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"We saw the lightning which was the weapons; and then we noticed the thunder which was the big weapons; and then we noticed the rain falling which was the bloodstream falling; so when we emerged to enter the plants, it was inactive men that we reaped." (Harriet Tubman) In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five teenagers in her life - to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who are in poverty, particularly dark-colored men. Dealing with these loss, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? As she began to create about the knowledge of coping with all the dying, she became aware the truth - and it required her breath away. Her brother and her friends all passed on because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a brief history of racism and economic have difficulties that fostered medication addiction and the dissolution of family and human relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so evident she felt ridiculous for not experiencing it. Nonetheless it nagged at her until she understood she had to create about her community, to create their testimonies and her own. Jesmyn was raised in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who are able to do no right and the women who stand in for family in a population where in fact the men tend to be absent. She bravely instructs her account, revisiting the agonizing loss of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to set off and pursue advanced schooling, she writes relating to this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity.
