Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Tried reading this one and it just was not meant for me. This does not mean that it is not a good book, I just was not in the right place to be reading it and have decided to not try picking it up anytime in the near future.

I have a lot of mixed feelings. I really thought i would enjoy this, but i didn’t. I tried desperately to connect with Hari Ziyad but I could never fully get there. It felt as if Ziyad was trying to smash too many issues into one book and i all felt mashed up while adding some heavy repetition which just left me confused.

The messages and the story being told was brilliant and I loved the uncompromising brutal honesty. The writing, however, could have done with more editing. I cannot look past the over-writing and repetition. By the end, the writing was making it hard to get through this book. At some points it felt like the way it was written really should have gone into therapy and perhaps stayed there. I respect their experiences and wanting to share them, but without a great editor helping to give this a storytelling flow it just had too many areas when it feels like they are over-explaining or simply talking too much.

The structure of this memoir in essays is wonderful. Ziyad's letters to their inner child make for a powerful frame. The way they explore both their own experiences of Black childhood, and then weave those intimate stories into a much larger story about the way Black children are treated in this country, is expertly done.

Ziyad's writing is beautiful. It took me quite a while to read Black Boy Out of Time because many sentences would make me pause and ponder. The willingness to open themselves up so fully was a gift. What sets this memoir apart from many others is the amount of self-reflection included, which leads the readers to participate in that process as well.

Black Boy Out of Time is a brilliant, seething indictment of the anti-Black, carceral world Hari Ziyad—and all of us—live in. Ziyad grew up in a blended family with a Muslim father and a Hindu mother. In this book, they allow us to enter into their world as they attempt several personal reckonings: How can they reconcile their parents' faiths with their queerness; and their mother's faith with their Blackness? How can they benefit from a proximity to whiteness whilst still fighting for Black lives? Most importantly, how can they reconcile who they were told to be as a child with who they grew up to become?

These are compelling, important, deeply personal questions. Unfortunately, Ziyad approaches them less as a storyteller and more as a journalist. They intersperse what is essentially an academic thesis about the lived experience of Black people in the United States with auto-ethnographic moments from their own life.

The socio-political commentary was thoughtful, and I appreciated their brutally honest, raw, reflective writings about their experiences with gender, sexuality, violence, and anti-Blackness, but there was a sense of detachment that shrouded the book.

Ultimately, this was less a memoir and more a treatise on the personal and political philosophies Ziyad lives by. Their perspective is valuable, desperately needed, and worth reading, and this is an intellectually demanding book. It entirely engaged my mind. I just wish it had packed a bigger emotional punch.

Thank you to Hari Ziyad, the publishers, and NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad is a powerful memoir that chronicles what it was like for the author growing up as part of a large blended family with a Hindu Hare Krishna mother and a Muslim father. Growing up Black and Queer in America is not easy, as demonstrated by this memorable and at times heart breaking book. Having sought therapy to help resolve their issues , the author opens several of the chapters of the book by writing a letter to his younger self, the inner child who struggled so much and faced so many challenges.
The book tackles many social issues in an interesting and unique way , one that challenges the reader to confront their own internalised prejudices and makes for a thought provoking, challenging and very worthwhile read.
I read and reviewed a copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Incredible, compelling tale of Hari Ziyad, who grew up in Cleveland, the child of a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father. The story of growing up black and queer in Cleveland is very powerful, but what makes this memoir particularly interesting is the deep cultural analysis of gender, race, religion, and sexuality and their intersections. Such a valuable read!

You know that feeling you get from not only enjoying a book, but learning from it also? That's Black Boy Out of Time. There were things here that made me have to look at myself and say "yes, that is me" but it's a learning experience. Overall, I really enjoyed it.

4/5 Stars

this is a very beautiful and heart-wrenching memoir that is a must-read
I would highly suggest this book to anyone who is struggling with their identtity.
the author writes in a way that is heavy but easy to digest. It reads "literary" in nature for lack of a different term
the cover is also very beautiful

This is just completely gorgeous and resonated deeply as an exploration of how different cultures, religions and influences shaped the narrator's family. I loved it.

For someone relatively young, Hari Ziyad has written an incredibly complex and comprehensive memoir, and with stunning beauty. They coin terms like "misafropedia" and "carceral dissonance" to explore their experience of growing up and existing as a Black and queer person within multiple systems. Their therapist suggests inner child work, and the letters to their younger self are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. Ziyad shows tremendous vulnerability and takes responsibility for the hurt they have caused others, all while extending grace and understanding to those who have hurt them. Rather than focusing on the individuals, they look at the anti-Black, anti-queer society as a whole to understand both their history and present. At the same time, to understand their experience is to also investigate and consider what so many others have gone through in the attempt to simply exist in a society that tries to shut them down at every turn and wants to make them hate themselves and those like them. In putting this memoir out there, Ziyad does us a great favor. Selfishly, I hope they continue to share their excellence with us.

Thanks to NetGalley, Little A and Hari Zyad for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.
Hari Ziyad has handed the reader the key to his intimate journal. The writing is eloquent and often beautiful.
His journey begins as one of nineteen children in a blended family in Cleveland, Ohio. Being queer, black and an outcast he faces and confronts many challenges, mostly survival. Ziyad’s struggles with facing ‘self’ is often difficult yet with the thoughtfulness of his writing is heart warming and heart wrenching. As a reader, I was confronting raw wounds, topics of great sensitivity and the truths of what many face in their daily lives. Hari Ziyad brings his world front and center and his voice is worth listening to.

Let me start with the cover, it‘s simply beautiful. The colors, the butterflies, the flowers, the light, and of course, the Black person (Hari as a child becoming a grown-up?). I can watch it time and again. It’s powerful and tender at the same time; I could buy this book just because of the cover.

Then the book itself. I find it hard to review. The writing is beautiful but also repetitive (constantly mentioning ‘carceral dissonance’ drove me a little crazy) and too much of a long ramble. I had a hard time getting into the memoir. To be honest, I never really got in, and I found myself skipping pages the more I read. I just didn’t feel anything and I hated myself a little because of that. I liked the acknowledgments the most! A little weird, probably ... The memoir started with the Author’s note, not just one or a few pages but a whole (long) chapter. I got confused because of that. And when I began to think that the ARC wouldn’t have chapters but only text and text and text (because it didn’t really read as an Author’s note), the Author’s note was over, and the chapters started. I was already sighing at that time, and that’s not a good thing when you try to like a book.

I read All Boys aren’t Blue a month ago, and I loved that book. I expected Black Boy Out of Time somehow to be the same. But it wasn’t (and maybe I shouldn’t have had those expectations, that’s definitely on me).


I hope other readers will love this memoir more than I did. Because I believe these kinds of memoirs by own voices are important to us all. Besides, a book with such a glorious cover needs to be loved 😀! Two stars and adding one star because of the cover.