yossarianlives's review against another edition
5.0
Jesmyn Ward writes about her life growing up in a family, community and place that she deeply loves, which are menaced by poverty and racism. I've never read anything quite like it. The dead haunt her life. Her "escape" to college leaves her desperately homesick. The lives not lived--both by the boys lost and her parents--are keenly felt. She gets grief on the page as a hard unjust and enduring fact.
hlhindin's review against another edition
5.0
I’m not sure I can do this brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking book justice. I am grateful to Jesmyn Ward for cracking her grief open and sharing it with the world. I have learned more about systemic racism and poverty in these 251 pages than I have by participating in workshops and discussion and book clubs which started popping up in response to police brutality in the last year.
My heart hurts and my eyes are swollen. There is so much work to be done.
My heart hurts and my eyes are swollen. There is so much work to be done.
lizgrr's review against another edition
5.0
An intimate and detailed memoir that reads like a story with a first-person narrative of growing up poor and Black in Mississippi, and the indivisible bond between brothers and sisters. The way Jesmyn Ward describes the setting is beautiful and real. The analysis and story of how her brother and lost friends think and feel is raw and beautiful. This memoir is a history of family in every sense and a first person account of the fragility of Black lives in a country constructed of discriminatory and racist systems.
juliadejong's review against another edition
4.0
4.5* absolutely beautiful. I just got confused about time and everyone's age quite often. I do understand why she wrote it that way though, because going backwards in time and ending the book with her brother's death added to the experience of reading the book.
amyripley's review against another edition
5.0
Haven’t cried this much reading a book in a while. And the fact that Jesmyn Ward has experienced this much loss and then her husband died this year is unfathomable.
litgirlliv's review against another edition
3.0
Finally I have my hands and all my attention on a Jesmyn Ward book. I feel guilty that it's taken so long. That said, I was left a little disappointed. For a good chunk of my reading experience, I couldn't help but relate this book to Heavy by Kiese Laymon and flag all the many ways it fell short in comparison. Like Heavy, this memoir is set in rural Mississippi and centers themes of Blackness, poverty, gender, and family. Unlike Heavy, this memoir doesn't do all the work of connecting the author's experiences to broader social commentary. There is a reading guide at the end that invites the reader to do this work on their own, and that's helpful but also dissatisfying. Truthfully, unless you're on Beyonce-level celebrity status, vignettes of your personal life are not by themselves enriching narratives. To reach enrichment you have to douse your personal experiences with reflection and emotion that transcend your personal experiences and reach a level of social commentary. While there were several bits of this memoir that I enjoyed (particularly the last chapter), I consistently longed for it do so much more, and at times I even found it dry.
For what it's worth, I noted that Roxane Gay captured a similar flaw within her own review. She writes, "Where it falls short is that it doesn't do enough to rise above the grief. Ward only briefly addresses the issues of race and poverty and how they indelibly shape too many lives, particularly in the rural South. Instead, that the culprits of these men's demise is inextricably bound to race is treated as assumption when it needs to be far more fully realized and plainly articulated."
For what it's worth, I noted that Roxane Gay captured a similar flaw within her own review. She writes, "Where it falls short is that it doesn't do enough to rise above the grief. Ward only briefly addresses the issues of race and poverty and how they indelibly shape too many lives, particularly in the rural South. Instead, that the culprits of these men's demise is inextricably bound to race is treated as assumption when it needs to be far more fully realized and plainly articulated."