Men We ReapedMen We Reaped

A memoir that examines rural poverty and the lingering strains of racism in the South by the author of Salvage the bones.
In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life: to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships.