How We Fight for Our Lives
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Narrated by:
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Saeed Jones
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By:
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Saeed Jones
About this listen
From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives - winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award - is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Elle; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; and many more.
“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’”
Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about 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 listeners into his boyhood and adolescence - into tumultuous relationships with his family, 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 one another - and to one another - as we fight to become ourselves.
An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful - a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and an audiobook that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.
©2019 Saeed Jones (P)2019 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Listeners gain an intimate sense of Saeed Jones's life through vignettes he presents with grace, compassion, and ferocity.... Jones narrates unflinchingly through early curiosity about his sexuality, homophobia from family and community, and damaging sexual encounters. While he's skilled at creating voices for everyone in his audiobook, certain voices - taunting slurs, crazed declarations of violence - are particularly chilling. Through his dynamic narration, listeners will feel as though they are sharing intense confidences and moments of joy with a close friend." (AudioFile magazine)
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A religious book
- By Amazonbuyer on 10-12-21
By: Harmony Dust
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Where I Left Her
- By: Amber Garza
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Whitney had some misgivings when she dropped her increasingly moody teenage daughter, Amelia, off at Lauren’s house. She’d never met the parents, and usually she’d go in, but Amelia clearly wasn’t going to let something so humiliating happen, so instead Whitney waved to her daughter before pulling away from the little house with the roses in front. But when she goes back the next day, an elderly couple answers the door - Amelia and Lauren aren’t there, and this couple swears they never were, that she’s at the wrong house.
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Kept me guessing!!
- By Sheppardspie on 09-13-21
By: Amber Garza
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Color Me In
- By: Natasha Díaz
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York City, 16-year-old Nevaeh Levitz never thought much about her biracial roots. When her Black mom and Jewish dad split up, she relocates to her mom's family home in Harlem and is forced to confront her identity for the first time. Nevaeh wants to get to know her extended family, but because she inadvertently passes as white, her cousin thinks she's too privileged, pampered, and selfish to relate to the injustices African Americans face on a daily basis.
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Mixed feelings about this book
- By Rachel Kohlbrenner on 02-02-20
By: Natasha Díaz
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The Fourth Child
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Winter
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
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Just OK - Considered Bailing
- By Madeleine Homan on 04-18-21
By: Jessica Winter
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The UnAmericans
- Stories
- By: Molly Antopol
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
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Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
- By MidwestGeek on 05-04-14
By: Molly Antopol
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Man Alive
- A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man
- By: Thomas Page McBee
- Narrated by: Thomas Page McBee
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.
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Worth a listen
- By Kade on 05-30-18
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Tell Me Everything
- A Novel
- By: Cambria Brockman
- Narrated by: Ariadne Meyers
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In her first weeks at Hawthorne College, Malin is swept up into a tight-knit circle that will stick together through all four years. There’s Gemma, an insecure theater major from London; John, a tall, handsome, wealthy New Englander; Max, John’s cousin, a shy pre-med major; Khaled, a wisecracking prince from Abu Dhabi; and Ruby, a beautiful art history major. But Malin isn’t like the rest of her friends. She’s an expert at hiding her troubled past - all while using her extraordinary insight to detect their deepest vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
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beware
- By keith y. on 10-03-19
By: Cambria Brockman
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Growing Things and Other Stories
- By: Paul Tremblay
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden, Graham Halstead, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national best seller The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts. A masterful anthology featuring 19 pieces of short fiction, Growing Things and Other Stories is an exciting glimpse into Paul Tremblay’s fantastically fertile imagination.
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Paul Tremblay is totally nuts.
- By Gary & Jay on 07-07-19
By: Paul Tremblay
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After Visiting Friends
- A Son's Story
- By: Michael Hainey
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.
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Son's Search for Father Brings on Self-knowledge
- By sheila kehoe on 08-15-13
By: Michael Hainey
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The Opposite of Loneliness
- Essays and Stories
- By: Marina Keegan
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
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Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
- By: Michael Koryta
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Janina Edwards, Fajer Al-Kaisi, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.
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The narrators are outstanding here.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 05-16-21
By: Michael Koryta
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My Body
- By: Emily Ratajkowski
- Narrated by: Emily Ratajkowski
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age 21, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.
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so vain..
- By Emily Valdez on 01-10-22
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What listeners say about How We Fight for Our Lives
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Carolyn J.
- 01-10-20
Powerful and Haunting
I continue to consciously marvel at how we as African Americans have to blaze paths for ourselves in an alternate reality in every aspect of life that the dominant culture refuses to see but still actively participates in making it a requirement. Saeed Jones skillfully pulls back the curtain to expose the extreme heights and near devasting depths of the non-stop rollercoaster ride that African Americans endure daily while we exist above ground in our coats of non-white skin. Our ancestors--mothers, fathers, and grandparents--are why we are able to endure and fight and thrive every day.
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- Jill
- 01-10-20
Beautiful and Honest
A beutiful and honest memoir. I love memoirs and this one did not disappoint.
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- ChocolateGoddess
- 10-25-19
Very Enjoyable
I really loved the story. The author's prospective was open and honest. I wanted the story to continue. Like, what happened with Emma!
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2 people found this helpful
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- JBHarris
- 05-24-21
PHENOMENAL
I loved this story! I am a fan of Saeed Jones, and to have him be this vulnerable? It was amazing.
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- Jessica
- 03-10-21
Beautifully lyrical and relatable
You can tell the author is a poet because the prose of this memoir is so wonderfully poetic. The words sing as the author reads excerpts of his own life aloud. His performance is less amazing; there are times you can hear awkward pauses or stumbling over words. Still, I think there's something special in experiencing something so personal read by the person that lived it. I share experiences, a city, and a school with this author, but think anyone can relate to the emotional truth in the story.
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- Shawnna
- 02-16-20
Incredible story!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Saeed’s journey. He was completely open and honest. It meant so much more to hear it in his voice. The last line had me calling out for my mother. Great ending!
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- Jennifer A.
- 06-21-23
Beautiful
Even if you didn’t know before that Saeed is a poet, you would know after reading his story. What a beautiful, honest telling of a life.
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- Kindle Customer
- 03-17-24
Read it now!!
This memoir was amazing from the language and the storytelling as a whole. The storytelling of his life was raw and real I felt a connection as a black queer who is also from Texas. Amazing Saeed!!!!! Thanks for sharing your story in an authentic way, I know it wasn’t easy but you healed parts of my soul telling your story.
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- Reader X
- 11-12-19
This guy can write (and read)
Very nice flow and the narration carries you along. I hope that Mr. Jones keeps fighting for his life because I'm pretty sure that he will have a lot more to say.
Readers who have a 'do I really want to be reading about this?' moment at any point in the book... should persevere. Well worth it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-20-20
Touching. Honest. Revealing....F**ing Stunning.
I have never read a book in one day! I am eternally grateful to finally see myself in a work displaying the many complexities and beauties of the soul.
Unflinchingly honest! A memoir that hits you with so many different emotions. I rode it like a wave back to the depths of myself.
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1 person found this helpful