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Title details for Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell - Available

Since I Laid My Burden Down

by Brontez Purnell
ebook
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An uninhibited portrait of growing up gay in 1980s Alabama: exploring art and sex with “more layered insight than the page count should allow” (Hanif Abdurraqib, MTV News).
DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?
A modern American classic, Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw and searing look into the intersections of memory, Blackness, and queerness.
“Performance artist Purnell beautifully captures a personality through introspection and memory in this slim novel . . . a compelling portrait of a particular disaffected kind of gay youth caught between religion, culture, and desire.” —Publishers Weekly
“It’s a true novel, chaptered, and bound, that not only holds its own as queer literature, with its unapologetically misanthropic narrative, but also expands upon it.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“An antidote to the rigamarole of gay lit.” —Mask Magazine
“Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder.” —The Bay Area Reporter
“Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” —Michelle Tea, author of Castle on the River Vistula
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Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

Kindle Book

  • ISBN: 9781558614321
  • Release date: June 2, 2021

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781558614321
  • File size: 2030 KB
  • Release date: June 2, 2021

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781558614321
  • File size: 2207 KB
  • Release date: June 2, 2021
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Fiction African American Fiction Literature LGBTQIA+ (Fiction)

Languages

English

An uninhibited portrait of growing up gay in 1980s Alabama: exploring art and sex with “more layered insight than the page count should allow” (Hanif Abdurraqib, MTV News).
DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?
A modern American classic, Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw and searing look into the intersections of memory, Blackness, and queerness.
“Performance artist Purnell beautifully captures a personality through introspection and memory in this slim novel . . . a compelling portrait of a particular disaffected kind of gay youth caught between religion, culture, and desire.” —Publishers Weekly
“It’s a true novel, chaptered, and bound, that not only holds its own as queer literature, with its unapologetically misanthropic narrative, but also expands upon it.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“An antidote to the rigamarole of gay lit.” —Mask Magazine
“Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder.” —The Bay Area Reporter
“Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” —Michelle Tea, author of Castle on the River Vistula
Expand title description text
Fiction African American Fiction Literature LGBTQIA+ (Fiction)