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How We Fight for Our Lives

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How We Fight for Our Lives

By: Saeed Jones
Narrated by: Saeed Jones
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About this listen

 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.©2019 Saeed Jones (P)2019 Simon & Schuster UK Biographies & Memoirs Memoir

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A beautiful story, a beautiful man, telling his truth in a sassy yet self-effacing way. The collisions of the religions in his life, the racism and homophobia, it’s all compelling and told with a rare grace. For all the talk about sexual encounters what shines thorough most is his understanding of how his many different identities were shaped in contemporary America, and how awkwardly. The personality he exposes is amplified in his own reading of his prose and I didn’t want it to end.

An Unmissable Voice

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Thank you so much for this Saeed - found it impactful, uplifting and beautifully written!! Well read as well.

Brilliant brilliant book!

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