This book was published some time ago. Unfortunately a review would not serve as productive or helpful at this point. I write this with sincerest apologies.

This book follows Brian Boome as be recounts growing up as a gay black child in Ohio and his young adulthood in Pennsylvania. It was very heavy and started off strong, but fell apart a bit for me by the end. It was very well-written though. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

One man's journey to adulthood and acceptance of himself as a black, gay man.
As I read this memoir, I was struck how bleak Brian Broome's life has been. A tale of failure to become a man. A black man. Brian was not into sports or throwing his weight around. Noticeably so. His father said he'd rather kill him himself than have a white man do it. What Brian didn't know at the time was, his father may have been alluding to the fact that as a Sissy, Brian was a target. In fact, he might actually be killed for it.

His life follows humiliations, beatings, along with bullying from teachers and other adults. Some because he was black. Some was because he was different. Some just because they could. Racism is as integral to his life's story as the turn it takes into drugs, alcohol and indiscriminate sex.

What I found surprising was the lack of how AIDS would have, if it did, impact his life frequenting Bath Houses in the 90's. AIDS was mentioned but only perfunctorily. It also leaves me wondering a few years now after this memoir has been published, if Brian Broome has found self-acceptance and perhaps love.

This book has been nominated or received a variety of nonfiction awards.

A powerful memoir about a gay black boy growing up in the midwest. It's brutal and raw in its realness. Absolutely wonderful.

This memoir was a dazzling debut from this author, and I was pulled into his story immediately. I liked the structure of this book as well.

I would like to thank Publisher/NetGallley for this ARC copy

Just wow this was excellent Bio I put this in my top 5, so real and raw as I was reading couldn't believe a person could go through so much trauma hard to read this book. Will be one of my best read 2022 again I look forward to reading more from this Author excellent Bio.

Ooh time goes by and if i don't write the review right away...sigh. I'm trying to be better. The best i can do right now is give a star count...

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 <I>Heavy</i> or <I>Between the World and Me</i>. Worthy reads, even necessary ones. <a href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2017/02/tears-we-cannot-stop-heartfelt-sermon.html" target="_blank"><i>Tears We Cannot Stop</i></a> 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 <a href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2021/05/nothing-personal-overlooked-essay-by.html" target="_blank"><I>Nothing Personal</i></a>, 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.
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
That, I feel, pretty much sums up the value in reading this book.

This title is deserving of all the accolades given to it this year. An honest memoir with a point of view that is painfully missing in the world these days. Congratulations Brian Broome!

THIS BOOK! Omg!
Ok so memiors are some of my favorite reads. And I think this one is up there with "Running with Scissors" for me... honestly I think it's better than that. I really SAW this book, and not just in my mind, but there were aspects of the book that resonated with me becauseof how i grew up and how things are what they are, but the internal struggles of the individualreally make something recognizable and real and honest in a way that many people cant even begin to comprehend. It made me feel so many damn emotions! Brian Broome is a beautiful story teller who gives the reader honest and raw depictions of his life and what he went through. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself in this book. The vulnerability is unforgettable. I really would recommend this book to anyone. And if it makes them uncomfortable then they aren't aware of just how tough life can be.

This is brutally honest account of growing up a young gay Black boy in a poor community. Brian is subjected to physical abuse and other harsh treatment to toughen him up so that he will not act too girly or white. His young life is full of disappointment and rejection but he tells with an emotional clarity that is refreshing and edgy

Punch Me Up to the Gods, author Brian Broome wrote his memoir with such honestly and rawness about his childhood and young adulthood, which shaped him to be the man he is today. His emotional, openness on his experiences with his strict mother, abusive father, and cruel, supposed friendships made me understand a lot more about a world I don't have any experience with. I wish I could have told him that it would be ok at a young age. This book gave me all the feels from the beginning to the end.

Brian grew up as a dark-skinned boy who was attracted to other boys and took a lot abuse over his feminine traits. His abuse of alcohol and drugs to hide behind and tamper down his feels was heartbreaking, but the journey leads him to eventual acceptance.

I can't wait to see what else Brian Broome writes.

Thank you NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mariner Books for allowing me to read this book for an honest review.

This is a memoir in the vein of James Baldwin. I saw a lot of my own history, felt a lot of my own feelings while reading this book. Growing up feeling different from everybody, not fitting into a prescribed mold. The journey Brian went through to find and then accept himself was long and hard, and is still ongoing.

The book alternates between stories about a young boy on the bus with his father “Initiation of Tuan,” and stories about Broome’s own life, all structured within the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. He describes learning how to be a black man not as a welcoming but as a trial to be endured. He recognizes himself in that little boy. Can he have the same compassion for himself?

