He's explicit in his accounts of using sex to humiliate himself and his partners, especially the straight white men he seduces. By the time he gets a full scholarship to Western Kentucky University for his debate skills, Jones is a roiling vessel of shame, need and anger. Throughout How We Fight for Our Lives, readers feel the tension of Jones' adolescent and college years, as he's trying to figure out how to be. And one day, if you're lucky, your life and death will become some artist's new 'project.'" Jones recalls his younger self realizing that, " Being a black gay boy is a death wish. Granted, Jones' public high school is open-minded enough to host a touring production of The Laramie Project, the play about the hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard but what Jones takes away from that performance is that he'd better closet himself even more securely at school. Jones' memoir effectively deep-sixes any illusions I had that it must've been a little easier in recent decades to come of age as a queer black boy in Texas. It's sometimes hard to read and harder to put down. Jones depicts the human experience with delicate skill and bold honesty that left me wishing his book was longer. How We Fight for Our Lives is at once explicitly raunchy, mean, nuanced, loving and melancholy. I believe How We Fight for Our Lives contains something anyone can relate to, whether it’s not being able to afford a dream school, feeling disconnected from relatives or finding solace in a library. It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders Saeed Jones On His Memoir, 'How We Fight For Our Lives' - And How He Fought For His
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