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Punch Me Up to the Gods
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Brian Broome, Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE • PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK • A TODAY SUMMER READING LIST PICK • AN ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY BEST DEBUT OF SUMMER PICK • A PEOPLE BEST BOOK OF SUMMER PICK
A poetic and raw coming-of-age memoir about Blackness, masculinity, and addiction
“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
“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 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 our misfit’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.
Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time
All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.
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Unique but universal
- By Carly on 09-04-23
By: Peace Adzo Medie
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Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer
- By: Jamie Figueroa
- Narrated by: Joana Garcia
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.
By: Jamie Figueroa
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Star Child
- A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler
- By: Ibi Zoboi
- Narrated by: Ibi Zoboi, Robin Miles
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight audiences 15 years after her death.
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Short and sweet
- By Etoile NEOhio on 09-24-23
By: Ibi Zoboi
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What's Mine and Yours
- By: Naima Coster
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly White high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next 20 years.
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Wonderful book!!
- By Susan 🎧Audible-a-holic🎧 Crowe on 03-15-21
By: Naima Coster
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Homebodies
- A Novel
- By: Tembe Denton-Hurst
- Narrated by: Marcella Cox
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter, but, for now, her days are filled with listicles about lip gloss and click-bait articles about celebrity haircare. Still, the job is flashy and her girlfriend is steady and supportive. The path may be long, but Mickey’s well on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Everything finally seems to be falling into place—until she finds out she’s being replaced.
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This novel is incredibly shapeless.
- By Anonymous User on 04-15-24
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Scenes from My Life
- A Memoir
- By: Michael K. Williams, Jon Sternfeld
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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When Michael K. Williams died on September 6, 2021, he left behind a career as one of the most electrifying actors of his generation. From his star turn as Omar Little in The Wire to Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire to Emmy-nominated roles in HBO’s The Night Of and Lovecraft Country, Williams inhabited a slew of indelible roles that he portrayed with a rawness and vulnerability that leapt off the screen.
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Absolutely incredible
- By corydonovan on 08-29-22
By: Michael K. Williams, and others
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Women of the Post
- By: Joshunda Sanders
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women’s houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it’s up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she’s recruited to join the Women’s Army Corps—offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world—Judy jumps at the opportunity.
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Must read book
- By Kourtney on 04-28-24
By: Joshunda Sanders
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Uphill
- A Memoir
- By: Jemele Hill
- Narrated by: Jemele Hill
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Jemele Hill’s world came crashing down when she called President Trump a “white supremacist”; the White House wanted her fired from ESPN, and she was deluged with death threats. But Hill had faced tougher adversaries growing up in Detroit than a tweeting president. Beneath the exterior of one of the most recognizable journalists in America was a need—a calling—to break her family’s cycle of intergenerational trauma.
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Story telling was so drab
- By Rosalind on 12-06-22
By: Jemele Hill
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Belonging
- A Daughter’s Search for Identity Through Loss and Love
- By: Michelle Miller
- Narrated by: Michelle Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Michelle Miller was an award-winning broadcast journalist for CBS News, few people in her life knew the painful secret she carried: her mother had abandoned her at birth. Los Angeles in 1967 was deeply segregated, and her mother—a Chicana hospital administrator who presented as white, had kept her affair with Michelle’s father, Dr. Ross Miller, a married trauma surgeon and Compton’s first Black city councilman—hidden, along with the unplanned pregnancy. Raised largely by her father and her paternal grandmother, Michelle had no knowledge of the woman whose genes she shared. Then, fate intervened when Michelle was twenty-two. As her father lay stricken with cancer, he told her, “Go and find your mother.”
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Get over it!
- By Dawn Starostka on 06-01-23
By: Michelle Miller
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River Sing Me Home
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Eleanor Shearer
- Narrated by: Debra Michaels, Eleonor Shearer
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.
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Good debut.. with a few quarrels in my opinion
- By Alize on 07-24-23
By: Eleanor Shearer
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Memphis
- A Novel
- By: Tara M. Stringfellow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray, Adenrele Ojo, Tara Stringfellow
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
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Awful narrator
- By Rachael edwards on 06-07-22
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I've Been Meaning to Tell You
- By: David Chariandy
- Narrated by: David Chariandy
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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When a moment of ignored-in-the-moment bigotry prompted his three-year-old daughter to ask, 'What happened?' David Chariandy began wondering how to discuss with his children the politics of race. A decade later, in a newly heated era of both struggle and divisions, he writes a letter to his now 13-year-old daughter. The son of Black and South Asian migrants from Trinidad, David draws upon his personal and ancestral past, including the legacies of slavery, indenture, and immigration, as well as the experience of growing up as a visible minority in the land of his birth.
