Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

This book found it's way onto the New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. This is notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that there is very little on that list that is not fiction. I would say 10% fall into the non-fiction category and even fewer are memoirs. The other is that two of the author's works of fiction are on that list, making her unique in having two forms represented and in an elite group of authors to have three works represented. The book chronicles the deaths of five young American black men that the author knew who were dead before they were 25, one of whom was the author's brother. The causes of death are varied, and do not really touch upon police brutality nor the prevalence of white supremacists in policing across the nation. It is simply a telling of who they were, why they mattered and how their deaths affected her personally. She is bearing witness and remembering them. Such is the uncertainty that African Americans contend with in the United States in the 21st century--even before an avowed racist was returned to the White House after he was convicted of rape. That is the state of young black male life in the US and then there is the paucity of options available to so many – almost one in 10 young black men are in jail and murder is the greatest killer of black men under the age of 24. It is to these statistics that the author attempts to give both humanity and context in her memoir, in which she relates the unconnected deaths in the space of just four years of five young men who were close to her.