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Jesmyn Ward describes how she lost five close men in her life within five years in her memoir Men We Reaped. The cause of death of these young men varied from accidents, drugs, suicide, and other misfortunes that befall people living in poverty, especially African American men. Women also suffer when they are left to take care of families when men die or when they leave their families to be locked up or go to find better lives elsewhere. Ward faces dilemmas, always trying to figure out why the losses happen one after the other. Consequently, she writes with the hope that she will one day understand the reason for all the misfortunes.
Growing up in rural Mississippi, Ward strongly narrates the pressures of life with men committing a crime, leaving their families, and women being left to take care of the family. The author explores the dilemma related to the finality of death. According to Ward, all the circumstances and odds left a young black man with no eventuality other than death. For instance, Ward posits that she did not know how much her friend C.J. did not like selling drugs under the tree and that he wanted a better life but did not know how to get it (Ward 78). Consequently, the author argues that opportunities were limited due to their race as African Americans. Thus, One was in a constant dilemma to commit crimes to at least survive or die in poverty.
Throughout the memoir, Ward is in a quandary that circumstances in her home in Mississippi are not favorable for an African American. The young and older generations engage in drugs and substance abuse to cope with life and high school dropout rates. Ward is, therefore, in a dilemma when she is presented with an opportunity to study in a private school funded by her mother’s employer (132). She has two options: enduring bullying at her public school and having no chance of making it to college or going to public school but still suffering due to racism.
Throughout her memoir, Ward constantly struggles to understand why she lost her close friends and family. She later realizes that her brothers and close friends died due to historical and systemic racism and economic injustices that forced them to engage in drug and substance abuse and the dissolution of families among the African American communities. Thus Ward posits, ” here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty and of economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing. We inherited these things that breed despair” (237). The author realizes that her community was in a dilemma, and either way, the results did not favor African Americans.
As the memoir concludes, Ward is still in a dilemma. The grief due to her brother’s death is too much for her to bear. She struggles between living in the uncertainty of a world full of racism where women continue to bear the burden of burial or telling a story of her community and highlighting systemic racism injustices and their effects on the African-American community. The author explains that she sometimes struggles when she remembers the loss of her close people, and thus she posits, “it is not easy. I continue. Sometimes I am tireless. And sometimes I am weary” (Ward 251). Therefore, the author still has unanswered questions concerning the factors that contributed to the death of the men in her life.
Work Cited
Ward, Jesmyn. Men We Reaped. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.
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