Men We Reaped: A Memoir | 
Even though this memoir is not the happiest, it is my favorite book of April 2021. A beautiful, sad, thoughtful memoir. #12booksof2021 @Andrew65
pickThis book is a gut punch and necessarily so. It‘s about systemic racism, but told at the micro-level of her family and community rather than the macro-level of some other works on the topic and thus brings an important perspective to the topic. The writing is urgent and painful and beautiful. So important.
Finished today as part of #Adventathon Day 22
“My parents were screaming at each other, their voices loud and carrying out of the windows, but I could not understand what they were saying. I heard one word repeated over and over again: you. You and you and you and you! This was punctuated by throwing things. The sun had set, and the evening sky was fading blue to black. Above Joshua‘s and my head, bats swooped, diving for insects. The windows shone yellow.” #Adventathon day 13
It‘s ok, April. I only wanted to read the epigraphs and table of contents today. 😆 Enjoy your nap. #catsoflitsy
#Adventathon Day 12
This package from @Scochrane26 for #HHS #HauntedHallowSwap is just delightful! I‘m so looking forward to reading Jesmyn Ward‘s memoir and glad to hear that it was one of your favorites this year! Children of Men looks super suspenseful. The tea will be perfect to have while curled up with a book and the tea towel is adorable. I love the smell of the goat milk soap and know my skin can use the sugar cube scrub. So cool that they are local goodies!
"...I found the adage about time healing all wounds to be false: grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief. We are nervous free from the feeling that we have failed. We are never free from self-loathing. We are never free from the feeling that made this mess."
pickThis book was so beautifully written but devastating, each loss the author suffered piling atop another. Absolutely gutting.
#curiouscovers #grey has me looking around and thinking of #BLM racism and social justice.
@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
pickWard‘s memoir accounts her personal history and grief after the deaths of five Black men in her life over the course of 4 years. But it also is a broader study of the often common tragedy of being and loving Black men in the American South. Ward‘s writing is raw and superb; grief dripping from the pages. Grief not only for the lives lost, but grief for all the Black men that “wanted more for himself, but he didn‘t know how to get it.” 4 ⭐️
I started Jesmyn Ward‘s memoir today and found these two epigraphs to be incredibly moving. The quote from Harriet Tubman in particular brought me to tears.
pickFinished just in time for #AuthorAMonth. A tough but necessary read. #ownvoices
pickThis was an incredible and heartbreaking memoir.the resilience that Jesmyn award has shown following the loss of five young men who were close to her within four years, 3 of whom their deaths occurred in a year. I can‘t even imagine suffering that kind of loss and finding the strength to keep moving forward and getting out of bed each day. #AuthorAMonth #BookSpinBingo
pickHeart and soul wrenching. Jesmyn Ward shares her losses of men in her life — too many — and also shares statistics on mental health of men like the ones she knew and loved. Very sad but an important read.
Read for #authoramonth @Soubhiville
This was tough to read but Ward writes so flawlessly that you can‘t stop. Losing friends, siblings, and cousins is excruciating especially when they are children or young adults. But those deaths teach us to love fiercely those who remain, and to survive with dignity.
#authoramonth2021 @Soubhiville
#bookspinbingo #doublespin @TheAromaofBooks
pickShe wrote this memoir to honor her fallen friends and family, especially her little brother. Fallen of too much despair in the circuitous, neverending system of being poor, being Black, and being men in the deep south. The way Ward organized her writing was brilliant. It breaks my heart that casual racism in housing, employment, education is still causing death.
#AuthorAMonth @Soubhiville
#AwesomeApril @Andrew65 book 3
pickIt‘s probably not a good idea to read this in one sitting, I feel a bit battered now.
A wonderful read, with so much to talk about.
Again, this is why I don‘t read a lot of NF though, because I can‘t reassure myself it‘s just a story.
Thanks Misty - you‘ve probably long forgotten you sent me this ❤️
pickRarely do books make me cry but wow, this one sure did. Heartbreakingly raw, intense, grief-stricken, the author lifts up the lives of important men in her life who were taken from her. It‘s a brutal read but a fundamental one. #AuthorAMonth
I. A character from The Nightingale 😭 but don‘t want to do a spoiler
II. Quite difficult to narrow down to 1, but I‘ll say How to Walk Away
III. ⬆️
#thoughtfulthursday @MoonWitch94
This one is taking me a while to get through it....It‘s a very heavy memoir.
pickI loved this book! Yes, it was sad, serious, and full of death, but it resonated with me. As most of you know, Ward writes about her childhood/young adulthood and alternates with the stories of 5 men who died in her neighborhood, including her brother. She writes vividly about the obstacles Black men & women face in her area, her grief, and her community. I connected to her loss of young friends. I‘ve lost young ones to car accidents, suicide, 👇
pickThis is my first by Jesmyn Ward. I love the way she writes and will definitely be reading more.
She‘s seen so much tragedy in her life. It‘s obvious by the blurb, but be prepared to cry.
