Dear Jesmyn,

Thank you for Men We Reaped and Salvage the Bones. Your writing style is effective, clear and moving throughout both your fiction and your non-fiction. Firstly, I’ve noticed many plot parallels in Men We Reaped to Salvage the Bones. How did the process of writing these two genres, both obviously inspired by your experiences growing up, differ? Which one do you prefer, and which one do you think is more effective in getting ignorant/ambivalent readers to care about the oppressive constraints of black poverty, or violence against black men? Additionally, after you recount CJ’s death, you present the differing accounts of exactly how he died, but say “I do not tell Charine these stories; I would not add to her burden of loss.” How do you reconcile this desire to protect your younger sister from the truth with the fact that this book will be published and she will inevitably read it? Were you scared about how your relatives would receive this book?

All the best,
Natassia