so it was a silence for us.” Jones acknowledged the pain of shutting off part of himself for their benefit, but he also understands that some of his mother’s and grandmother’s struggle to accept this part of his identity came from a place of concern. We said ‘I love you.’ Though she practiced nature and Buddhism and was pretty liberal leaning and progressive in a lot of ways… homosexuality queerness, the education just wasn’t there …. “My mother and I had a vibrant, warm relationship,” he said. They discussed Jones’ complicated relationships with his mother and grandmother, who struggled to accept his sexuality. As part of the Talking Volumes series, Jones joined MPR’s Brandt Williams at the Parkway Theater. 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.When Saeed Jones sat down to write his memoir, he had one central question: What are the costs of being made to feel that you cannot be your whole self? In “How We Fight for Our Lives,” Jones describes his experience living with that question as a gay, black kid growing up in suburban Texas.
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.Īn award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful-a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze.
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 family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about 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. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’” We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves.
“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times The Washington Post NPR Time The New Yorker O, The Oprah Magazine Harper’s Bazaar Elle BuzzFeed Goodreads and many more. #10 in Bestselling LGBTQIA+ Nonfiction Audiobooksįrom award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives-winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award-is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” ( The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
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