How We Fight for Our Lives (2019) is a memoir by American poet, essayist, and cultural critic Saeed Jones. Centering mostly on Jones's coming-of-age years, the book is a meditation on what it means to be a gay man of color in twenty-first-century America. Yet, it is also universal in its larger themes, speaking to the experiences of so many who encounter rocky terrain on their paths to fully embracing who they are—even, and especially, when everywhere you turn, it seems as if the world is against you. How We Fight for Our Lives won the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Time, National Public Radio, and O, among others, all named it one of the best books of the year.