Men We Reaped

Ward begins her memoir with a description of her journeys to New Orleans to spend weekends with her divorced father. From her mother’s commands to “lock the doors” to her brother’s ominous declaration that “Somebody died here” to her father’s devotion to raising fighting dogs, violence and death permeate Ward’s environment from a young age (1-2). She navigates the racism she endures in her “majority White Episcopalian Mississippi private school” as “a scholarship kid, only attending the school because my mother was a maid for a few wealthy families on the Mississippi coast who sponsored my tuition” (2). She alludes to the implied stereotype of Blacks as violent that permeates many of her interactions with her White peers. As a young adult, Ward attempts to reconcile the violent stereotypes of New Orleans she overhears with the humanity she observes firsthand. She witnesses the Black residents of New Orleans in their daily lives and “wondered what the men were talking about. I wondered who they are. I wondered what they were like” (4).

Ward dreads returning to school in Mississippi, anticipating the racism she has and will continue to endure. On the drive back home from New Orleans, Ward confesses, “I didn’t want them to look at me after saying something about Black people. I didn’t want to have to avert my eyes so they didn’t see me studying them, studying the entitlement they wore like another piece of clothing” (5). As they venture closer to home, Ward describes her hometowns of DeLisle and Pass Christian in contrast to New Orleans; she paints an elaborate picture of the rich traditions, history, and humanity of DeLisle, which she declares as “poor and working-class, but proud” (6). Transitioning into the present, Ward notes the impact Hurricane Katrina, which occurred seven years before the novel’s publication, on modern-day Pass Christian. After losing most of its housing during the hurricane, Pass Christian now features new developments filled with displaced survivors.

As an adult, Ward admits to the difficulties she faces in returning home to DeLisle not only due to the lasting impact of Hurricane Katrina but also due to the reality that “five Black young men I grew up with died, all violently, in seemingly unrelated deaths” over the course of four years (7). She lists the names and years of death of each of these men: Joshua, Ronald, C. J., Demond, and Roger. Though she confesses that “telling this story is the hardest thing I’ve ever done” (8), Ward shares her determination to share each man’s story. She unveils her deliberate choice to “follow them backward in time” (8). Between each chapter, she will document the history of her family in chronological order. Ward concludes the Prologue with a clear statement of her memoir’s purpose: “to understand a little bit better why this epidemic happened” (8).