By: David Chariandy
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Up Home
- One Girl's Journey
- By: Ruth J. Simmons
- Narrated by: Ruth J. Simmons
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become the first Black president of an Ivy League university. The former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M, Texas’s oldest HBCU, Simmons has inspired generations of students as she herself made history.
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Butter Roll
- By Anonymous User on 06-03-24
By: Ruth J. Simmons
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Dear Black Girls
- How to Be True to You
- By: A'ja Wilson
- Narrated by: A'ja Wilson
- Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite gold medals, WNBA championships, and a list of accolades, A’ja Wilson knows how it feels to be swept under the rug—to not be heard, to not feel seen, to not be taken seriously. As a fourth grader going to a primarily white school in South Carolina, A’ja was told she’d have to stay outside for a classmate’s birthday party. Wilson tells stories like this, about how even when life tried to hold her down, it didn’t stop her. She shares her contribution to “The Talk,” and how to keep fighting, all while igniting strength, passion, and joy.
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a'ja is an amazing author
- By Chayla H. on 06-11-24
By: A'ja Wilson
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What listeners say about Punch Me Up to the Gods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cindy L Krenz
- 04-15-22
Compelling and compassionate
Fabulous writing! A voice I could listen to all day. My only complaint is that I didn’t want it to end
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- Catherine Leopard
- 09-16-22
Poetry
Broome’s writing is poetry in a story format. As he reads his words I was transported into an uncomfortable space of an unfamiliar life. This life took hold deep inside me and opened a new door leading toward understanding.
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- Choochin
- 05-28-21
Soul-baring & life changing.
This book, this story and the courage Brian exudes in telling it, stripped me bare of all the things that I thought made me, us, human. It performed a “hard reset” on the part of my heart that stores all of the things people have told me that I could not and should not be. Every word he says, weighed on my bones, until each one cracked under the pressure, but this makes me feel reborn, not broken. I don’t exaggerate when I say that, this story saved my life- the way I can always count on words to do. I made a promise to Brian, myself and every oft forgotten and dismissed, battered, bruised & bloodied little boy out there, to be more gentle with myself, as I work to unlearn all of the lies I was told about myself that I believed true. From the deepest part of me, Thank you, Brian. A true masterpiece.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- aphra b
- 06-05-21
Stunning!
This book left me equal parts soaring and gutted. I was moved to tears to rage to laughter to joy in a matter of minutes. I was amazed by his prose and the juxtaposition of his story alongside the young child on the bus. Beautifully written! Thank you, Brian Broome!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kimberly A. Carmitchel
- 05-25-21
just plain great writing
The content may not be for everyone given that there was a fair bit of raw and gritty discussion of drug use and sexual interaction but the writing was so good. Several of Brian's turns of phrases just blew me away. Definitely I would recommend this.
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2 people found this helpful
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- benjamin mack
- 05-31-22
Incredible story telling.
The way Brian draws you in to his life and shares some of the most relatable concepts of being an outsider and wanting to be part of. I truly felt captivated, it made me feel like I had lived through some of these journeys with him. 20/10 highly recommend.
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- Donna
- 01-08-22
enjoyed it
Seems like an important book for a better understanding of one of life's greatest challenges, understanding ourselves and others. The sooner we start to think about how people came to be 'their developed self', the more peace we gain in that ever developing understanding.
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- Ashley Jackson
- 06-20-21
Absolutely incredible
Most impressive memoir I’ve ever read. Searingly honest, poetic.
Tough listening in parts due to its graphic depictions of abuse, addiction, and self loathing.
Highly recommended.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Natasha
- 09-09-21
I have never rated a book so highly!
This author was absolutely amazing in both his performance in reading the audible and most importantly in his haunting and uncomfortable honest writing. I remain in awe. Every black person, every gay person and every being should listen to or read this work. It's painful, relatable, sometimes funny and always real.
I 1000% recommend.
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- Billy D.
- 09-03-21
Loved it...
Loved it!! Sometimes it is a dark journey on the way to meeting one's self.
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