“A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence On Black Life in America” by Trymaine Lee
c.2025,
St. Martin’s Press
$29.00
257 pages
Face it: some scores can never truly be settled.
You can try tit-for-tat, scheme, and plan, but make things even? Not a chance; the other guy is probably scheming, too, so full pay-back isn’t happenin’. And besides, why let revenge live in your head? Life’s too short, you can’t do it – especially, as in the new book “A Thousand Ways to Die“ by Trymaine Lee, you can’t do it with a gun.
Eight years ago, Trymaine Lee almost died.
Fortunately, the blood clot in his body, the “widow-maker,“ was caught in time, but the whole episode affected his then-young daughter, who continued for some time to beg for stories about it, and to ask about life and death.
Lee didn’t always know what to say.
“I struggle,“ he says, “to answer why things are the way that they are, especially when it comes to Black folks like us.”
Death by violence happened in his own family. In 1923, a young great-uncle left on horseback to run an errand and was never seen alive again, which “ripped a hole in the family“ that resonated for generations. Lynchings were common then, as was Jim Crow, and so “Black folks… began leaving the South en masse…”
Guns, he says, were “central to the violence“ then, on both sides.
Violence followed Black soldiers to Vietnam and home again. It went to prison with some people, most often, men. Once, Lee almost got in trouble for a “twelve-dollar toy gun from Walmart“ that looked realistic.
Black funeral directors learned how to hold open-casket funerals, as death stalked Black Americans, for not learning to swim because Jim Crow kept them from learning to swim. Cancer caught others in unequal numbers. Some were wrapped up in “the deadly grind of the drug trade,“ while “innocent victims [are] caught in the crossfire.“
“We still bleed,“ he says. “… yet salvation from America’s violence has remained out of our grasp, like trying to put shape to the wind.”
On the surface, you may think there’s not much new to say about violence when talking about Black life in general. In many ways, it’s been a part of American life for so long that it’s almost some wrong-headed new normal. And yet, read “A Thousand Ways to Die“ and your thinking will twist, and twist again in a whole new direction.
While author Trymaine Lee mainly focuses on gun violence in the past century or so, he sometimes diverts readers’ attention. Don’t forget this. Remember that. Here’s a story for you, and here’s something else. As Lee totes them up, one by one, each point shows hidden costs attached to violent acts.
Readers will be struck by the fact that it’s a long list.
This is the kind of book your mind will carry with you for days, and it begs to be shared and discussed. You owe it to your community, in fact, to talk about “A Thousand Ways to Die“ because of this powerful book’s scores.
