How We Fight for Our Lives (Review)

The raw and unflinching look into the life of a black, gay man growing up in America, How We fight for Our lives is, and will continue to be, an incredibly poignant story. 

An award-winning essayist, Saeed Jones gives readers snapshots into his experiences with sexuality, family, racism, and religion. Never sugarcoating, the stories within How We fight for our Lives, hold a necessary bitterness and are deeply personal even as they explore more universal topics. 

“Just as some cultures have a hundred words for ‘snow,’ there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.”

Labeled as a memoir, the book actually feels more like a series of short stories, which are mostly grouped in a natural, chronological order. Although these stories definitely connect in many ways, some jumps in time and gaps between chapters that aren’t fully solidified in a timeline can be jarring for someone who expects a mere start-to-finish non-fiction story. And, at less than 200 pages, the book feels a bit too short to depict the full details of a person’s life, especially one so filled with meaningful experiences. 

Although each chapter could stand as it’s own essay, the book can also be separated, more or less, into three central topics: coming out and childhood, an exploration of promiscuity and sexuality, and finally, grief. These themes neatly make up the beginning, middle, and end of the book and create a natural order, although they seem somewhat separate from one another, as if three stories are living within one text.

“People don’t just happen. 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.”

In my opinion, the stories about grief were most engaging, perhaps because they were so emotionally raw, or perhaps because they showed a pain that is ultimately universal and therefore much less personal than some of the other deeply intimate experiences in the book, which allow the topic to be explored with less fear. But perhaps it was just because, seeing as it took place at the end of the book, I had finally slipped into the writing style and format, and the stories within the topic seemed to connect the most naturally to one another and feel as one. 

An important and heavy read that could have only been strengthened by more length, I rated How we fight for our lives 4 out of 5 stars.  

You can read or listen to How We Fight For Our Lives for free with a 30-day trial of Scribd. 

Bullying, violence, homophobia, racism, loss of a parent.