![]() Ward and her siblings are themselves a product of this mixing. In spite of being seen as a “black” community by outsiders, DeLisle, Miss., is really a place of mixing, with “African, French, Spanish, and Native ancestry all smoothed to the defining Black in the American South.” ![]() The Southern economy has cratered, leaving families adrift in towns such as DeLisle. “Every time some ill luck befell my family, some unique confluence of events that bespoke what it meant to be poor and Black and southern, it shocked him,” Ward writes. Near the end, Ward’s “upper middle class” African American boyfriend makes a cameo, and it’s clear that his life couldn’t be more different than hers. Class looms over the fate of Ward’s family as much as race does. Rather, it tells a story about growing up black and poor in the post-civil rights era 21st century South. ![]() “Men We Reaped” is not a book about the sorrows of growing up black in America. ![]() Now, as I write these stories, I see the truth of their claims.” “Most of the men in my life thought their stories, whether they were drug dealers or straight-laced, were worthy of being written about,” Ward writes. ![]()
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