Punch Me Up to the Gods
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Brian Broome
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Robin Miles
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By:
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Brian Broome
About this listen
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.
©2021 Brian Broome (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Pride and Protest
- By: Nikki Payne
- Narrated by: Kacie Rogers, Ron Nery Jr.
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Liza B.—the only DJ who gives a jam—wants to take her neighborhood back from the soulless property developer dropping unaffordable condos on every street corner in DC. But her planned protest at a corporate event takes a turn after she mistakes the smoldering-hot CEO for the waitstaff. When they go toe-to-toe, the sparks fly—but her impossible-to-ignore family thwarts her every move. Liza wants Dorsey Fitzgerald out of her hood, but she’ll settle for getting him out of her head.
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The CHEMISTRY
- By Kristen Killen on 09-18-23
By: Nikki Payne
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Midnight Cowboy
- By: James Leo Herlihy
- Narrated by: Michael Urie
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck's fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel's emotional nucleus.
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Superb
- By Macala Shon on 01-26-21
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Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
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things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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Three-Fifths
- By: John Vercher
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a black father he’s never known and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn’t, 22-year-old Bobby Saraceno is passing for white. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden his truth from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a hardened racist.
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Good BUT not as good as it sounded
- By jaymie thomas on 12-13-19
By: John Vercher
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The Dark Side of Innocence
- Growing Up Bipolar
- By: Terri Cheney
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling author blends a pitch-perfect childlike voice with keen adult observation as she shares her heartrending, groundbreaking insider's look into the fascinating and frightening world of childhood bipolar disorder.
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Eye opening
- By Anonymous User on 03-13-23
By: Terri Cheney
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The Turner House
- By: Angela Flournoy
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over 50 years. Their house has seen 13 children grown and gone - and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a 10th of its mortgage.
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The narrator's performance made the difference.
- By KT on 06-11-15
By: Angela Flournoy
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The Rebel of Raleigh High
- Raleigh Rebels Series, Book 1
- By: Callie Hart
- Narrated by: Teddy Hamilton, Charlotte North
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Hit me. Kick me. Hurt me. Hate me. There’s nothing that the students of Raleigh High can do to Silver Parisi anymore. Over the past year, she’s had to endure more pain and suffering than most people are asked to bear in their lifetimes. She’s a pariah, an outcast, a ghost. She’s also never been one to take shit lying down, though...despite what half the football team might say. With only 168 days left of the school year, it won’t be long until graduation, and Silver’s planning on skipping town and leaving Raleigh firmly in her rearview mirror. Until he comes along....
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Not a YA only! Do NOT blow this off!
- By Amazon Customer on 02-29-20
By: Callie Hart
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Tell Me Everything
- A Novel
- By: Cambria Brockman
- Narrated by: Ariadne Meyers
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In her first weeks at Hawthorne College, Malin is swept up into a tight-knit circle that will stick together through all four years. There’s Gemma, an insecure theater major from London; John, a tall, handsome, wealthy New Englander; Max, John’s cousin, a shy pre-med major; Khaled, a wisecracking prince from Abu Dhabi; and Ruby, a beautiful art history major. But Malin isn’t like the rest of her friends. She’s an expert at hiding her troubled past - all while using her extraordinary insight to detect their deepest vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
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beware
- By keith y. on 10-03-19
By: Cambria Brockman
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A Good Country
- A Novel
- By: Laleh Khadivi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California - about where identity truly lies, and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Reza Courdee, a 14-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner.
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A very important contribution
- By Mia on 05-29-17
By: Laleh Khadivi
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Passion Marks
- By: Lee Hayes
- Narrated by: Vance Goodwin
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything that looks good isn't good for you. From the outside, Kevin Davis' world leaves nothing to be desired. It is a life of luxury, comfort, and money, but never judge a book by its cover. His pretend world hides the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse he endures at the hands of his perfect man. Passion Marks finds Kevin entangled in a dark web of love, violence, depravity, and torment at the hands of his lover, James Lancaster, the ambitious CEO of a rising Houston software firm. In order to free himself from the cycle of violence, Kevin must overcome his personal demons.
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The Reality that was entirely too close to home
- By Anonymous User on 08-27-24
By: Lee Hayes
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The Fourth Child
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Winter
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
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Just OK - Considered Bailing
- By Madeleine Homan on 04-18-21
By: Jessica Winter
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Godshot
- A Novel
- By: Chelsea Bieker
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it's an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret "assignments," to bring the rain everybody is praying for.
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flawless novel, not the best narration
- By Adrienne on 05-05-20
By: Chelsea Bieker
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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- Kindle Customer
- 09-11-24
A Teue Testament of Survival
The author knows how to catch your attention with graphic illustrations of his story. I was memorized from start to finish.
He made me laugh, cry, sorrowful, and reflective of my own treatment of my son as well as other black men. The struggle is real for men and he painted a clear picture of the trials and tribulations men face when they are not considered masculine. Great read everyone.
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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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