RaveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksJesmyn Ward, with an honesty few other writers often express, bravely recounts her own story of being an African American living in poverty in rural Mississippi over the last few decades ... Ward convincingly transports the reader to the steamy woods of the bayou and gulf regions of Mississippi and Louisiana, all filled with crowded homes, mosquito-filled backyards and sweaty parties in the park ... The book’s dizzying structure occasionally jars the reader through a series of time warps as the chapters detailing each man’s death interrupt her linear life story ... for her to live, her story needs to be processed personally and then told. In Men We Reaped, she reveals that journey and why it is important her story is told through the loss of these men.