#KweliClub

Charles M. Blow - Fire Shut Up In My Bones

A gorgeous, moving memoir of how one of America's most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up -- a place where slavery's legacy felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders' stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.
Blow's attachment to his mother -- a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning -- cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It's damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.
Finally, Blow escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he's ever needed and wanted, until he's called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.
A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.

 

 

  • Print Length: 242 pages
  • Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (September 23, 2014)
  • Publication Date: September 23, 2014
  •  

    Welcome

    You made it! Congratulations on your invitation to be a member of the exclusive Kweli Club. Please create an account to complete any purchase.

    Your first purchase will activate your full membership and add you to my personal address book. All full members can hit me directly on email anytime. I have a dedicated account on my phone exclusively for you.

    If there are any books you are looking for, or would like for us carry, Please send us an email at kweliclub@gmail.com.