Brian Broome

Brian Broome writes beautifully about the joys and sorrows (there are many sorrows) connected to being born a Black male in Northeastern Ohio in the 1990s.

Broome frames his story around a long bus ride during which he observes a Black father admonishing his toddler son not to cry and to "be a man". In this way, the destructive socialization of Black boys begins. This father-son pair reminds Broome of his problematic relationship with his own domineering father, an angry and depressed man who couldn't accept his son's homosexuality. The younger Broome grows up to be an alcoholic and a cocaine addict who desperately begs for love from the men he finds in gay dive bars. The narrative goes backward and forward in time as Broome remembers his childhood fascination with dolls and other stereotypically "girls' things" as well as his adult substance abuse. He writes that he was always looking for someone to save him, but at last he realized that only he could save himself.

Highly recommended.… (altro)

FINALIST FOR THE 34th LAMMY AWARD—BEST GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY! Winners announced 11 June 2022.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2021!

Listen to this interview with Author Broome!

The Publisher Says: Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in.

Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.

Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: You won't get a whisper of a whine from me about Author Broome's beautiful phrase-making. He is up there in the poetic-prose rankings. He could, and most likely will, give James Baldwin a run for his epoch-making money in the poetic eloquence on the Essence of Blackness derby.

Yes, I said that and I meant it. Moreso than other writers on Blackness, Author Broome's dual Othering of being a Black gay man adds the ingredient so often missing in manifestoes like [Heavy] or [Between the World and Me]. Worthy reads, even necessary ones. Tears We Cannot Stop offers a more religious, sentimental slant on the subject of Black maleness, and is an equally necessary voice to attend to. But James Baldwin, in his significant for its being so overlooked essay Nothing Personal, brings his religious past and his queer present and his uncertainty about the future into focus in much the same way that Author Broome does: as fact, as solid ground, as new, everlasting source of Otherness among the Othered. There being fifty-plus years between the two books, there are differences of tone made possible by the progress that has happened. There is not, however, a difference of kind in the subject of these books: The authors are Othered Others and are not allowed to make a life that doesn't center their Othered Otherness in this, our glorious country.

Author Broome uses the framing device of a young Black boy being psychologically shredded by the father who, I do not doubt for an instant, loves him and wants him to become a superstar in this world. To that father, as he browbeats and abuses his probably-queer young son, that means beating the gay out of him. That's also what it meant to Author Broome's father, emasculated by the same round of deindustrialization that created so many billionaires, and to Baldwin's religious-nut stepfather. The truth is these men, these fathers, aren't alone in thinking that they as well as their sons would be happier if the boys were either straight or dead. A quick flick of one's eyes over the statistics on adolescent suicide and teen drug use...this last plays quite a role in Author Broome's life...teaches us the toxic price paid by father, son, acquiescent or indifferent mother in death and destroyed personhood and family.

I think the power of reading the author's memories of growing up the Othered Other really rests in this: However easy it might have been for him to give in and let his addiction to drugs drag him into death, he does not. He stands on the rocks of his father's failed life, his mother's rage at...well, everything, and the cruel bonds of racist hatefulness (the dance party scene broke me), and he creates beautiful phrases and uses them to limn horrifying images onto my grotesquely privileged brain.

I have no method to persuade you that the act of shoving your most tender feelings way down deep or trying somehow to numb them will only result in someone else having to pick up your pieces later.

That, I feel, pretty much sums up the value in reading this book.… (altro)

I have been so lucky with my book choices in the last couple of months, drowning under a tidal wave of genius. After reading two stunningly good works of fiction I decided to move to nonfiction, reasoning that whatever novel I picked up next would not satisfy me because I had been temporarily ruined for other books (I have a short memory, I figure I will be back to fiction soon.) So I chose to pick up a work of creative nonfiction from a new writer (he came to writing in midlife, his younger years given over to drug abuse and joyless sex) assuming it would be a palate cleanser of sorts. The good news is that it did not suffer from the comparison to my recent fiction reads. The bad news is now I am ruined for both nonfiction and fiction.

This book is simultaneously gorgeous and ugly, brutal really (there are some funny moments, but they are surrounded by the unfunny.) But this is not a book were we are rubbernecking, it is not tragedy porn, the book creates a space for and builds real empathy. The process is successful, in part, because Brian Broome is building empathy right alongside you. It has been an age since I have read a book that so clearly showed the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The author turned so much pain and rejection into extraordinary wisdom. This is an eagle eyed view of the reasons for and harms of the fetishization of blackness. It is also an attack on black conceptions of masculinity. He does not celebrate any aspect of this narrow definition of men's and women's "roles", and slaps us across the face with illustrations of its danger to women and men alike. And the writing is perfect. It honestly is. I am a harsh critic, I don't throw around statements like that cavalierly. It is perfect. There is nothing sensational or manipulative, the words are put together like poetry. Broom considers James Baldwin to be his idol (though he says not his favorite writer) and ends the book making his first trip outside of the US to the French town where Baldwin spent many years. Writing from the beach in Nice, Broom says he is not James Baldwin, and he is not, he is a different man raised in a different time and place. But he is equal to many comparisons to Baldwin. He says he wants to be black and queer and unafraid to share his truth like Baldwin did. That he does, and he does so with a clarity and unassailable candor and veracity. As with Baldwin, Broome forces the reader to acknowledge his rightness or to turn his back on his rightness, there is no counterargument, there is nothing theoretical, his premises are fully supported by his own experiences.

I listened to the audio read by the author, and absolutely recommend it.… (altro)