When I put this book on hold at the library, it was with the optimistic belief that at some point in the future, I would be up for reading a memoir that deals with growing up in the south as a gay black boy being raised by a single mother with a heart condition. I had read Jones's work before, so I knew it would be written well, but also that is a lot to handle! But his light touch in exploring his past and his memories and what he did and what was done to him made it so easy to read, until it suddenly punched you right in the gut. It seemed to float until it landed, and you realized it had been on that trajectory the entire time, and you just didn't know.
So much of his experience discovering who he was as a queer man felt familiar to me, and part of that is in reading about someone coming of age when I did, too - the '90s are now a decade of self-reflection, of origin stories, and that lodged in my chest in a particular way. But of course, so many of his experiences don't reflect my own, and he teases them out and holds up a mirror to them all. I loved it.
Grade: A
So much of his experience discovering who he was as a queer man felt familiar to me, and part of that is in reading about someone coming of age when I did, too - the '90s are now a decade of self-reflection, of origin stories, and that lodged in my chest in a particular way. But of course, so many of his experiences don't reflect my own, and he teases them out and holds up a mirror to them all. I loved it.
Grade: A
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