Saeed Jones possesses the rare ability to see himself with uncompromising clarity. He also has the courage to put his insights down on paper, chronicling the shame, vulnerability, and self-destruction that marked his journey into adulthood in a fervent memoir that lingers like a bruise.
How We Fight for Our Lives tells the coming-of-age story of a gay black boy raised in the South, and his struggle to carve out a place for himself within his family, his community, and his tumultuous inner world. Jones’ story begins in the North Texas suburb of Lewisville. There, unrequited schoolboy crushes fester, grown men proposition him to illicit trysts, and he discovers black and queer literature, which affirms his experiences in a way his surroundings never could.
