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

of Jesmyn's memoir is the Prologue which is describes her childhood but addresses her life in the present time. The beginning of the memoir sets the scene of her family and starts off with a story of death. This sets the precedent of the story, where family, death, and racism seem to surround her life. Next, we are introduced to her brother, Joshua, her two sisters Nerissa and Charine and her parents. Jesmyn then describes their life they lived with their father and with their mother and she shows the separation they had as a child. Lastly, Jesmyn speaks to the audience and addresses the purpose of sharing her story to the world. As stated on page 8, “My hope is that learning something about our lives and the lives of the people in my community will mean that when I get to the heart, when my marches forward through the past and backward from the present meet in the middle with my brothers death, I’ll understand a bit better why this epidemic happened, about how the history of racism and economic inequality and lapsed public and personal responsibility festered and turned sour and spread here”. In the end, the first division of the memoir sets the scene of her family in the past and then in the present as she struggles to understand why racism and death is all around her.
The second division of the memoir is, We are in Wolf Town, which recounts the past generations of her family.

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

history.
The third division of the memoir is the first death stated, Roger Eric Daniels III, which is reiterated by Jesmyn and how it affected her life. Roger is a close friend of Jesmyns sister, Nerissa and was apart of the Jesmyns close friends and family. Roger like many of the Black men in the South was immersed with the pressures of racism. As mentioned on page 25, “This is how silly pranks by black kids are handled in the South, Rog learned. Rog was lucky in some ways: he wasn’t caught”. This explains how racism in the south starts young and begins to overcome their lives, which is what happened to Roger. Roger turned to drugs to escape his hardships of being black in the south. Some of these hardships include being excluded from school, “Sometimes they re passively forced out by school authorities, branded as misfits or accused of serious offense like selling drugs or harassing other students: sometimes they re shed to the back of classrooms and ignored” (26). In other words, many Black men were pushed out of society and ultimately altered their mindset. Overall, the third division of the memoir describes Roger Eric Daniels III life and how the pressures of being a Black man in the south affected him which led him to escape to drugs.
The fourth division of the memoir, We Are Born, recollects Jesmyns birth story and the infidelity that occurred with her father and how it affected her family. The story of Jesmyns birth provides background on how she has beens struggling since birth. For instance, “I lived, silent and tenacious, in my incubator, my body riddled with multiple tubes” (43). This shows how Jesmyn was brought into the world, fighting. Secondly, the audience is introduced to the infidelity her father has been doing and the conflicts her mother has to deal with. As mentioned on page 53, “She would have been feeling pressure then as her gamily grew, as my father continued to cheat and plead his innocence and devotion and cheat more”. The main topic of this division deals with how the pressures of being a Black man and women in the south and how women had to stay and provide for their family and the men left.
The fifth division of the memoir deals with the death of Demond Cook, a close friend of Jesmyn. Throughout this division, Jesmyn is dealing with the past deaths of her friends and family and starts to drink and do drugs to drown the grief. As stated on page 74, “Drunk and Sentimental, I loved every one of them for still being alive”. This describes the pain and sorrow she has been constrained with which has made her turn to substance abuse. Demond Cook is analyzed as being a charming black man that had a family and was a hardworking man who did everything to provide for this family. During this division, Jesymn describes her friends and a family, a community who have struggled together. As stated by Jesymn, “We know that taking this cheap picture is tacky, but we are a neighborhood, a community, a hood, a family, so we grin” (74). This recounts how her friends ultimately became family and were all equally strained with the conflicts of death and racism. Unfortunately, Demond was shot by an unidentified person as he walked the steps of his house after coming home from a late night shift. Death seems to haunt her and her friends, as stated on page 67, “We were young people living in houses seemingly more populated by ghosts than by the living, with he dead and the new”. After all, the main topic of this division is death and grief and how it happens to occur to the Black men surrounding her.
The sixth division of the memoir, We are Wounded, describes Jesmyns life in her childhood from 1984 to 1987. During this division, Jesmyns describes her life as a child with her father and mother while living with her grandmother. One of the main topic of this division is the hardships Black women are expected to live to provide for their family. As stated on page 83, “ They worked like men. then, raised their children the bet they could, while their former husbands had relationships with other women and married and then left them also, perhaps searching for a sense of freedom or a sense of power that being a Black man in the south denied them”. This explains how the life of being a Black women in the south was going to engulf her in the future. Secondly, another topic of this division describes Jesmyns life with her parents and how even though they couldn't give her much, she still loved them. For instance, “ And something about clinging to the top of that rope made me feel closer to my mother and father, even though, physically I was as far away from my parents as I could get” (96). This provides insight on how Jesymn parents always tried to provide for her even when they had nothing and Jesmyn still felt appreciative. To conclude, the sixth division of the memoir deals with Jesmyns childhood and her life with her family but also the constant battle with sexism and the pressures of being Black.
The seventh disivon of the memoir, Charles Joseph Martin, deals with his death.

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

about fixing them or installing a reflective gate arm”. In the end, I believe the main topic of this division deals with the racism and the affects it had on C.J.
The final division of the memoir so far, We are Watching, is set during when Jesmyn was a teenager and the life she lived with her family. During this time, her father left again and this made Jesmyn and her family feel a sense of unworthiness. As stated on page 135, “His leading felt like a repudiation of the child I was and the young woman I was growing into”. This explains how Jesmyns fathers leaving has affected her greatly in many ways. Jesmyns mother also dealt Jesmyns depression in a different way, “Instead of seeing it as directed at myself, she read it as a sullen anger, a pre-pubsccent hatred that was aimed at her for leaving my father and breaking the family” (137). This describes how the never ending of her father leaving impacted her family greatly. A main topic of this division deals with Jesmyn feeling unworthy, as stated on page 157, “When he said this, I thought he meant that he saw all the misery in me, saw that I deserved to be treated this way by a boy, any boy, all boys, everyone, and I believed him”. In the end, the main topic of this division was Jesmyns sense of unworthiness and her self image was significantly altered. Part 2: Rhetorical Precis
Jesmyn Wards memoir, “Men we Reaped” (2013), proclaims that Black men and women have to deal with constant racism and economic inequality that ultimately leads to numerous deaths and drug abuse. Jesmyn Ward develops and supports this argument by explaining her family history involving racism and death, outlining the struggles her parents go through being Black in the south, and talking about three Black men in her life that have died under these circumstances. Jesmyn Ward’s main purpose is to provide the audience her community’s story of racism, economic inequality and death in order to inform us about the hardships Black men and women go through daily. Ward establishes a relationship with her audience of anyone who wants to learn more about the struggles of Black men and women in the south.