Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir

by Brian Broome

Overview

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE • WINNER OF A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK • STONEWALL HONOR BOOK • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AMAZON AND APPLE BOOKS • TODAY SUMMER READING LIST PICK • ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY BEST DEBUT OF SUMMER PICK • PEOPLE BEST BOOK OF SUMMER PICK

A raw, poetic, coming-of-age “masterwork” (The New York Times)

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358439103
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

BRIAN BROOME’s debut memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods is an NYT Editor’s Pick and the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the GLAAD Award for Gay Nonfiction, the Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award, and was voted an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.

Broome has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He also won a VANN Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for journalism in 2019. Broome's film Garbage won the Audience Choice Award at the Cortado Short Film Festival and was a semi-finalist in the Portland Short Fest. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Esquire, and Men’s Health.

Table of Contents

Introduction Yona Harvey xi

The Initiation of Tuan 1

We Real Cool

Colder

We Left School

Bee 21

The Red Caboose 38

Parental Alienation 101 52

The Rent 66

We Lurk Late

Arena 85

Sandalwood 98

Like This 104

We Strike Straight

The Key 123

Game Theory 139

We Sing Sin

A House is Not a Home 149

Let the Church Say "Amen" 159

We Thin Gin

This Gay Life 177

Look Left, Look Right 186

We Jazz June

Carnival 199

We Die Soon

Gravel 217

Stall 227

Tabula Rasa 241

Acknowledgments 249

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/01/2021

Broome debuts with a magnificent and harrowing memoir that digs into the traumas of growing up Black and gay in Ohio in the late 1970s and early ’80s. His reflections jump between locations and times, which Broome organizes into chapters titled by the stanzas of Gwendolyn Brooks’s classic poem “We Real Cool.” Another framing device utilized throughout is Broome observing a young Black boy on a public bus as he’s berated by his father, reminding Broome of his own childhood. “What I am witnessing, is... this ‘being a man’ to the exclusion of all other things.” Broome frankly details his early physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father, white teachers, and neighborhood boys, as well as his later struggles with shame, substance abuse, and melancholic attempts to find community in Black queer spaces (“Most of my night-time encounters I will spend the rest of my life trying to forget”). He uncovers deep, intergenerational traumas, and racialized queerphobia and misogyny (“White boys liked girl things and acting like a white boy or a girl of any color was prohibited”). There are no easy victims or villains in Broome’s painful, urgent telling—his testimony rings out as a searing critique of soul-crushing systems and stereotypes. Agent: Yona Harvey, Upstart Crow Literary (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Broome’s debut tells of growing up Black, gay, and poor in a country that values none of those things. Taking his titles from Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘We Real Cool,’ Broome’s writing, even when recalling the roughest experiences, is rich and satisfying, often funny, and always alive."

Boston Globe

"This hard-hitting, unflinching memoir recounts the horrors of addiction, racism, and homophobia—and how one man survived them all."

Saturday Evening Post

One of Lithub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021
One of BuzzFeed's 75 Books to Add to Your 2021 TBR List
One of The Temper's 12 Recovery Memoirs You Need to Read 
One of BookRiot's 6 Stunning LBGTQ+ Books from Debut Authors to Read in 2021 
One of Bustle's 51 Best Debuts for Spring
One of Beyond the Bookends' 75 Books for Spring 
One of Shondaland’s 5 Best Books for May
One of Chicago Review of Books’ 12 Must Read Books for May
One of Entertainment Weekly's 20 Best New Books to Read in May
One of Saturday Evening Post's 10 Books to Enjoy This Spring 

“Punch Me Up to the Gods feels like a gift. There will come a day when some Black child . . . will have read Broome’s masterwork and possibly commit to staying alive because of Broome’s words. They will tell him that Punch Me Up to the Gods is a testament to the insurgent and ineradicable power of Black queer being. That it reveals that Black queer men are our own best creations.”
—New York Times Book Review

“This devastatingly beautiful memoir about growing up Black and gay in rural Ohio introduces a major literary talent in Broome."
—Entertainment Weekly 

“This hard-hitting, unflinching memoir recounts the horrors of addiction, racism, and homophobia—and how one man survived them all.”
—Saturday Evening Post

“Broome’s debut tells of growing up Black, gay, and poor in a country that values none of those things. Taking his titles from Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘We Real Cool,’ Broome’s writing, even when recalling the roughest experiences, is rich and satisfying, often funny, and always alive.”
—Boston Globe

“Brian Broome has penned a powerful, emotional memoir about his experience growing up as a sensitive, dark-skinned Black boy in rural Ohio . . . this memoir stands in its own unique lane, strong and true”
—Shondaland

“An electrifying read. Vulnerable and poetic but filled with a ferocious fire, it grabs you from the first page to the last. Perfect for fans of Sarah Broom, Kiese Laymon, and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight.”
—Chicago Review of Books

