Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

by Taylor Brorby

A Bioneers Best Reads Selection"Brorby has written not only a truly great memoir, but also a frighteningly relevant one that speaks to the many battles we still have left to fight." —Jung Yun, New York Times Book ReviewFrom 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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Biography Memoir, Environment

348 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 7, 2022

About the author

Taylor Brorby is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land, Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Mesa Refuge, Blue Mountain Center, and the North Dakota Humanities Council.

Taylor’s work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Orion Magazine, The Arkansas International, Southern Humanities Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and numerous anthologies. He is a contributing editor at North American Review.

Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change. He is the Annie Tanner Clark Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was thrilled to see this on NetGalley because I, too, am queer and in North Dakota and while I certainly don't regret the read, it was... Rough. Brorby loves a thesaurus heavy image and the kind of melodrama punctuated by phrases like, "Nothing, after all, survives on the prairie by being tender," except all the other ones are worse. Everything is alabaster and cerulean, all the clouds are cirrus, the prairie grasses are gold, sunsets are crimson and violet. I live in this land, a Bakken oil boom town in the far west corner, and I know how beautiful it can be (A shock to southern California me when we got here in 2012!) but reading it described this way over and over again was like rubbing my brain with a cheesegrater.

There are no characters in this book, just images, props, and ciphers through which Brorby's Serious Truths can be enunciated, and some of the anecdotes feel... like a bit much. I know that memoir is the place where writers are supposed to be free to paint the picture they experienced rather than photograph reality for the reader, so I won't begrudge a man the way he sees and reiterates his own life. I will, however, begrudge the quality of the prose used to talk about it.

If you're looking for a sad gay narrative or if you have an interest in overwrought metaphors about lignite coal mining, this might just be the book for you anyway.

Thanks to W. W. Norton & Company and Liveright for the ARC.

[Jarrett Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Coming out stories are the bedrock of LGBT+ literature. Regardless of time, geography, gender, or class, queer people share abundant similarities in their struggles to claim their own identity and merely exist in a world that is hostile towards them. But if one reads enough queer lit, these stories begin to become repetitive and predictable, making the reader feel as if nothing in Western society has changed regarding the treatment of queer individuals despite decades of swift social, political, and legislative victories for the community.

Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land is another volume in the growing corpus of coming out stories, yet Taylor Brorby, in prose that, at times, strives for the beauty of a Whitman poem, sets his story apart from others. Admittedly, North Dakota is a region of the United States I know little about, but the land holds deep affection for Brorby, the only son of working class parents who never imagined their son, an introverted overachiever, could be gay. All individuals are shaped by their environment, and Brorby goes into glittering detail about the landscape of North Dakota and its way of both imparting identity and destroying it. This is rough country. North Dakota's population is small (with only 770,221 inhabitants, it is the 47th populous state in the nation) and the mostly White Christian residents of the state are ultraconservative adherents who firmly believe in God, guns, and no gays. Brorby, astute from a very young age, knows the real danger, both bodily and emotionally, of coming out in this environment. This is why, like so many other queers, he left when he graduated from high school.

Boys and Oil is a smart title for this memoir. One of the book's strengths is that Brorby charts not only his journey to accept himself as a gay man and be accepted by others but also champions for the preservation of the upper Midwest. An alternative narrative, the B-storyline, involves his growth as a scholar, writer, and environmental activist. While these sections of the book hold interest, Brorby has problems getting them to speak to one another. Coalescing these sections was tough for him but I could see myself in his fascination with books, travel, music, and all the cultural products that many working class folks have come to resent. His writing works until it doesn't. The opening sections of the book, where Brorby lovingly caresses the North Dakota landscape with bejeweled prose, grasps the reader from the start. Yet it doesn't hold up, and in other chapters I felt the writing lacked style. Indeed, there's a clunkiness to some chapters, and many of the scene breaks are unnecessary and disruptive. Yet he gets his message across and maintains pace.

What saddens me about the book is the many fractured relationships Brorby has. He alerts us to this in the book's title, yet it pains me that many of the characters in the book float in and out of his life without much impact. Although he was lucky enough to find many allies along his journey, his parents remained intractable and scornful throughout, and I for one had no sympathy for them. How parents can disown their own children for being gay boggles my mind, but some do. Brorby's parents' roots to the land and its culture demonstrate how geographical identification and economic strife can breed bigotry and resentment. Despite Brorby's many accomplishments, his parents just can't get beyond their homophobia.

Brorby is aware just how vicious this environment can be. Several times throughout the book, he is stalked, threatened, and even assaulted once. Like other LGBT+ people who live in large, welcoming cities, I often wonder why other queers continue to stay in red states or hostile environments where little to no queer community exists. As Brorby's book attests, it is the love of land and family that make them stay. Not all queer people want life in a big expensive city. Rural life holds many delights, and Brorby makes this clear. Boys and Oil didn't make a big impression on me, but it did open my eyes to a part of the country I'm unfamiliar with, and it affirmed just how much queer people of all backgrounds have in common.

