From 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.
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.
“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,
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. 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. 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.
An 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.
is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.