Brian Broome’s childhood in Ohio was defined by contradictions: a dark-skinned Black boy with secret crushes on other boys, a mother both fierce and unyielding, a father broken yet omnipresent, and a world quick to remind him he was an outsider. To cope, he turned to sex, drugs, and self-destruction—escapes that often ended in equal parts comedy and heartbreak.
But beneath the chaos was always the search for belonging, for truth, for the freedom to exist fully in his own skin. Framed by Gwendolyn Brooks’s iconic poem We Real Cool, Broome’s memoir is both raw and lyrical, a story of masculinity, addiction, and survival.
Winner of the Kirkus Prize, Punch Me Up to the Gods is a staggering debut that redefines the modern memoir.
