{"id":80498,"date":"2019-10-17T06:30:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T11:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=80498"},"modified":"2019-10-16T23:13:29","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:13:29","slug":"saeed-jones-visits-square-books-in-oxford-mississippi-tuesday-october-22-2019-with-his-new-memoir-how-we-fight-for-our-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/saeed-jones-visits-square-books-in-oxford-mississippi-tuesday-october-22-2019-with-his-new-memoir-how-we-fight-for-our-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Saeed Jones Visits Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi Tuesday, October 22, 2019 with His New Memoir, “How We Fight for Our Lives”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saeed will be in conversation with Kiese Laymon <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives <\/em>is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.<\/strong>

\u201cPeople don\u2019t just happen,\u201d writes Saeed Jones. \u201cWe sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The \u2018I\u2019 it seems doesn\u2019t exist until we are able to say, \u2018I am no longer yours.\u2019 \u201d

Haunted and haunting, Jones\u2019s memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence\u2014into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for<\/em> one another\u2014and to<\/em> one another\u2014as we fight to become ourselves.

Blending poetry and prose, Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and powerful\u2014a voice that\u2019s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives<\/em> is a one of a kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Saeed Jones is the author of\u00a0Prelude to Bruise<\/em>, winner of the 2015 PEN\/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award\/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones is a co-host of BuzzFeed\u2019s morning show,\u00a0AM to DM<\/em>, and previously served as BuzzFeed\u2019s LGBT editor and Culture editor. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in New York City and tweets @TheFerocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Saeed will be in conversation with Kiese Laymon From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":80560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239],"tags":[5835,7933,448,15454,602],"class_list":["post-80498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","tag-author","tag-kiese-laymon","tag-off-square-books","tag-saeed-jones","tag-square-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Saeed-Jones.jpg?fit=310%2C163&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}