In the contemporary queer canon, Jones finds himself deploying sex as commentary on how we claim, hurt, and pleasure each other. His writing treads through the mucky marshes of a violent and enduring America, one openly despising his gay Black self. His writing is tactile and immediately engrossing. If being is survival, and if experiencing life is survival, then it only makes sense to note how Jones’ prose appeals to the senses. In Saeed Jones’ memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, I discovered a type of survival baked into my queer soul. Survival can be pawing at skin and the depth of a kiss. But survival does not always have to be a picture of bloody knuckles and missing teeth. Survival is at the forefront of the queer mind. Survival is ongoing and momentous, and hard won. The way the vowels mush into each other on their way down the tongue, through the teeth, and beyond the lips. The way it sits and sours in the mouth before becoming tangible. And it's a wild heart full of need - and one desperate to communicate its humanity with the world.“Survival” appears complex. The struggles that he faced and the journey he embarked on to find and (re)define his identity after every major change are the heart of this book. His memoir highlights that he was painfully aware of how discrimination, homophobia, and racism work in this country, how they contaminate everything, and that made him cognizant of the possible consequences of being an openly gay black man. Jones knew he was gay at an early age, but finding himself and developing the strength to show his true self to the world took years. Despite the changing backgrounds, the core of his life remained the same: his mother his family his passion for words and his sexuality. From there he moved to Kentucky to earn a BA at Western Kentucky University and then on to New Jersey to pursue an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. Jones was born in Memphis, Tenn., and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. Extremely personal, emotionally gritty, and unabashedly honest, How We Fight for Our Lives is an outstanding memoir that somehow manages a perfect balance between love and violence, hope and hostility, transformation and resentment.
However, it's also a story packed with elements that profoundly connect him to poetry, to every black person that came before him in this country, and to many of us who grew up dreaming of a chance at upward social mobility through education that we couldn't afford. How?Īs How We Fight for Our Lives is Saeed Jones' biography, it is a unique narrative of the events that shaped him. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title How We Fight for Our Lives Subtitle A Memoir Author Saeed Jones
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