves, I found myself searching for the face of the man in the photograph—for a hint of that smile, that beautiful, unforgivable smile.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Edition (October 8, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501132733
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501132735
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #614,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #790 in LGBTQ+ Biographies (Books)
- #2,088 in Black & African American Biographies
- #21,132 in Memoirs (Books)

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Saeed Jones

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Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the 2020 Stonewall Book Award/Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award, a 2020 Publishing Triangle Award, and a 2020 Lambda Literary Award. He is also the author of the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his dog Caesar.

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Leigh

4.5 stars- Coming to terms with your pain and grief

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

Saeed Jones’ memoir details his experience being a black, queer person in the South. The story also centers the complex relationship between Jones and his mother. Reading about their relationship was quite emotional because you could tell they loved each other so much, but they navigated their relationship as if there was always an elephant in the room. This is part of what kept me captivated by this book. I kept hoping that there would eventually be a turning point between them, and they would eventually address all the issues and pain between them and renew their bond. That unfortunately didn’t happen however, and I felt this anguish for Saeed that he may not get the closure he deserved. At the same time however, this exemplifies how life is not guaranteed and if we keep waiting for opportunities to express how we feel, then we may never get the chance.

Saeed engages in a lot of self-destructive behavior particularly during his college years. I think this stems from the constant onslaught of feeling like his identity is disposable. Jones was a young adult when the tragic murders of James Byrd Jr, a black man from Texas, and Matthew Shepherd, a gay man from Wisconsin, took place. If the lives of black men and gay men are disposable and are unreasonably cut short, then what does that mean for black queer men? Jones also learned that one of his mother’s closest friends died from AIDS, yet another agent that cuts the lives of gay men, in particular, short. When you come to understand the external and internal struggle to stay alive and live fully, you might feel as though your existence is constantly under attack. Hence the title, “How we fight for our lives”. I think this is what underscored Jones’ self-destructive behavior. If people already believe the stereotypes are true-even though they aren’t- then what’s the point in proving them wrong? If people treat black men’s bodies as aggressive, animalistic, and disposable, then why try to dispel that. As readers we know that this is incredibly dehumanizing and toxic, but to Saeed he was using his body this way as a weapon. For him, engaging in toxic sexual relationships is a defense mechanism. I read another book recently (I think it was Felix Ever After) and it said that sometimes people accept the hurt and pain they think they deserve. We look for validation and affection from people who do not value us and try to hurt us. I think Jones’ accepted these toxic relationship dynamics because maybe he felt he deserved it. It was actually kind of painful to read because no one deserves to be abused or disrespected. I kept hoping that he would eventually realize his worth and start to love himself, but that also takes time.

Another poignant theme is that while grief can feel overwhelming and you may want to succumb to it, you are still alive and you still have a life to live. The grief may not ever go away but it will get easier. Also, sharing your grief with someone who understands and empathizes can also be comforting and cathartic. Grief doesn’t need to be bared alone.

“How We Fight for Our Lives” is a really poignant title because Jones discusses the mechanisms people use just to survive in this life. People may use toxic relationships to avoid reconciling their inner turmoil and self-loathing. People may put on a façade for others as a defense mechanism to hide who they truly are. People use avoidance to avoid talking about the things that truly upset them. There are many times when Saeed and his mother avoid talking about him being gay because they don’t want to upset the fragile balance they have. These are defense mechanisms used to prevent people from seeing the vulnerable parts of ourselves. If you’re trying to live in a society where your identity is devalued, then not sharing our vulnerability is necessary for survival.

I admire Saeed Jones being able to share his vulnerability with us in this book. Hopefully, this means that he’s in a better place now. I found Saeed’s story to be so engaging and I always wanted to know what would happen next even when some parts were painful. I highly recommend this book because it’s a unique and necessary story that should be shared. This book could truly make a difference in someone’s life. It also got me thinking about how I navigate my relationship with my mom. I’m thankful that I can mostly be honest with her but maybe some areas could be improved. Anyway, give this book a read, it’s honest and engaging and you might take something away from it!

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H. Williams

Thoughtful, violent, quick, episodic, and poetic - all before the age of 25

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2021

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The book group at The LGBT Center in NYC discussed this book in March 2021.

The consensus was that this was an interesting, straightforward (no significant flashbacks), but slightly short memoir. When it came time to vote on the "number of Amazon stars," however, it got a solid 4 star average, rather than the expected 5 stars. Jones is a poet; he won the Lambda Lit gay poetry award in 2014 for his book "Prelude to Bruise" and "How We Fight..." is very poetic. The book opens with a poem and the memoir is almost too literary, too poetic; maybe that's why it got 4 stars. But Jones does a terrific job of describing how he came to grips with becoming his gay, Black self.

The memoir is in four sections. The first section, "Growing Up" (my name for the section, not Jones'), begins with a moving story about a friend of his mother's who died of AIDS. His relationship with his grandmother is strained and reminded some of us of the "pray away the gay" scene we read last year in "Speak No Evil" by Uzodinma Iweala.

The second section, "Fears and Disappointments," offers stories of Jones' sexual exploration as he grew up, the sense that gaydom was in the air, the furtive sex, and the horrors he saw over and over again of being gay. It also includes his disappointment at not getting to attend NYU. Imagine how different things would have been if he'd come to NYC.

