Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

A memoir structured around the violent deaths of five young African American men

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, a coastal town whose racially segregated people and culture remain deeply damaged by the legacy of slavery. Each of the book's five parts is dedicated to  one of her young male friends and relatives. All of the young men died in violent careless ways, including, most painfully, her nineteen year old younger brother. They died young and society did really not care. Men We Reaped also chronicles Ward’s life: her growing understanding of her charming dad’s lack of dependability which fuels the no nonsense strictness of her mother, a domestic worker supporting four young kids. Thanks to her mother, Ward is offered a scholarship to a private school which leads to a gold plated ticket out of DeLisle: Stanford and the University of Michigan. Far from Mississippi, she can’t, however, shake her homesickness.

I read this book practically in one sitting. Ward is a master of establishing tension. The young men, their love of life and partying, are deftly portrayed. She relates their risky and not so great decisions as well as describes the oppression of small town Mississippi: early neglect in substandard schools, the overpolicing of the black population and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. These uneducated young men cannot have a single misstep. Otherwise they will pay a life altering price. Sadness permeates this book.

As her first class education takes her further from DeLisle, Ward can’t help but lead a double life. I felt panicky after she returned to Mississippi from Stanford and couldn’t even get a job at the local Barnes and Noble. This book achieves two things: A portrait of the artist as a young woman, and a spotlight shining upon unacceptable conditions existing in America today.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

 A family comes under intense pressures in the days before Hurricane Katrina

Fourteen year old Esch lives in the backwoods of coastal Mississippi with her family, which consists of a drunken widowed father, and three brothers: basketball playing Randall, pit bull loving Skeetah and seven year old Junior. The story begins with dad haphazardly urging the kids to prepare for the hurricane by having them fill jars with water and stock up on extra boxes of Ramen noodles. All the children except for Junior have their own high-stakes problems. First of all, classically educated Esch is coming to the understanding that she is pregnant. She’s had many sexual partners among her brothers’ friends although she is certain the father is Manny, a boy she loves who cares nothing for her. Meanwhile, Skeetah’s beloved dog, China, just birthed a litter of puppies. Skeetah desperately tries to keep the small blind puppies alive, and ward off the fatal infection parvo. But one by one, the dogs sicken and Skeetah gets desperate for pricey medicine. Randall dreams of entry to an exclusive basketball camp, dependent upon his good behavior and more to the point, the good behavior of his family. Their dreams are jeopardized by their own choices, and finally by the impending chaos of Katrina. The storm comes, the floods roll in and the desperate family escapes to the roof of their house.

Wow, what great writing. This book really succeeds at world creation. I was completely sucked into the narrative, the stakes for each character rising each humid day before the storm.  Ward plunges the reader into Esch’s intense bloodily violent world and never lets up. The Michael Vick situation became a lot clearer – pit bull fights deep in the woods gives the boys' circumscribed lives meaning. The plotting is clever – each family member’s desires and motivations are depicted in painful snatches, just enough to carry the action along.

Although I have no idea what the title means – the bones coming out of the flooded graveyard? And, every so often, Esch likens her love situation to Medea’s, which jarred a little as the insertions didn’t feel seamless. There were also an awful lot of boys, between Esch’s brothers and her sex partners -- I started to get them mixed up. There’s a great flood scene at the end, which reminded me of other great flood scenes from Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jayne Anne Phillips's Lark and Termite. There’s nothing like a good flood scene to get everything out on the table.