“Broome's powerful, sharp-edged memoir, often equal parts horrifying and bleakly funny, is made up of essays focusing on key moments in his life.”
—Columbus Dispatch

“Broome debuts with a magnificent and harrowing memoir that digs into the traumas of growing up Black and gay in Ohio in the late 1970s and early ’80s . . . There are no easy victims or villains in Broome’s painful, urgent telling—his testimony rings out as a searing critique of soul-crushing systems and stereotypes.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“An engrossing memoir about growing up Black and gay and finding a place in the world. Structured around Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem "We Real Cool,” Broome’s thought-provoking, emotional journey unfolds through a clever use of parallel stories and juxtaposition . . . Beautifully written, this examination of what it means to be Black and gay in America is a must-read. A stellar debut memoir.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Bursting at the seams with raw power . . . Broome is a debut author, but you wouldn’t know it by his writing. He commands his story and readers’ attention in a way that will have them laughing, crying, and screaming along with him . . . Punch Me Up to the Gods is an exquisite and important memoir.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“In his thoroughly electric debut, PUNCH ME UP TO THE GODS, Brian Broome will shatter your heart. Then make you laugh, sweat and cringe. And—all while eviscerating stereotypes and expanding notions of Black masculinity and queer identity—he'll shatter your heart again, then carefully, exquisitely, piece it back together.”
—Shelf Awareness, Starred Review 

“With conscious nods to Gwendolyn Brooks, Punch Me Up to the Gods is a stunning introduction to a new literary star on the rise.”
—Bustle

“Punch Me Up to the Gods obliterates what we thought were the limitations of not just the American memoir, but the possibilities of the American paragraph. I’m not sure a book has ever had me sobbing, punching the air, dying of laughter, and needing to write as much as Brian Broome’s staggering debut. This sh*t is special.”
—Kiese Laymon, New York Times best-selling author of Heavy

“Punch Me Up to the Gods is some of the finest writing I have ever encountered and one of the most electrifying, powerful, simply spectacular memoirs I—or you—have ever read. And you will read it; you must read it. It contains everything we all crave so deeply: truth, soul, brilliance, grace. It is a masterpiece of a memoir and Brian Broome should win the Pulitzer Prize for writing it. I am in absolute awe and you will be, too.”
—Augusten Burroughs, New York Times best-selling author of Running with Scissors

“This book is light forged from darkness, in the way that James Baldwin’s writing is or in the way that Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight is but also in a way that is singular and vivid and wholly original. Brian Broome writes about the ‘real America’ we hear about so often—steel towns full of the forgotten working class—and the real America we rarely hear about—the Black folks, the queer folks, the Others in those spaces that push back against a narrative hellbent on erasing them. Punch Me Up to the Gods is furious and dazzling, poetic and gritty. It is vital for every type of reader and a gift to every reader who has had to fight to affirm their existence in this country.”
—R. Eric Thomas, national best-selling author of Here for It and Reclaiming Her Time

“Punch Me Up to the Gods feels like a scream at the end of a summit. It’s what happens when one has had to climb a mountain of -isms in the dark, abandoning training and precedent, to find a singular freedom. One separate even from the freedom sold to us in . . . well, books. But Broome has shattered every rule and has come to make a mess of what we think of as family, Blackness, sexuality, and most importantly, the memoir. With unflinching honesty, he delivers a necessary testament of his refusal to allow the strangling expectations of life to rob him of his personhood. We should all hope to be this courageous, not only in our writing, but in our living.”
—Jason Reynolds, New York Times best-selling author of Long Way Down and Look Both Ways

“Punch Me Up to the Gods is a pain-filled tour de force of incredible beauty. The writing is as exquisite as the story is at times horrific. A true work of art. Not one of the best new books I’ve read this year, but quite simply the best.”
—Sapphire, author of Push and The Kid
 
“In Punch Me Up to the Gods, Brian Broome breaks the rules, and in doing so, breaks our hearts and our minds wide-open. He forces us to question what we think we know about the way narratives are constructed or who becomes a final authority. Memory carries its own weight in this work, the anchor drawing us back to what we already know but are retaught by experiencing Broome’s bright and curious language. This thrilling debut sparkles with deft honesty and shakes alive something hiding deep in the night of our psyches.”
—Camonghne Felix, author of Build Yourself a Boat

“I wish there was a way to teleport Punch Me Up to the Gods back to a twelve or a fifteen or even a twenty-five-year-old me to prove that the anxiety and pressure I felt to perform ‘appropriate masculinity’ wasn’t singular. Brian Broome’s remarkable memoir removes the veil from all of the performing, all of the acting, all of the preening, and just reveals, us—as flawed and as funny and as scared and as weird and as human as we can be. As we’re supposed to be. But since time machines don’t exist (yet), I’ll settle for adult me reading Broome’s hilarious and heat-seeking missile of a memoir and discovering a new-as-fuck way to write an old-as-f*ck story.”
—Damon Young, author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker
 