"Becoming Sexual," which largely takes place in college, includes his eroticizing of rough and anonymous sex (especially with white men, apparently) while avoiding an emotional connection, and his role as an outsider. His hook-ups with "The Botanist" are the epitome of this type of behavior, where his partner does not even have a name. The section ends with a hookup gone very bad, which many of us thought was a turning point.

The fourth section, "Mom's Death," is a substantially different feel than the first three. Here he recalls his close-but-distant relationship with his mother, his silences around her, and her silences around him, her sacrifices for him, and how she allowed him to become his own person. This section ends with Jones touring in Europe with an older woman, doing something that he never got to do with his mother.

The stories throughout the memoir are episodic; this is an exciting and poetic way to tell a life that Jones exploits to great effect. We discussed his recognition at a drag show that "gay and alone are not synonyms" and how he came out as gay to his mother, without coming out as his true self.

This is not your father's coming out story. A few readers thought there might be too much candor, too much sex, but most of us thought that it was all necessary to make his case.

"How We Fight for our Lives" has a violent title to prepare us for the violence in his story. But this is not new, previously seen in thinly disguised memoirs such as Gore Vidal's "The City and the Pillar" and John Rechy's "City of Night."

Jones shows strong confidence in his dealing with sex and it is also reflected in his writing: smart, traumatic, emotional, and both personal and individual but also highly relatable and universal.

3 people found this helpful

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Ben Long

A Memoir Shockingly Raw and Achingly Real

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 19, 2020

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📝 Review of ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕎𝕖 𝔽𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕦𝕣 𝕃𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕤
+++
“𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦. 𝘐𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘢𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧”
+++
It’s a little past midnight, but I read this memoir in one day and I need to write this review RIGHT NOW!
+++
Briefly, the memoir focuses on Saeed’s life from 1998-2011, from the age of 12 to roughly 25 (which is blowing my mind as I’m already 29 myself). It centers on his extremely personal experiences of growing up gay and black in mostly small towns under the care of a single mother. The middle of the book is mostly about Saeed’s life and sexual experiences as he transitions from high school to college, but the beginning and end bookend beautifully with his relationship with his mother (and really she’s a constant thread throughout)
+++
I appreciate Saeed’s candor and vulnerability in telling his story. There are moments both shocking and raw (sexual and violent). I am neither gay nor black, so I couldn’t personally relate to everything, but he told his story with such beauty, heart, and humanity that it was easy to empathize with all of it. Also I am not typically a fan of explicit sex in books, and word of warning here it gets graphic at times, but I am so glad overall that I read this book. Saeed gets to the heart of his experiences and the writing is both poetic and real in a way that is captivating. I simply couldn’t put it down! This book is very much about his life, but it is also a wonderful tribute to his mother and mothers everywhere.

12 people found this helpful

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Lucía

Reseña

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on July 29, 2020

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📝«People don’t just happen […] 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.»

Saeed Jones nos cuenta como ser negro y gay es la combinación perfecta para que te maten en el Sur EEUU. Creciendo en Texas como homosexual tuvo que reprimir todas sus emociones por la sociedad que le rodeaba y la mala relación con su abuela que no era capaz de aceptarlo tal y como era. Por aquel entonces toda la información que Saeed encontraba sobre la homosexualidad estaba relacionado con el VIH y parecía como si las dos cosas fuesen de la mano.

Sin ninguna educación sexual, tras la represión sufrida en la infancia y la adolescencia, el autor nos cuenta su despertar sexual y cómo se buscaba a sí mismo teniendo numerosas relaciones sexuales con hombres de todo tipo. La mayoría de ellas dañinas para el escritor que intentaba encontrarse en estas a pesar de que eran, cuanto menos, tumultuosas. Advertencia, es un libro muy explícito en lo que se refiere a las relaciones sexuales con hombres, que están narradas con todo tipo de detalle detalle.

El libro acaba con la relación con su madre y con cómo con el paso del tiempo junto con los obstáculos y las lecciones que nos da la vida, uno es capaz de encontrarse a si mismo, a pesar de haber estado perdido durante tantos años.

👉Súper consejo: como siempre que es una autobiografía os recomiendo escuchar el audiolibro narrado por el autor

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Kimberley McMechan

Graphic and potentially trauma-triggering material

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book contained some fairly graphic and shocking visuals.
Movies come with warnings for sexually explicit material, so why didn't this book?
I was not prepared, and wish I had not found myself in (carried along in the narrative) some of the scenes I found myself immersed in.

In terms of literary merit, it's beautifully written. However, the protagonist does not come to the maturity and insight I hoped he would come to by the end of the book. The author describes rampant and sometimes violent sexual promiscuity, but fails to bring the reader to any insight about himself or his behaviour by the end of the book.

Disappointing, content-wise.

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Powerful...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

I purchased as a gift. The feedback is that it is concise yet powerful, really enlightening and a great read. Looking forward to reading it.

Buse Yaman

Didn't like the content

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on September 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

Didn't like its content. Too much focus on sexual experiences than other experiences in life.

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FREE delivery: Thursday, May 18 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

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Sold by: TrickSmart

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