Men We Reaped

The first chapter details Ward’s family history, focusing on the years leading up to her birth. She describes her ancestors from various backgrounds as “some of them were Haitian […] others were Choctaw, said they spoke French, that they came from New Orleans or a nebulous elsewhere, searching for land and space, and they stopped here” (9). Ward then explores the history of DeLisle, her family’s hometown of many generations, which was called Wolf Town by early French settlers. DeLisle is a small town composed of intertwined families who “are conscious of the way bloodlines are so entangled in our community” (10).

Ward recalls her own family stories of navigating the complexities of being mixed race and the ability of certain family members to pass as White to evade the threat of the Ku Klux Klan at night. She features the origins of both her maternal and paternal ancestors and the connections between the two sides of her family. The women on both sides dominate; Ward’s family history is littered with “men’s bodies” while the women survive.

Ward imagines the potential close encounters of her parents as children growing up in a small town, prior to their official introduction as teenagers. She chronicles Hurricane Camille’s devastation on Southern Mississippi in 1969 and her father’s family’s government-funded relocation to Oakland, California, where he grew interest in martial arts and the ideals of the Black Panthers.