How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir

Saeed Jones

ISBN 10: 1508297460 ISBN 13: 9781508297468

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio and Blackstone Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.

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, Jones s memoir tells the story of 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 mother and grandmother, 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.

Blending poetry and prose, Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and 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.

About this title

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 is a cohost of BuzzFeed's morning show, AM to DM, and previously served as BuzzFeed's LGBT editor and Culture editor. 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 New York City and tweets @TheFerocity.

Review

A powerful collection...with a high level of craft, emotion, and metaphor.

--"Ebony"

Jones has crafted a fever dream, something akin to magic.

--"Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Prelude to Bruise"

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio and Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1508297460
• ISBN 13: 9781508297468
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1