His own feelings growing up were an insult to his father and black manhood. His advice to Tuan throughout the book is to be vulnerable, be yourself, it’s scary, it takes work, save yourself, fight for yourself not for what others think you should be.
In one chapter he speaks with his mother’s voice, forgiving her. He recognizes that hers was ‘a life derailed and unrealized.’ He was first punched by his father for reaching for a doll - trying to beat masculinity into him - send him back up to god - but felt god wouldn’t take him in this condition, he was so broken.

Like James Baldwin, he had to leave America to reflect properly and find his own voice. He wants to be like Baldwin whom he sees as confident, strong, unafraid. He understands his father may have suffered from anxiety and depression like he does - anxious, lonely, insecure. He took the trip to prove to himself that he is allowed to take up space in the world. That really hit me, feeling the same way for so long. We don’t need to perfect ourselves as a condition of existence. There will never be a time where we are not criticized. Learn from Brother Baldwin and live freely and without apology.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mariner Books and NetGalley for an advanced egalley in exchange for a candid review.

A gripping, powerful memoir that shares about Broome's growing up "poor, gay, and Black in Ohio." It's raw and should be one of those books required to be read in America. I also really appreciated the literary structure of the book.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with this book. All thoughts are my own.

Although because of the subject matter and it being triggering, this was such a powerful read. The author bared his soul in each and every page. Many times I became overwhelmed with emotions and had to pause reading it. I've read a lot of memoirs, and this was one of the most powerful and emotional I've ever read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this free advanced copy. Brian Broome is an amazing new voice that I will be on the lookout for from now on! His story is touching and heartbreaking and inspiring. I think this should be required reading for a lot of people!

How do I possibly begin to review this memoir? The weight of this book stuck with me for a long time. So long, that I couldn’t find the words to express the magnitude of what I had just read.

Punch Me Up to the Gods is a difficult but enthralling read. There is so much rawness and honesty on these pages that I often had to stop and say a prayer for the author. Broome’s life as a gay black man, often marred by physical abuse by his own father, was far from easy. It’s through his beautiful writing — and the story of a young boy named Tuan — that he has woven a heart wrenching viewpoint of a life quite different than my own. For this, I am grateful. Grateful for his perspective, his strength and his perseverance.

If there’s one book you read this year, it’s this one.

Thank you Betgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for generously providing a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for eARC. I really liked Broome's 2 structural writing choices here, framing his memoir around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” and his present-day interstitial commentary "The Initiation of Tuan" about a young Black toddler, Antuan, on the bus with his father and how his interaction with his father and the world will shape his ideas of Black manhood. This book was really well done and will stand up there with similarly themed works by Darnell Moore, Saeed Jones, and George M. Johnson, all of whom offer differing but necessary perspectives on growing up Black and gay and the intersections of toxic masculinity, racism, religion, and misogyny. I'd read more by Broome. and definitely recommend this novel.

“Black boys don’t get a long boyhood. It ends where white fear begins…” This is an amazing memoir. Broome writes explicitly about growing up Black and queer in rural Ohio, and his voice is both forthright and artistic, with an essay "The Initiation of Tuan" running through the memoir, which allows Broome to introduce the reflective, wiser narrator, giving us a birds eye view. The chapter titles are lines from the poem, "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black female Poet Laureate.

Broome writes elegantly about the pressure on Black men to be masculine and conform to a certain persona, and what it means to be a person who fits no where neatly: not in Black society, nor in queer society, where his skin color always keeps him othered.

Broome asks, "What if I believed brown boys to be just as worthy as white ones? […] Who would I be if I unlearned all the things I’ve learned without my permission? All the things that the darkness of my skin is supposed to mean.” We as readers must ask ourselves as well. Who would we all be if we unlearned all the racist messages fed to us our whole lives?

Punch Me Up to the Gods is a heartbreaking memoir about growing up poor, Black, and gay in a small town in Ohio. Brian Broome touches on a lot of hard-hitting topics throughout the book, such as his abusive father, his problems with alcohol and drug addictions, toxic masculinity (especially in the Black community) and his constant effort to fit in in a world that constantly rejects who he is.

Memoirs are difficult to rate. I don’t rate the author’s life story itself, but the way it is told. In this case, the story is not told linearly, the narrative jumps to different moments of his life like fragmented memories. The chapters of his own life are intertwined with a scene of Brian watching a young Black boy and his father in the bus. The way they interact reminds him of his own childhood and the “lessons” his own father told him. This storytelling device worked well in the beginning, but it started to lose connection with his own life towards the end. In general, I think the first half of the book was way stronger than the second half, since it started to get repetitive.

Overall, I still highly recommend this books, especially if you enjoy memoirs told in a more literary way. Broome’s story can be difficult to read, and you should be in the right mind space to start this book, but you should absolutely add it to your TBRs.