Structure

The work is Brian Broome’s memoir of his early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy discovering his homosexuality and struggling with his abusive father. The memoir’s structure is complex and serves the narrative purpose of allowing readers to experience Broome’s fumbling and difficulty to find his place in a world that was determined to “other” him.

The novel does always divide into clear boundaries between the past with threads and clues woven throughout each section to tie together Brian’s past, present, and hopeful future. He is intentional in showing the inevitable connection between who he was as a child seeking love and the man he grew to be, still seeking love and trying to fill the space with casual sex and escalating drug use to soothe himself. There is no way to separate the past from the present, but...