Punch Me Up to the Gods

A poetic and raw coming-of-age memoir about Blackness, masculinity, and addiction

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 Broome’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.

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Punch Me Up to the Gods

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Punch Me Up to the Gods

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ISBN-13:	9781799968955
Publisher:	Hmh Adult Audio
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Brian Broome, a poet and screenwriter, is K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is pursuing an MFA degree. He 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.

Yona Harvey is an American poet and recipient of the the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her first poetry collection, Hemming the Water. Her second poetry collection, You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in September 2020. She is among the first black women to write for Marvel Comics since the company's founding in 1939 and the first black woman to write for the Marvel character Storm. She won the inaugural Lucille Clifton Legacy Award in poetry from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. She facilitates creative writing workshops, delivers writing-specific speaker topics, and is at work on her first memoir. She currently serves on the editorial board of Poetry Daily.

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“The most important thing is the reader. I tell my students, Look, if you’re writing about yourself, it’s great that you want to get your feelings out. You want to maybe, you know, have some catharsis. You want to get the earliest things out. But, if you bore the reader, you’re done. You know, and […]

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 bestselling author of Running with Scissors

“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 bestselling author of Heavy

“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 bestselling 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 bestselling 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

12/01/2020
Famous for breaking the Watergate story with Bob Woodward, Bernstein backtracks to his early-1960s experiences as a teenage reporter at the Washington Star in Chasing History. Structured around Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool," Punch Me Up to the Gods recounts award-winning poet/screenwriter Broom's upbringing in Ohio as a Black boy crushing on other boys, falling into wild sex and drug use, and finally finding his way. Laden with Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG, and Grammy honors, Foxx pivots here to talk about raising two very different daughters in Act Like You Got Some Sense (400,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for October 2020). In The Windsor Diaries, published posthumously, Howard records staying with her grandfather at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park during World War II and befriending princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Emmy Award winner Leslie Jordan, a viral sensation, pulls out the Southern charm to tell funny stories about life and celebrity in How Y'all Doing? (100,000-copy first printing). Having started the YouTube channel Dad, How Do I? to hand out the fatherly advice and how-to tips he wishes his dad had been around to give him, Kenney here reiterates that advice while surveying his childhood and how the channel went viral (75,000-copy first printing). In Sparring with Smokin' Joe, Lewis, director of journalism at York College, CUNY, recalls the months he spent in 1981 in the gym and on the road with boxing great Joe Frazier. Brat Packer McCarthy relates a life that encompasses acting, directing, and working as an award-winning editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler. In Sunshine Girl, Margulies shows how she created order amid the chaos of a difficult childhood to become an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress. In Sinatra and Me, Oppedisano, a longtime confidant and key member of the singer's management team, reflects on Sinatra's life, loves, and commitment to his craft (100,000-copy first printing). Finally, in The Wreckage of My Presence, actress/podcaster Wilson offers funny but heartfelt essays ranging from the joys of eating in bed to her obsessive need to be liked (100,000-copy first printing)

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