Título: Men We Reaped: A Memoir
Autor: Jesmyn Ward
Sinopse: Named one of the Best Books of the Century by New York Magazine
Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing) contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a black man in the rural South.
“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” ―Harriet Tubman
In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life―to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth―and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.
Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Men We Reaped: A Memoir”, de Jesmyn Ward, publicado pela editora Bloomsbury USA, em 2013 e com 272 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Bloomsbury USA
Páginas: 272
Ano: 2013-09-17
Edição: 1
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 160819521X
ISBN13: 9781608195213
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Bloomsbury USA oferecem uma experiência de leitura marcada por narrativas que transitam entre o thriller psicológico sofisticado, a ficção histórica e o relato biográfico detalhado. As histórias frequentemente exploram conflitos internos profundos, como crises de identidade e dilemas morais, em cenários que vão desde ambientes urbanos contemporâneos até paisagens históricas e culturais específicas. O catálogo apresenta obras com ritmo variado, ora com tensão crescente em tramas de espionagem e mistério, ora com um tom mais reflexivo e envolvente em memórias e ensaios. Há também uma presença notável de personagens complexos enfrentando desafios pessoais e sociais, que dialogam com questões como ciência, cultura e poder.
