The memoir is well written, if conventional, but Blow rarely lets his guard down and the commentary on gender and sexuality feels underdeveloped.more The language is polished, the characterization solid, the pacing measured. Early chapters focus on Blow’s impoverished childhood and his strong bond with his mother, whereas later ones detail his college years at Grambling State University his ambivalence about his sexuality and his relentless ambition tie the two parts together. The memoir is we The debut memoir from longtime New York Times columnist Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up In My Bones examines the author’s coming of age in rural Louisiana.
The debut memoir from longtime New York Times columnist Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up In My Bones examines the author’s coming of age in rural Louisiana. It's damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.įinally, 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.Ī powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.more 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.īlow'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. 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' stor 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 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.
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