[Kristen Hackmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who attended high school and college in North Dakota in the 1980s, what is written in Taylor's memoir is how I remember the culture of the Midwest toward anyone that was gay. When my son came out to me, these are the things that I worry about. I wasn't worried about how others, including relatives, would perceive me, but how he would be treated. Could he be a target of violence because of who he was attracted to? Taylor's book, "Boys and Oil" shows that, even in 2005, the attitude I understood in the 80s is still present in ND. Progress is being made, but not quickly enough. I hope Taylor's parents are able to open their hearts and their minds to accepting Taylor for who he is. I also hope this book opens the eyes of those less understanding. Nothing we do or say is going to change someone who is gay. Just be kind!

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I'm biased because I know the author; maybe I'm biased because I recited Chaucer with him in the dark wood classrooms of St. Olaf College; maybe because I, too, live in a prairie state and love the beauty of the high plains. But I loved this memoir and will be thinking about it for a long time.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I ever meet this author (something I will never seek out), I think all I will be able to do is weep; I don't know that I've ever seen my own life reflected so much in a book that is so intimately about someone else.

Brorby finally gave me words to describe the reality of living in a rural area funded by an extractive economy you never truly reap the benefit from, yet bear the burden of. The alienation of being different in your home-and being told you belong somewhere else-while feeling fundamentally different than others in the somewhere else. Longing for home that only exists in a past before the truth.

So anyway here's to being a queer, rural-Midwestern, late-blooming, environmentalist/musician who gravitates toward the stability of education, spends approximately a week at a seminary, finds comfort in the academic nature and routine of religion while remaining unsure in their belief, moves temporarily to a cabin in the woods for some peace and quiet, and eventually finds their footing as an educator. Thank god I don't play the saxophone.

(honestly though, this dude and I might be living parallel lives)

[archive ☄ · Rating 3 out of 5]

a book about an extraordinarily inspiring landscape written, unfortunately, in some of the most uninspiring prose imaginable. brorby is so good – SO good – when he's really getting into the flow of the landscape, the prairies, the buttes, the ponderosas, etc etc but falls flat everywhere else. a lot of the recollections in this book are disjointed, unnecessary to the telling of the story, made me Cringe.

i am also uncertain as to why this book is called boys and oil. i feel like... maybe... boys and coal would have been a better choice, since he comes from coal country and it played a huge role in his upbringing? the tiny little section on oil – i.e. the dakota pipeline – is very hurriedly tacked onto the latter half of the book and never really addressed again.... i am thinking confused thoughts....

anyway, i'm being picky but this book was pretty good. it took me back to my home in the dakotas, which is really what i was looking for going into it. 10/10 dakota prairie content!

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I competed in Speech with the author at least one year together. We were coached by the same coach that year (Mrs. Harrison, who taught us 'how to hold an audience' as he so eloquently and appropriately notes in the acknowledgments). I knew then Taylor could command an audience and weave a story, and he does it wonderfully here.
There were moments I had to put this book down and process. Reading this book in a time in our country where it feels as though we're going backwards was an eerie parallel to reading about the past events in the book. But it was also...these are people, places, and events that I know of. It was definitely a unique lens to read the book through.

[Katey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was super eager to read this, as I live in Bismarck. I went to Bismarck High School, as did Taylor. I had Mrs. Pole for English, as did Taylor. I witness some of the close-minded comments, both pre-Trump and after. Also, like Taylor, I see beauty in the prairies that surround me.

But. The book only gets three stars from me.

It was too disjointed: the seques were non-existent; the prose, too much. The jumps between talking coal and oil and fracking and prairie grass, to a childhood memory, were too sharp.

The content was touching and renewed my commitment to raise open-minded children, inclusive of all, in this small town where that mindset is a minority; but the book itself didn't overly wow me.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, as well as tragic. Taylor instills a very palpable miasma of sadness and fear as he replays many intense stories from his life as a closeted gay man attempting to navigate coming out and being gay in a primarily anti-gay and homophobically violent human landscape.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

We stared at each other. We knew the weight of not getting out, of not escaping, of being trapped. We had seen it. High-school classmates pregnant. Few colleges or universities to attend. Minimum-wage jobs in small towns. Limited hospitals. No professional sports teams or orchestras.

The pressure to stay home.

The pressure to stay home.

"But I miss home," I said to him. "I miss that landscape."

"I do, too," he said. (235)

North Dakota is a land defined by farming and harsh winters and small towns, prairies and badlands and insular communities. And oil: North Dakota has some of the biggest oil reserves in the United States, and consequently some of the most fracking. Brorby grew up in these flatlands, and it gradually became clear to him that while it was home, it was not always a sustainable place. Not for those who recognised the social and environmental ravages of fracking, not for those whose inclinations leaned towards the arts rather than, say, hunting and fracking, and not for those who were gay. Not for those whose families asked what will the neighbours think.

