Dear Jesmyn

Dear Jesmyn,

Thank you for being brave and sharing your story. Men We Reaped is groundbreaking in the sense that it speaks about real life, important, topics that are rarely touche don by mainstream culture. The idea that Black men are expected to die young, and that the people around them are expected to deal with this fate silently and without protest. I really connected to the idea that even though her life in Mississippi and Louisiana were painted with crime, death, racism, and poverty, when she was at Stanford she still missed it and needed it in a sense. The idea that even though places are less desirable than this school we all attend, there is something real about and honest about the idea of home. Even though home has crime, and poverty, and chaos, it is still a place that grounds me. Thank you for talking about the reality of being an outsider and a Black woman at Stanford and how the reality of Black existence does not really line up with the expectations of student life at Stanford. I am sorry for the loss of your brother, but I want to deeply thank you for talking about it and how you coped with a phenomenon that effects so many Black women.The death of Black men is something that is expected and at the same time ignored by so many, so thank you for shedding light onto the the subject and sharing your life with us.