{"id":10817,"date":"2024-08-30T12:39:43","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T04:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bbold.asia\/art-culture-i-want-to-be-a-writer-so-my-brother-can-come-home-alive-men-we-reaped\/"},"modified":"2024-08-30T14:32:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T06:32:54","slug":"art-culture-i-want-to-be-a-writer-so-my-brother-can-come-home-alive-men-we-reaped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bbold.asia\/en\/art-culture-i-want-to-be-a-writer-so-my-brother-can-come-home-alive-men-we-reaped\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d Men We Reaped"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d<\/p>\nJesmyn Ward<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A Place Where Black People Can Only \u201cSleep, Wake Up, Struggle, and Survive\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

American author Jesmyn Ward was born into poverty in DeLisle, Mississippi, in the southern United States. What kind of place is DeLisle? Jesmyn describes it as a place where Black people in the South \u201cendured catastrophe and enslavement\u201d, where they \u201corganized under the threat of terrorism and lynching to gain the right to vote\u201d, and where people can only \u201csleep, wake up, struggle, and survive.\u201d From 1877 to 1950, there were 654 cases of racially motivated lynchings in that area. Jesmyn was the only Black person from her community to leave and receive a higher education in a big city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My Family History Is Littered with the Corpses of Men<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Between 2000 and 2004, five of Jesmyn\u2019s childhood friends, including her own younger brother Joshua, died in a series of tragic incidents, succumbing to drugs, accidents, and suicide. The deaths of these five Black men seemed unrelated, yet the harsh truth pointed to a tragic racial destiny. \u201cThe current value of my people\u2019s lives is: worthless.\u201d This is how she once described the state of Black human rights in America. Ten years after her brother’s death, she wrote this memoir, Men We Reaped<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She Searches for Her Brother’s Shadow in Her Words<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jesmyn managed to achieve the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d through hard work, but survivor\u2019s guilt lingered deep within her. She began drinking heavily, saying that alcohol was her way to forget. Yet, the more one tries to forget, the more deeply those memories embed themselves. She once longed to leave the South, but was forever drawn back by a suffocating love that called her home. In 2000, when she returned to her hometown after graduating from Stanford University, she discovered that her brother had turned to drug dealing. Jesmyn didn\u2019t harshly criticize him for it, as this was the fate that Black men couldn\u2019t escape. After her brother died in a car accident, she tattooed his name, Joshua, on her left wrist. Every time she felt the urge to cut her wrist, she would remember not to cut into her brother and would stop. Joshua had truly lived, even if only for 19 short years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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She Writes the Stories of Her People<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jesmyn Ward is the only Black female author in history to have won the National Book Award twice. However, her works were repeatedly rejected by publishers due to racial discrimination, with claims that her writing lacked universal appeal. She openly admitted that her first novel didn\u2019t receive much attention, so no publishers invited her to write a second book. Without a sensational debut, she persevered with a sincere heart and finally earned widespread acclaim in 2017 for her work Sing, Unburied, Sing<\/em>. In her politically charged lyrical style, she explores racial issues across her various works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I was young, life promised me different things\u2014that life wouldn\u2019t be so hard, that my loved ones wouldn\u2019t die one after another… In real life, I looked at my parents and vaguely understood that being a girl was tougher, while boys had it easier. In the end, this is what a mother teaches her daughter: be brave, be strong, be resilient, open your eyes to reality, and create from it. As the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter, and now a new mother to a daughter, I hope to teach my child the same things, passing down my mother\u2019s gift.\u201d\u2014Men We Reaped<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo Source: \u6bcf\u65e5\u982d\u689d, Shutterstock, Amazon UK, Lyceum Agenc, British Vogue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d Jesmyn Ward A Place Where Black People Can Only \u201cSleep, Wake Up, Struggle, and Survive\u201d American author Jesmyn Ward was born into poverty in DeLisle, Mississippi, in the southern United States. What kind of place is DeLisle? Jesmyn describes it as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[1476,1479,1478,1481,1480,1474,1475,1482],"class_list":{"0":"post-10817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art-and-culture","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-author","11":"tag-autobiography","12":"tag-black","13":"tag-blacklivesmatter-2","14":"tag-jesmyn-ward","15":"tag-menwereaped","16":"tag-racism"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d Men We Reaped - BBOLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbold.asia\/en\/art-culture-i-want-to-be-a-writer-so-my-brother-can-come-home-alive-men-we-reaped\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d Men We Reaped - BBOLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI Want to Be a Writer So My Brother Can Come Home Alive.\u201d Jesmyn Ward A Place Where Black People Can Only \u201cSleep, Wake Up, Struggle, and Survive\u201d American author Jesmyn Ward was born into poverty in DeLisle, Mississippi, in the southern United States. 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