{"id":17385,"date":"2025-10-09T14:35:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=17385"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:35:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:35:45","slug":"a-thousand-ways-to-die-the-true-cost-of-violence-on-black-life-in-america-by-trymaine-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/09\/a-thousand-ways-to-die-the-true-cost-of-violence-on-black-life-in-america-by-trymaine-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence On Black Life in America by Trymaine Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

c.2025, St. Martin\u2019s Press <\/strong>
\n$29.00\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n257 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/strong>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Face it: some scores can never truly be settled.<\/p>\n

You can try tit-for-tat, you can scheme and plan, but making things even? Not a chance; the other guy is probably scheming, too, so full pay-back ain\u2019t happenin\u2019. And besides, why let revenge live in your head? Life\u2019s too short, you just can\u2019t do it \u2013 and especially, as in the new book A Thousand Ways to Die<\/em> by Trymaine Lee, <\/strong>you can\u2019t do it with a gun.<\/p>\n

Eight years ago, Trymaine Lee almost died.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the blood clot in his body, the \u201cwidow-maker,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Lee didn\u2019t always know what to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI struggle,\u201d he says, \u201cto answer why things are the way that they are, especially when it comes to Black folks like us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cripped a hole in the family\u201d that resonated for generations. Lynchings were common then, as was Jim Crow and so \u201cBlack folks\u2026 began leaving the South en masse\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Guns, he says, were \u201ccentral to the violence\u201d then, on both sides.<\/p>\n

Violence followed Black soldiers to Vietnam, and home again. It went to prison with some people, most often, men. Lee himself almost got in trouble once for a \u201ctwelve-dollar toy gun from Walmart\u201d that looked realistic.<\/p>\n

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 it. Cancer caught others in unequal numbers. Some were wrapped up in \u201cthe deadly grind of the drug trade,\u201d while \u201cinnocent victims [are] caught in the cross fire.\u201d
\n\u201cWe still bleed,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2026 yet salvation from America\u2019s violence has remained out of our grasp, like trying to put shape to the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the surface, you may think there\u2019s not much new to say about violence, when talking about Black life in general. In many ways, it\u2019s been a part of American life for so long, it\u2019s almost some sort of wrong-headed new normal. And yet, read A Thousand Ways to Die<\/em> and your thinking is going to twist, and twist again in a whole new direction.<\/p>\n

While author Trymaine Lee\u2019s main focus is on gun violence in the past century or so, he diverts readers\u2019 attention sometimes. Don\u2019t forget this. Remember that. Here\u2019s a story for you, here\u2019s something else and as Lee totes them up, one by one, each point shows hidden costs attached to violent acts.<\/p>\n

Readers will be hit hard by the fact that it\u2019s a long list.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of book that 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<\/em> because this powerful book scores.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2025, St. Martin\u2019s Press $29.00\u00a0 \u00a0 257 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Face it: some scores can never truly be settled. You can try tit-for-tat, you can scheme and plan, but making things even? Not a chance; the other guy is probably scheming, too, so full pay-back ain\u2019t happenin\u2019. And besides, why let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-17385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17387,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17385\/revisions\/17387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17385"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=17385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}