Boys and Oil Audiobook By Taylor Brorby cover art

Boys and Oil

Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

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Boys and Oil

By: Taylor Brorby
Narrated by: Greg D. Barnett
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About this listen

From a young, gay environmentalist, a searing coming-of-age memoir set against the arid landscape of rural North Dakota, where homosexuality "seems akin to a ticking bomb."

"I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power." So begins Taylor Brorby's Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, "a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking."

In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

©2022 Taylor Brorby (P)2022 Tantor
Americas Environmentalists & Naturalists Professionals & Academics State & Local United States Growing Up Village
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Amazing! I have a gay son and I am from ND. I also went to St. Olaf! It was nearly a perfect book!

Amaze

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The story was easy to listen to. My heart goes out to him and I want to hear more!

I want to hear more!

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Wonderful storytelling. A beautiful and painful portrait of the American west and the human experience.

I rewound a number of lines because they were so powerful. Great narration. I highly recommend Boys and Oil.

Intimate and vulnerable storytelling.

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