This was a difficult read for me. Mostly because I cannot connect with the storyline due to me being a straight, white female. This did not discourage me from reading the book. I have compassion for the authors struggle and want nothing more to embrace the author in a long, loving hug. No one should have their future planned out for them. This author deserved a loving childhood in which he could bloom into his true self. Instead he struggled to find his place in this world because of those who w...

Four StarsAn email from the publisher put this book on my radar, since my reading preference is biographies. Another thing that drew me to the book is the invitation to learn about someone whose life experiences are very different from mine. Brian writes of growing up in Ohio and suffering on several fronts. It might be easier to use a specific example from the book to illustrate just how heart wrenching it was. The only time his fellow students made him feel a sense of inclusion was when they n...

Yooo the transparencyyyy! It takes guts to share this story and stand in it with your whole chest and Brian Broome did that!!! "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." - 98% in 'Punch Me Up to the Gods' by Brian Broome ...But you did tho! Brian Broome's written pieces let off several bells and I have so much gratitude for the effort that

Black boys don't get a long boyhood; it ends where white fear begins.People will tell you that times are different now but I think we all know that only some love is granted public access.*Poetic, structurally unique, and stylistically beautiful, while simultaneously gut wrenching, painful, and brutally honest. Besides being human and American, I have nothing in common with Brian Broome, but through his writing I felt his confusion/desperation/agony as he detailed the reality of being Black and

This memoir is really heavy. Broome is examining his childhood and the ways he was abused because he was Black and gay. It starts off incredibly strong but gets repetitive by the end. The structure is more like memoir in essays vs traditional memoir. Strong writing but not enough range to carry a full 250 pages.

This is definitely one of the best memoirs I've read in ages!There is much to admire here. The book is cleverly constructed, framed around a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and watching a father and a young son on the bus—the father telling the toddler not to cry, to be a man. This framing device very subtly and effectively introduces and reinforces the material from Broome's own story, and how his father and other males policed and sought to enforce concepts of masculinity.There is one chapter in what i...

Punch Me Up to the Gods is a powerful memoir written by Brian Broome a Black gay man who grew up in Ohio and moved to Pittsburgh, PA. Broome's story is told in an interesting way, he prefaces each chapter with vignettes titled "The Initiation of Tuan" which covers Broome's observations of a Black father and his young son Tuan on a city bus. Broome observes how the father interacts with Tuan, telling the young boy to be a man and to not cry. These observations lead into Broome's own story which f...

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestGosh, this was beautifully written. Sometimes you read books that make you second-guess your own abilities as a writer because of the way that person can use a simple word or phrase to paint such a quietly evocative picture of a thought or idea. I kept having tons of moments like that while reading PUNCH ME UP TO THE GODS, which is a memoir that discusses what it is like to be gay as a Black man and how that gets framed by societal const

Remember Brian Broome’s name: he is going to be a major literary force. This debut memoir will break your heart, make you laugh and cry, and you’ll be rooting for Brian on every page. For readers of Saeed Jones’s excellent memoir and Augusten Burroughs.

Brian Broome laid it all out there and should be commended for that. This is honest storytelling and the best kind of memoir since the subject himself wasn't above critique.Punch Me Up to the Gods, There Will Be No Miracles Here and Survival Math are forming something like a Holy Trinity for me when it comes to modern day memoirs written by Black men.YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35mw-...Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6oHa...

Whew! Some people will say it's not written like a traditional memoir and I couldn't agree more. I loved the way the author experimented with form and structure. The story is one that I will sit with for a long time. The memories he went through and his struggle with being a black gay man in America are intertwined into a story that should be read by everyone. After reading this I just want to protect him and my students who can identify with his struggles forever. I also commend him for sharing...

There is a category of memoir I've discovered in recent years that have completely challenged my understanding of the genre, books that stretched and pushed the genre and what it could or should be. Books like Hunger by Roxane Gay, Heavy by Kiese Laymon, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado and Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Memoirs which so brilliantly and bravely bear the souls of the writers in a way that I could not have ever imagined. Memoirs that changed me in some fundamental way, j...

Brian Broome's Punch Me Up to the Gods is no gay anthem, it is a ballad to which every brokenhearted Black queer boy knows the word. It begins as all indelible sad songs do, with a confession to shame: "Any Black boy who did not signify how manly he was at all times deserved to be punched back up to God to be remade, reshaped." Black boys love sad songs too, we sing them all the time: in the safe dimension of our dreams, where we assume God is not listening.“Homosexuality, as it so often does, a...

This memoir was painful to read at times (most of the times if I am going to be completely honest), but it was beautiful. The subject was not particularly full of beauty but the voice that told the story is beautiful. I loved the unique structure to this memoir. It is a serious of essays broken up with observations Brian made of a young boy and his father on the bus which caused him to reflect on his own upbringing. Brian is brutally honest and this memoir tells the story of how he failed to con...

Brian Broome's Punch Me Up to the Gods is a deep dive into growing Black and gay in the U.S.Brian was born in steel mill town in Ohio to a father, laid off when the mill closed, and a mother who works to pay the bills. As Brian gets older he realizes he is the one thing Black men are not supposed to be: gay. But as he learns to accept his gayness he also struggles with the ways in which white supremacy have shaped his perspectives: longing for the love of white men who only see him as fetish for...

4.5Black life in America doesn’t seem to allow for it. As a race, we are often admired for how “strong” we are and for how much we have endured. The truth is that we are no stronger than anyone else. We have endured, but we are only human. It is the expectation of strength, and the constant requirement to summon it, fake it, or die, that is erosive and leads to our emotional undoing. ...Punch Me Up to the Gods knocked me flat. If you are white and queer, read this book. Hell, anyone and everyone...

There have been a number of engaging memoirs centered on Black Queer men, among them Sayeed Jones, Darnell Moore, and George M Johnson, but this one is particularly special. Brian Broome writes with such raw unflinching honesty and simply gorgeous storytelling, it effectively raised an already rather high bar. I started this on audio and was immediately drawn into the timbre of his voice, but what really captivated me was the way he recounted each particular memory. Starting in McKeesport Pennsy...

This book had me going through a variety of emotions. Anger, sadness, laughter, etc. very straight with no chaser account of the author’s journey of being gay and Black in a time that this was not accepted, especially in the Black family. I also enjoyed the chapters about atuan and how he tied them into his history. Mr. Brian, I thank you for allowing me the chance to live your story via your words. Blessings unto you in this thing we call Life. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher

In Punch My Up to the Gods, Brian Broome explores the pressures that Black men face to perform a certain kind of masculinity—one that he found particularly damaging as a Black, gay boy growing up in rural Ohio. In a series of stories organized by theme around Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool," Broome reflects on the way these requirements to "be a man" damaged his relationship with his family, complicated his efforts to find queer community, and resulted in longterm struggles with anxiety an...

This is a hard memoir by Brian Brooke, who has had a very tough life by not being the masculine person his family wanted. This book reminds me how badly people need parental love to be mentally healthy adults. Excellent writing!