“Black, dark, queer, and poor. These are the vectors of Punch Me Up to the Gods. Brian Broome, literary son of the Black modernist giant Gwendolyn Brooks, writes from the center as one declared wrong among the wronged, one cast out of those cast aside, and one who desperately seeks tenderness. And on the hard road of growing up he finds wisdom, poetry, and love. This spectacular, unforgettable, and wholly innovative book is an ethical reckoning that tears us away from cruelty and invites us to witness real beauty.”
—Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine and Breathe
 

From the Publisher

01/01/2022

Broome is a debut author, but you wouldn't know it by his writing. He commands his story and readers' attention in a way that will have them laughing and crying along with him as he reflects on his childhood and navigates adulthood as a gay Black man in the United States.

Library Journal

★ 2021-03-20
An engrossing memoir about growing up Black and gay and finding a place in the world.

Structured around Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool,” Broome’s thought-provoking, emotional journey unfolds through a clever use of parallel stories and juxtaposition. Writing about an experience at a bus stop on “the Black end of town,” where he watched a father berate his toddler son for crying, the author addresses his own upbringing with an abusive father whose “beatings were like lightning strikes. Powerful, fast, and unpredictable. He held his anger so tightly that, when it finally overtook him, the force was bone-shaking. He punched me like I was a grown-ass man.” As a dark-skinned Black boy in Ohio, Broome’s childhood was fraught with peril; at school, it was made abundantly clear that God “made white people and Black people and meant for us to stick to our own kind.” His parents used shame and abuse to try and toughen him up, tactics the author describes in heart-wrenching detail. While watching the man on the bus, he realized that “what I am witnessing, is the playing out of one of the very conditions that have dogged my entire existence. This 'being a man' to the exclusion of all other things.” Moving back and forth through time, Broome revisits similar scenes—e.g., punishment and rejection for not acting according to someone’s expectations, halting attempts to express himself—and he interrogates his complicated relationship with his parents. In one particularly poignant passage, the author describes how he convinced his mother to buy him a girl’s shirt at the store: “And from that day to this one, no one has ever looked at me like my mother did that day. It was pity mixed with worry for what was to come. It was the piping pink manifestation of all she had ever suspected.” Beautifully written, this examination of what it means to be Black and gay in America is a must-read.

A stellar debut memoir.

Kirkus Reviews

"This book is light forged from darkness, in the way that James Baldwin’s writing is or in the way that Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight is but also in a way that is singular and vivid and wholly original.... Punch Me Up to the Gods is furious and dazzling, poetic and gritty. It is vital for every type of reader and a gift to every reader who has had to fight to affirm their existence in this country."

R. Eric Thomas

"Punch Me Up to the Gods is a pain-filled tour de force of incredible beauty. The writing is as exquisite as the story is at times horrific. A true work of art. Not one of the best new books I’ve read this year, but quite simply the best."

author of Push and The Kid Sapphire

"Punch Me Up to the Gods feels like a gift. There will come a day when some Black child . . . will have read Broome’s masterwork and possibly commit to staying alive because of Broome’s words. They will tell him that Punch Me Up to the Gods is a testament to the insurgent and ineradicable power of Black queer being. That it reveals that Black queer men are our own best creations."

New York Times Book Review

"Black, dark, queer, and poor. These are the vectors of Punch Me Up to the Gods. Brian Broome, literary son of the Black modernist giant Gwendolyn Brooks, writes from the center as one declared wrong among the wronged, one cast out of those cast aside, and one who desperately seeks tenderness. And on the hard road of growing up he finds wisdom, poetry, and love. This spectacular, unforgettable, and wholly innovative book is an ethical reckoning that tears us away from cruelty and invites us to witness real beauty."

Imani Perry

"This devastatingly beautiful memoir about growing up Black and gay in rural Ohio introduces a major literary talent in Broome."

Entertainment Weekly

"Punch Me Up to the Gods feels like a scream at the end of a summit.... Broome has shattered every rule and has come to make a mess of what we think of as family, Blackness, sexuality, and most importantly, the memoir. With unflinching honesty, he delivers a necessary testament of his refusal to allow the strangling expectations of life to rob him of his personhood. We should all hope to be this courageous, not only in our writing, but in our living."

Jason Reynolds

"An electrifying read. Vulnerable and poetic but filled with a ferocious fire, it grabs you from the first page to the last. Perfect for fans of Sarah Broom, Kiese Laymon, and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight."

Chicago Review of Books

"Brian Broome has penned a powerful, emotional memoir about his experience growing up as a sensitive, dark-skinned Black boy in rural Ohio . . . this memoir stands in its own unique lane, strong and true."

Shondaland

"Broome's powerful, sharp-edged memoir, often equal parts horrifying and bleakly funny, is made up of essays focusing on key moments in his life."

Columbus Dispatch