"We all think we could have done something to save them. Something to pull them from death’s maw, to have said: I love you. You are mine. We dream of speaking when we lack the gift of oratory, when we lack the vision to see the stage, the lights, the audience, the endless rigging and ropes and set pieces behind us, manipulated by many hands."
Jesmyn Ward's memoir is alternately devastating, melancholic, loving, poignant, and revealing. The result is a searing commentary on the psychic and emotional toll that poverty and racism wreak on tight-knit communities in the South.
With a title pulled from a Harriet Tubman quote ("We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped."), the book is the result of excruciating, painful work by the author, dealing with avoidance and reliving devastating moments.
" ... 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."
Through the stories of loss surrounding five men beloved to the author, "Men We Reaped" pulls no punches in discussing faith, addiction, trust, and hopelessness in a crumbling Mississippi town. Ward is at her best when examining the life-long struggles to shake the grief associated with the death of her brother, Joshua.
While Ward largely brushes aside her own role in breaking out of the mold set for her by virtue of her upbringing, she doesn't ignore the constant call of home and family amid her experiences at elite academic institutions around the country.
"Men We Reaped" stands tall among the ever-growing oeuvre of one of America's most gifted and unflinching writers.
"Once, they lived. We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing. We drank too much, smoked too much, were abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered. There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it."
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