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 … 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.
more
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.
This book. Oh my goodness. It is everything everyone needs right now — both love song and battle cry, brilliant as f*ck 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.
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.
Bodies. My body, your body, our bodies. And in those bodies: existence. Saeed Jones in How We Fight For Our Lives explores his body and those of others, engaging in a conversation that’s powerfully universal yet completely personal. Jones thrusts us into a world that has challenged his sense of self in relation to himself and the world around him. It’s a journey wonderfully and painfully told. With writing that’s both simple yet stylistically incredible, Jones introduces us to his body both now and then. I couldn’t put his memoir down.
I listened to the audio book and was so glad that Saeed Jones narrated his own book about his own life. A life that was already difficult because the color of his skin got much harder as he is a gay black man trying to live in a world where that is not accepted. It was well written and the way the story flows, you get to know Saeed Jones in a very personal manner.
“Just as some cultures have a hundred words for snow, there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.”
Throughout the book we get a feel of his relationship with his mother. And they are close, even if he didn’t officially come out to her until much later. I feel as if she knew. Especially after a trip to NY that would alter Saeed’s life forever. But this book also delves into life in the south and with being black and with being gay. The picture painted is painfully brutal and I can’t even imagine what went through this young boy’s mind when discovering himself. Knowing all the things he did know, I was surprised by some of his first sexual experiences. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Luckily, it never really did. A little mentally and psychologically but nothing real physical like I was afraid of.
This was a well written book that opened up a small door of what it is like for not only a gay man, but a black gay man to live his life in a world that is so close-minded. I liked getting his perspective and his accounts of what he went through. He writes from the heart and so poetically. The book was personable and explicit during some parts, but what kept everything together was his strong relationship with his single mom that fought tooth and nail to give him everything he would want.
It was a story of love, a story of ‘devouring the world’ just as much as it was about his perils of being a gay black man in an unaccepting world.
This book left me gutted. And so grateful for the author. An amazing read. Highly recommended.
“Just as some cultures have a hundred words for ‘snow,’ there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.” p. 24
I have no words to do this book justice. Simply stunning in every way. Saeed Jones is incomparably talented: his words sing, slay, and soothe. Through vignettes of his life as a Black gay man from the South, he examines and interrogates race, sexuality, and loss. One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.
I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Jones speak and I imagine this would be marvelous as an audiobook. Should he ever have an event near you, by all means go.
CW: racism, homophobia, beating, death of parent, grief