How We Fight for Our Lives | 
#pridebookrec #nonfiction week
Who doesn't need a gorgeous middle American Black boy coming of age story?
Jones is spectacular.
pickIncredibly powerful memoir. Written with brutal honesty and flowing prose, Jones's nature as a poet shines through. It's really raw in places, and honestly, I struggled with the abundance of graphic scenes of sex and violence. That's not a criticism of his work - it's his truth - just an acknowledment that as a reader, I struggled with it.
pickIn this moving memoir, Jones shares what it is like to come of age as a gay Black man in the South. Growing up in suburban Lewisville, TX, he was close to his mother yet afraid to fully open up to her. At college in Kentucky, he had the space to come alive and open up to his mother, but he had some negative and awkward sexual experiences, too. He ends the memoir with his mother‘s death right after he finished grad school. #audiobook ⬇️
February reading recap: https://debbybrauer.org/#february-2021-recap
pickFor a memoir to rate so highly from me is unusual. Maybe the fact that it's short helped. [Most people's lives aren't so interesting to others that they merit more than 200–300 pages.] ⬇
pick#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks #NonFiction2021 @Riveted_Reader_Melissa
Powerful memoir! I listened to the author read this and it made the read even better.
Saeed doesn't shy away from the difficult aspects of his life and he writes with such ferocity that I couldn't stop listening once I started this one.
His relationship with his mother was touching to read. 💚💔
To celebrate MLK Day, I bought an anti-racist book from a black-owned bookstore through Libro.fm. Never too many audiobooks!!
There are many lists of black-owned bookstores online. The two closest to me have closed, unfortunately, but I picked one in a state where I used to live.
I have accepted that the way I do my monthly TBRs is to just list out all the books I m i g h t read. So here that is for January 2021. I just finished A Dead Djinn in Cairo and am currently reading Good Omens, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, Sorcery of Thorns, The Night Circus, The Starless Sea (reread), The Bloody Chamber, We Set the Night on Fire, Snagglepuss, and How We Fight for Our Lives. Let's do this, 2021 🤙🏻
pickShort but punchy!
This memoir was intimate, candid and brutally honest.
The man sure knows how to turn a phrase.
pickThe willingness to be vulnerable on the page is often what makes a memoir powerful. Saeed Jones‘ memoir overflows with vulnerability, but it‘s the way that he so tenderly weaves together the brutal and poetic that is so moving. The flap says, “Jones tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself...” The writing is really good.
So grateful to have the opportunity to join this webinar tonight. Maggie Smith and Saaed Jones talked about their writing and resiliency. They were both a total joy and I even found myself taking notes!
pickHighly recommend! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man trying to understand himself and make space for himself in his family and in the world. It is set largely in Texas and Kentucky.
Saeed Jones is a beautiful writer. His heart and soul were laid bare on these pages.
"In retrospect, I think I didn't feel as if a burden had been lifted because my being gay was never actually the burden. There was still so much I hadn't told my mother, so much I knew that I would probably never tell her. I had come out to my mother as a gay man, but within minutes, I realized I had not come out to her as myself." (p. 97-98)
~
That last sentence!
"Just as some cultures have a hundred words for "snow," there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night." (p.24) ?
pickIn many ways Saeed Jones‘s memoir of growing up black and gay is straightforward, almost pedestrian. But therein lies its power—he makes many of his experiences so relatable, so human, that it‘s impossible not to empathize. You can easily see yourself as him, allowing you to feel his story that much more deeply. Impressive writing.
pickPowerful memoir of growing up a gay Black man, son of a single mother. Great audio book read by the author.
pickSaeed Jones writes about growing up black and gay in a family that preferred not to have its secrets spoken out loud. He went on to college in Kentucky which had its own challenges but it is also where he found his voice as a writer. I particularly loved the family dynamics - single mother and Buddhism in the south makes for some great moments. How Saeed is tokenized and/or overlooked for hookups aligns with what I've heard from other black men.
"I didn't realize how much I had denied myself..."
pickI could not put this memoir down. Saeed has a unique story, but the emotions he portrayed were so universal. His stories made my heart hurt and sing. I plowed through it in two sittings. An important read during Pride and with the current political climate in the US.
Much of my reading is focused on “classics“, so this is an area where I need to make an effort in order to broaden the perspectives I encounter.
I've read two books with characters identified as LGBTQIA+, but only one was #ownvoices (the tagged) and a third book by an author that identified as gay, but the novel didn't include characters identified as LGBTQIA+
#integrateyourshelf @ChasingOm @Emilymdxn
This has been on my list forever !! Finally got a skip the line hold from the library. It‘s a beautiful 23 degrees (Celsius 🤣) today and I‘m enjoying my second day of summer vacation immensely.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/greenlight-bookstore-virtual-reopening-party-and-al...
