Men We Reaped

Chapter 10 chronicles the first death Ward experiences in 2000: the loss of her brother Joshua. A climactic point in Ward’s memoir, Chapter 10 commences with Ward’s declaration: “This is where the past and the future meet…This is the heart” (213). In April 2000 Ward returns to Mississippi after graduating from Stanford University. She yearns “for the familiar” after becoming “tired of being in the big world” (214), where she feels constant loneliness. She struggles to find work related to her English and communication degrees, while Josh jumps from job to job. He moves back in with his mother and sisters, and eventually lands a job at the Grand Casino in Gulfport, where he works as a valet parking attendant.

In the time between employment, Josh continues to sell drugs, a choice Ward explains is “a necessity for most young Black men” in their community, particularly given the “sluggish economy where their labor was easy to come by and totally and completely expendable” (218). After dropping out of high school in ninth grade, Josh feels limited in his options. Thinking of Josh’s difficulties, Ward reflects on the changing global economy and “how America was hemorrhaging blue-collar jobs overseas, how factory jobs like the one my father had once supported a family on were becoming a rarity while only dead-end service jobs remained” (219-20).