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How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir Audiobook
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“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. Jones tells the story of 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.
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“Jones…unknots his complicated relationship with his mother and the lingering wounds of his childhood. But the book is also a sexual coming-of-age story, giving an clear-eyed look at his relationships and romantic encounters.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Urgent, immediate, matter of fact.”
— New Yorker -
“This memoir is a rhapsody in the truest sense of the word…[a] rare book that will show you what it means to be needful, to be strong, to be gloriously human and fighting for your life.”
— Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author -
“Scorching…a commentary not only on what it takes to become truly and wholly oneself but on race and LGBTQ identity, power and vulnerability, and how relationships can make and break us along the way.”
— Good Housekeeping -
“Extremely personal, emotionally gritty, and unabashedly honest.”
— NPR -
“[This] memoir marks the emergence of a major literary voice…written with masterful control of both style and material.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“Powerful…Jones is a remarkable, unflinching storyteller, and his book is a rewarding page-turner.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Awards
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A Parade Magazine Pick of Most Anticipated Books for Fall
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A New York Times Pick of the Month
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Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize
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Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of Best Books Now in Paperback
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About Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones is a cohost of BuzzFeed’s morning show, AM to DM, and previously served as BuzzFeed’s LGBT editor and Culture editor. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in New York City and tweets @TheFerocity.