eahaynes's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
nglofile's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars. There's often a tension in my reading life among what I want to read, what I feel I should read, and what I'm ready to read. (This is further complicated by my profession, but that's a conversation for a different time.) When Men We Reaped was first published, I had not a single doubt that it would be worthwhile. I wanted to read it. It seemed an important book and was by an author for whom I already had an enormous amount of respect. However, it was easy to keep putting this work off, especially when I felt I had enough emotional weight to carry. Whether or not that was the right call for those times, I neglected to trust what I already knew of this author: her skill in creating empathy and hope in even the most challenging contexts. I am richer for reading her story.
One of the challenges of memoirs is that the reader is often at a remove. We're reading a life that is unlike our own. Though reading allows us a vicarious experience, there's also an element of sitting back while a story is presented. This is where Ward stands apart. As a gifted fiction writer, she crafts these episodes of her life as narrative, immersing the reader so that we feel very much a part of the action and emotions and cannot simply keep distance as observers. We aren't paging through someone else's scrapbook of memories; we are projecting ourselves into them, and that brings an inescapable power to message.
Ward's use of language is one of my favorite qualities of her writing. I'll include a particularly moving passage here because I want to be able to revisit. It comes before the final section and actually isn't characteristic of the experiential nature of the earlier chapters, but it is an elegant signalling to the reader of what everything that came before was building toward and how it is even more deeply personal:
audiobook note: If I ever hear Jesmyn Ward speak, I will be momentarily taken aback that her voice is not that of narrator Cherise Boothe. Boothe reads Ward's words with such passion and nuance that I often forget that I'm not hearing Ward herself. There is a purity to her performance that enhances without being showy, and I for one am grateful that they have chosen to partner together on every audio adaptation thus far. In this work specifically, Boothe skillfully toggles among characters and tones, never losing sight of the harsh truths of the author’s personal experience. Her performance underscores the resignation, strength, uncertainty, and stubborn hope that make this layered, lyrical memoir unforgettable.
One of the challenges of memoirs is that the reader is often at a remove. We're reading a life that is unlike our own. Though reading allows us a vicarious experience, there's also an element of sitting back while a story is presented. This is where Ward stands apart. As a gifted fiction writer, she crafts these episodes of her life as narrative, immersing the reader so that we feel very much a part of the action and emotions and cannot simply keep distance as observers. We aren't paging through someone else's scrapbook of memories; we are projecting ourselves into them, and that brings an inescapable power to message.
Ward's use of language is one of my favorite qualities of her writing. I'll include a particularly moving passage here because I want to be able to revisit. It comes before the final section and actually isn't characteristic of the experiential nature of the earlier chapters, but it is an elegant signalling to the reader of what everything that came before was building toward and how it is even more deeply personal:
This is where the past and the future meet. This is after the pit bull attack, after my father left, and after my mother's heart broke. This is after the bullies in the hallway, after the nigger jokes, after my brother told me what he'd done as we stood out on the street...This is where my two stories come together. This is the summer of the year 2000. This is the last summer that I will spend with my brother. This is the heart. This is. Every day, this is.There are points to be made about society and culture, and stories such as these make those arguments more effectively than polemics, but this is first and foremost a personal story.
audiobook note: If I ever hear Jesmyn Ward speak, I will be momentarily taken aback that her voice is not that of narrator Cherise Boothe. Boothe reads Ward's words with such passion and nuance that I often forget that I'm not hearing Ward herself. There is a purity to her performance that enhances without being showy, and I for one am grateful that they have chosen to partner together on every audio adaptation thus far. In this work specifically, Boothe skillfully toggles among characters and tones, never losing sight of the harsh truths of the author’s personal experience. Her performance underscores the resignation, strength, uncertainty, and stubborn hope that make this layered, lyrical memoir unforgettable.
cheers_amanda's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
claireechalk's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0