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.

“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, Jones’ memoir tells the story of 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 readers into his boyhood and adolescence --- into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, 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 a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.