Analysis Of Men We Reaped By Jesmyn Ward

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward is a memoir that describes her life through her childhood to adulthood. Through pages 1 to 163, the audience is exposed to 8 divisions of the book so far which reiterate Jesmyn's life’s story and three specific deaths. The 8 major divisions are; Prologue, We are in Wolf Town Distant Past - 1977, Roger Eric Daniels III, We Are Born, Demond Cook, We are Wounded, Charles Joseph Martin, and We are Watching. So far in Men We Reaped, I believe Jesmyn Wards main point of writing this story is to show the audience the hardships of being Black and the racism that haunts her family which ultimately leads to countless deaths from many outside resources like drugs and economic inequality.
First and foremost, the first division

The audience is introduced to her paternal and maternal grandparents and how racism and death is ingrained in their family history. For instance, as stated on page 14, “Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts”. This explains how the circumstance of how death from the past was very evident and it is now in her own life. In this division, Jesmyn relates this to her hometown, DeLisle, formerly called Wolf Town, is true to its name because of all the deaths that have occurred. As mentioned on page 14, “Sometimes, when I think of all the men who’ve died early in my family over the generations, I think DeLisle is the Wolf”. Racism seems to have been evident in her families history, as stated on page 11, “It’s not safe for you here. The Klan are here, You should not be caught out on these roads in the dark. So my grandmother and her siblings folded their small bodies into and hid under the suffocating blanket, and a seemingly White Man and his White mother drove south to DeLisle, to the mostly Creole, mixed-race community they called home”. To conclude, the second division recounts her families past generations and how death and racism has engulfed their

Charles Joseph, C.J, was Jesymns cousin and dated Charine, Jesmyns little sister. C.J dealt with living between his mothers and fathers like Jesmyn. C.J also dealt with the constant racism that surround them. As mentioned on page 106, “…because that attracted something we called heat: police attention. While that might not matter in neighborhoods that were mostly White and working-class, in our Black working-class community, it mattered”. This explains how Black people in the south were treated and how later it affected them. I believe the main topic of this division deals with racism which ultimately leads to death because of the pressures Black men and women felt. As stated on page 121, “Maybe he looked at those who's still lived and those who’d died and didn't see much difference between he two; pinioned beneath poverty and history and racism, we were all dying inside”. In other words, this describes how C.J felt, as if even though he is not dead he might as well be as he's under immense pressures of poverty and racism. The death of C.J occurred because no precautions were set in place infant of train tracks so while driving, he got struck and killed. As stated on page 125, “There were flashing lights and bells that should have wanted of the passing train, but they did not consistently work, and because it was located at a crossing out in the country in a mainly Black area, no one really cared