Men We Reaped

Ward uses statistics to provide a glimpse into Black life in her home state of Mississippi. She incorporates footnotes to her sources and details how “by the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing” (237). Her use of the first person solidifies her direct connection to these inequalities.

Ward then describes her circumstances directly after Josh’s death, as she lives a transient life in New York City in the wake of her grief. She contemplates suicide and struggles against the active forces of grief that consume her. As she fights the urge to harm herself, Ward tattoos her brother’s signature across her left wrist and then again across her right wrist. The tattoos of Josh’s handwriting are a deterrent: “I knew that I could never make that fatal cut across Joshua’s name” (239). Ward argues against the adage that time heals all wounds by revealing her own understanding of grief as regenerative, observing how it “scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways” (239).