$20 to see this amazing group of writers? I'm in.
37 books read
4 Black authors
2 NB POC authors
4 International POC authors (Japanese, Chinese, Pakistani)
0 Indigenous authors
1 LGBTQIA+ author
@ChasingOm @Emilymdxn #integrateyourshelf
According to google, 6% of the world's population is Indigenous. So I should have read at least two books by Indigenous authors. I also need to double-check my count of LGBTQIA+ authors and make a conscious effort to include more in my reading.
pickSaeed actually grew up in Lewisville, TX, which is about 20 mins from my town. I enjoyed seeing it through his eyes and reading about his life as a gay, black man in Texas. Spoiler: that's not an easy thing to be here. #lgbt #ourownvoices #pridemonth
The top row are books finished this week. The two on the left were because I am making an effort to continue educating myself. #blm The Lewis Man was my #tartannoir pick for #booked2020. I have been reading Matilda with Flo—it‘s too scary for G.
Currently reading The Witches with Flo and I‘m hoping G will warm to it. Halfway thru both The Rabbit Queen (#booked2020 #animaloncover) and White Like Her (audio). #bookreport
pickReading books is one way to get a glimpse at other people‘s lives. While our lives are quite different, I absolutely related to and loved the parts of this book where he talks about his relationship with his mother. While I‘m lucky to still have my mother, I have lost a parent, and his words on his mother will stick with me for a long time. I loved the last line, “Our mothers are why we are here.” It had two meanings and was perfect.
pickWe all know that knowledge is power, so I‘ve been making it my mission this weekend to read books that speak to the experiences and history of POC. First up is this memoir. It‘s biting and fast and tells the intersectional story of Saeed as he grows up as a gay black man in the south. He has a wonderful way with words, and his relationship with his mother really spoke to me. We don‘t always know how to connect with those we love. #blm
pickHow We Fight for Our Lives is a fantastic memoir that recounts Saeed Jones‘ experiences being a gay, black man from the South. It is haunting, heartbreaking and so powerful. I highly recommend the audiobook, which is narrated by the author.
pick2020 Read Harder Challenge, book 22
Prompt: Read a debut novel by a queer author
Title: How We Fight For Our Lives
Author: Saeed Jones
I‘m still processing this one—anything that deals with dying parents guts me. All I can say is wow. This is an incredible, poetic, heart-scraping snapshot of growing up as a gay black man in a conservative town, and of facing the loss of a beloved family member. I‘m adding all of Jones‘ poetry to my TBR list now.
We all know that feeling of getting a stack of new books and 4 of your library holds, which you made months ago, all come in AT THE SAME TIME!
Would it always be this way? Time cascading and crashing in on itself, each memory pushing me back toward the beginning of my grief. I didn‘t know if I could take it.
When I first stepped into the water, I almost laughed. At its warmth, like an embrace. The tease of the waves licking my ankles. The shock of coming into contact with a body of water that vast, then vanishing into it.
The sunflowers calmed me, so I looked at them whenever I felt tears or memories begin to take hold.
Tears don‘t always just fall; sometimes they rip through you, like storm – painted gusts instead of mere raindrops.
Sometimes I would picture a dark, tobacco – scented flower blossoming in one of her lungs, then another and another... maybe the flowers would die off one winter, only to return the following spring. It would be awful, I was sure, but it would be slow. We would have time to say goodbye. We‘d watch the season change together.
...The outlines of my silhouette beginning to crumble and come apart, the color of my skin and then the flesh itself pooling out like ink dropped into clear water. I was turning into fog. And in me, what had already been difficult – distinguishing between memory and present moment, between thought and action – became practically impossible. I could‘ve been anywhere; I could‘ve been anything.
This night would, in the end, just be one Sanskrit word uttered in a very long prayer. I slept well that night, but I didn‘t dream.
It seemed as if my life were waiting for me outside that room, like a polite guest I left behind at the table. It was rude to keep him waiting. It helped to think of my life as someone separate from me, a person who didn‘t deserve to be abandoned.
After having put so many years and miles between the scared little boy and the young man I had fought so hard to become, here I was again: alone in the crowd, the black kid trembling in the middle of a graveyard only he could perceive. “The drowned and the drowning, including always myself.”
I tried to read my face but its language was inscrutable. I didn‘t look interesting. I didn‘t look like a man who was screaming behind his smile.
This is what I thought it meant to be a man fighting for his life. If America was going to hate me for being black and gay, then I might as well make a weapon out of myself.
...I stared at an orange tree just out of reach until I finally plucked off a fruit. It seemed miraculous, oranges in the dead of of winter.
