Men We Reaped

Ward uses statistics to provide a glimpse into Black life in her home state of Mississippi. She incorporates footnotes to her sources and details how “by the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing” (237). Her use of the first person solidifies her direct connection to these inequalities.

Ward then describes her circumstances directly after Josh’s death, as she lives a transient life in New York City in the wake of her grief. She contemplates suicide and struggles against the active forces of grief that consume her. As she fights the urge to harm herself, Ward tattoos her brother’s signature across her left wrist and then again across her right wrist. The tattoos of Josh’s handwriting are a deterrent: “I knew that I could never make that fatal cut across Joshua’s name” (239). Ward argues against the adage that time heals all wounds by revealing her own understanding of grief as regenerative, observing how it “scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways” (239).

Ward lists the other deaths that have shaped her community. She explains the effect of death on her life today, as she fearfully anticipates the continued spread of death. Despite this hindering fear, Ward clarifies that she has “turned down more-lucrative jobs, with more potential for advancement, to move back to Mississippi” (240). She describes how Josh’s death affected each of her family members as they navigate the active and uncontrollable forces of grief. Ward also states her direct purpose for writing this memoir as she searches “to assert that what happened happened, in a vain attempt to find meaning” (249). She catalogs the other ways that she and those within her community attempt to grapple with grief by ignoring or numbing it, despite the fact that “there is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it” (250).

Ward ends her memoir with a tribute to her mother and the courage, strength, and resilience she embodies. To Ward, her mother’s example teaches her “how a transplanted people survived a holocaust and slavery […] how Black people in the South organized to vote under the shadow of terrorism and the noose […] how human beings sleep and wake and fight and survive” (250-51). She expresses her desire “to teach my child these lessons, to pass on my mother’s gifts” (251). She closes with a glimpse into her long-awaited reunion with Josh after her own death. She pictures his invitation for her to join him in a car ride, to which she simply replies, “I’m here” (251).