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    How We Fight For Our Lives
    How We Fight For Our Lives
    How We Fight For Our Lives
    Audiobook5 hours

    How We Fight For Our Lives

    Written by Saeed Jones

    Narrated by Saeed Jones

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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, 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. 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. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 8, 2019
    ISBN9781508297444
    Author

    Saeed Jones

    Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and tweets @TheFerocity.

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    Reviews for How We Fight For Our Lives

    4.5/5

    331 ratings16 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Short and sweet, left wishing I could hear more stories from him.
    • 5/5
      Excellent, very well written book. I loved it so
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I feel it has an important message that needs to be heard.
    • 3/5
      Decent .
      Only really made me miss my mom a couple times though.?
    • 4/5
      This is the most honest memoir I've read to date. The author unwittingly confirms so many commonalities in different walks of life.
    • 5/5
      Jones shares deeply intimate and unique experiences with great wit and observation. I haven’t heard a voice like his before; frank, curious and brimming with wisdom and awareness. Among the best memoirs in recent years
    • 5/5
      This book is so sweet and also deep and kind, I loved it
    • 4/5
      Saeed’s story of his life so far is funny and heartbreaking. His love story with his dear mama is also tender and heartbreaking. He’s deserving of His success and his story is deserving of a listen.
    • 4/5
      This is a very honest and candid memoir of the author's coming of age and coming into acceptance of who he is and what he wants. The author is quite the compelling storyteller and had me anxiously anticipating every "next" story. Excellent book.
    • 5/5
      Bittersweet. Honest. Beautiful and meaningful. Highly recommended to other gay men of Colour.
    • 4/5
      A heartfelt memoir about being black queer human and learning to find your own way
    • 5/5
      It is raw and heart wrenching. a must-read book for all people.
    • 5/5
      Feels like the nephew of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and Frank Conroy's "Stop Time" I friggin loved it.
    • 5/5
      What can I say that hasn't already been said? It's lovely. The last chapter is one of the loveliest tributes I've read to a beloved mother. It reads both as a collection of essays and an eloquent whole. It is very personal and intimate and reaches out at the same time. Jones has written a lovely treasure of a book.
    • 5/5
      This is the only kind of memoir I want to read; it's short, it's focused and to the point, and it's excellently written.
    • 4/5
      "Being black can get you killedBeing gay can get you killedBeing a black gay boy is a death wish"So Saeed Jones understands the challenges he faces as a young man. This memoir follows his evolution into adulthood coming to terms with his sexuality, race, and especially the troubled relationship with his mother. The memoir captures the extreme risks he takes to explore his sexuality. One wonders why he didn't find more satisfying partners as a young man and only hopes that this will eventually happen for him. His relationship with his mother is especially poignant as it evokes the all too common black mother struggling to raise and protect her children alone in a world that views them with hostility. Only after her death does he come to appreciate her importance to his development. Meeting the old woman in Barcelona is a powerful metaphor for his relationship with his mother. Memoirs written by young people can be unsatisfying reads because of the lack of a wider life experience. Certainly, this seems to be a problem here, but Saeed copes remarkably well.