#authoramonth
pickWhat a compelling, devastating read. Jesmyn has seen so much loss, and she writes so eloquently about it. She follows the deaths of five close-to-her men in reverse chronological order back to her brothers death, while following her family‘s life forward from her parents‘ courtship in alternate chapters. If you have any doubts about the unique difficulties of being Black in the US, especially in the Deep South, read this. #audiobook #authoramonth
pickThroughout my life, I have tried to understand the dynamics of race, to “put myself in the shoes of another person.” Ward‘s book helped me realize that I have never once come close to truly understanding what it is like to live in a world where you are not protected by the umbrella of colour and privilege. This book was a stunning lesson in how to truly understand race - we should all read it if we want to learn a little more. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Authors I‘ve read all their books:
Jesmyn Ward -Jason Reynolds -Jacqueline Woodson - Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston- Maya Angelo- Alice Walker- Bells Hooks -Angela Davis- James Baldwin-Alex Haley-Langston Hughes-Richard Wright-Zadie Smith-Audre Lorde-Angie Thomas -Nella Larsen-Roxanne Gay- Mildred D. Taylor-Gwendolyn Brooks-Nikki Giovanni -Rita Williams-Garcia- Christopher Paul Curtis
Many more
Lupita Nyong'o my favorite new picture book
Author Grid of authors I read more than once this year 🤍
Victor Hugo
Shakespeare
LM Montgomery
Lang Leav
Toni Morrison
EE Cummings
Jesmyn Ward
Nic Stone
Nikki Giovanni
Hemingway
Stacy Lee
Danielle Steel
Rebecca Searle
Jane Austen
Kamala Harris
Proust
#Memoir
#ThankfulThoughts
I would love to meet her... She has lost so many men in her life.. 💔
This is heart wrenching to read, but please do 👇🏻😪😓💔
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-gri...
pickA beautifully written and heartbreaking memoir of grief, poverty, race, and the loss of black men‘s lives close to Ward. An important and moving book for everyone to read.
https://www.fatherly.com/news/jesmyn-wards-essay-on-losing-her-husband-during-co...
I read this the day it came out. I can‘t stop thinking about it https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-gri...
I‘ve read Jesmyn Ward‘s fiction but not her nonfiction work. This one is on my TBR, as is The Fire This Time, a collection of essays she edited, all responding to James Baldwin. #AugustAuthors
“My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: we didn‘t trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system. And even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us we're perpetually less, we distrusted each other.“
#integrateyourshelf
But this grief, for all its awful weight, insists that he matters. What we carry of Roger and Demond and CJ and Ronald says they matter. I have written only the nuggets of my friends‘ lives. This story is only a hint of what my brother‘s life was worth, more than the 19 years he lived, more than the 13 years he‘s been dead. It is worth more than I can say. And there‘s my dilemma, because all I can do in the end is say.
pickOver five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five men she was close to, including her brother. She weaves their stories with her memories of growing up in Mississippi, exploring the ways that poverty and institutional racism contributed to their deaths. This was a tough read but so worth it. #integrateyourshelf
so-soI thought this book would gut me. It switches between stories of deaths of young black men in the author's hometown and her personal memoir. While it was well written and I connected to the memoir sections, the accounts of death did not grab me as much. It finally all came together with the author's brother's death, which was the second to last chapter. That delay in truly personal connection to these deaths took me out too much too often.
Gorgeous day for a boat ride. Been slowly making my way through this book, hoping to finish it this weekend. It hasn't captured me as much as I thought, but it's especially hard to get into with scenery like this.
This incredible memoir of life, love, & loss is a kindle deal today.
That's my 13 year old son walking to Radiant Students (youth group) first the first time in several months. This campus is 45 minutes away. But I don't mind, I'm enjoying the sunshine in my car and reading the tagged book. @TheBookHippie @Wife @Sward7 #LMPBC
Books somewhere around 60 plus
LGBTQIA 6
DIVERSE 29 breakdown below
BLACK 20
BIPOC 9
Not included in count:
Every daily book readings in school that I read for read a louds always includes a diverse book along with another type book. I did not count those.
My books I read with kids at the alternative school are 80 percent BIPOC or POC or LGBTQIA
My preference is classical literature which is difficult to find diverse that I enjoy.
Yay! I just picked up the two books I ordered for #BlackoutBestsellerList and #BlackPublishingPower.
I loved the one book I read by J. Ward and Citizen had an intriguing description.
Good Talk is a relevant bonus buy -- Indian mother has variations of The Talk with her mixed race son, told in graphic novel format!
I‘m so glad I saw this on your page @TheBookHippie
https://bookshop.org/lists/antiracist-reading-list
'After I left New York, I found the adage about time healing all wounds
to be false: grief doesn‘t fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into
new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never
free from grief. We are never free from the feeling that we have failed. We
are never free from self-loathing. We are never free from the feeling that
something is wrong with us, not with the world that made this mess.'
pick@TheBookHippie @Sward7 @Princess-Kingofkings @suvata This was a tough one. I could hear the author‘s voice at times, but not always. The trauma of her story was difficult for me to absorb right now. It‘s an important read and I could tell the she wrote her heart into it. I am glad I read it. Thank you for choosing this Christine. 3/5🖤s #LMPBC I‘ll send this out to Nichole soon.