Brorby is a poet, and it shows in his writing; this is less linear story than it is impressions of a landscape and scenes of a life accidentally in the margins. Places where it is safe to step outside the mould and places, not only in North Dakota, where it is not. There's a scene late in the book in which Brorby is at a campsite with some other gay men. They're free to relax in the knowledge that they're alone in the wilderness, that they don't have to hide who they are—until a truck pulls up, and the illusion of safety is shattered. I won't spoil the story, but I will say that it's a story that will resonate with anyone who has ever been gay (or visibly different) in an unforgiving place.

It's a book that belongs to a specific time and place and context, but also one that feels unexpectedly timely to me here in Germany, with a different sort of energy crisis looming. It'll be interesting to see where Brorby goes from here.

[Mackenzie]

Okay I liked a lot of this.
The parts about the land sometimes get boring tho. Just the diction and detail were tiring but I appreciate the intent behind it.
Also he came to the English Reading Series and read parts and answered questions and was hilarious so I’m a fan.

I mostly liked the stories and the importance of sharing his narrative as a gay man!


Parts I liked with the page numbers in my book:

97 about tender male professors
Modeling a certain type of commitment to the life of the mind and the life of engagement

129 American studies class
Why we brush our teeth and other American studies questions !! So interesting!! Jim Farrell

130 “I went to professors’ office hours frequently because I craved their stories: how the hell did they wind up here? What is this thing called graduate school? Could that be part of my story? Can you really make a life reading and writing and still pay the bills?”

143 “I wanted a profession where reading was bedrock, where I had time for contemplation, where I could call upon my learning to help others in their time of need.”

200 Thesis about whether the canon of western literature encourages consumerism
Of course- halls and feasts, gardens in emma and gatsby


The parts at the end about coming out to his nephews and some great lines about the complexity of that experience in the last chapter



Made me think about my life and relationships and also grad school and what I want in life and the beauty of nature and more about the lived experience of gay men, especially one from North Dakota

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5 Solid memoir with keen observations from a part of the USA that rarely gets attention for LGBTQ+ stories. The author delves into North Dakota history and the ties that bind him to the state.

[Bernard Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realistic and picturesque portray of a fractured land and fractured lives torn apart and divided by intolerance to differences. A memoir of a hard survival and the heaviness of coming out.

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! ❤️

[Leondra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in all these places and know versions of all these people, so it resonated.

[Emily Hewitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won an advanced reader’s copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways. Boys and Oil was a unique memoir compared to other memoirs I usually read. It is ultimately a coming out story as Brorby describes his conflicting relationship with his traditional and conservative hometown and home state. He loves the landscape and where he comes from but he is hurt by the people he loves whose attitudes and beliefs regarding the LGBTQ community refuse to change. I have never been to the Dakotas or anywhere out west, so reading Brorby’s stories of homophobia and violence in that region of the country was both interesting and disappointing to learn about. As a straight white woman who has grown up near a large & diverse city and stayed on the east coast my entire life, this memoir gave me a different perspective and a glimpse into a culture and upbringing that I was entirely unfamiliar with. Brorby is an extremely talented writer which is why I give this book 4 stars. He writes beautifully and makes small stories seem profound and meaningful that I would probably otherwise find boring or insignificant. A final thought I have is that I was really rooting for some kind of resolution with his parents at the end of the book. I truly hope that happens for him someday. By the way he described his parents and childhood, I was shocked to learn they are not as accepting as I’d hoped.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the most compelling aspect of this memoir is the articulation of the connective tissue between personal history and landscape:

Before growing upward, prairie grasses shoot down their roots—they test the soil conditions to see whether this place, this spot, is the right home for them. With each visit to North Dakota, to home, I test the conditions, send down my roots, and find that there is no place for me.

That said, if this had been the endeavor, I think it fell short. Descriptions of places were odd, yet repetitive. There are only so many times that you can describe something's color as ochre, before it just sounds meaningless- like the author needed to make his experience of a place more profound than it actually was.

This is one of the main reasons I didn't like the book. Especially in moments when the author reflects on his own life. When the author writes about losing his thumb in a machining operation: That small, crucial part of me was now gone. I was no longer his perfect son.

Good God, who thinks like this? Obviously this author does, and who am I to question what has happened to him or how he has processed what has happened to him.

But the author again and again attempts to make things more profound than they actually are: like getting into Princeton's Seminary. In part because he drops out, he really has no understanding of how graduate schools at Ivy Leagues work, and the prestige they carry or don't. He describes his master's thesis on consumerism . . . as present in 13th century literature? Consumerism didn't exist in the 13th century, are we just trying to sound smarter than we actually are?

The most compelling aspect of the book is just how difficult it is to read in the beginning as the author interlaces episodes from his childhood and adolescence into the narration of the events of his early adulthood. The author creates this visceral feeling of being stuck, of being an adult unable to escape the grips of things that happened a decade ago. It was so much more painful reading another description of a class the author took as an undergrad than the narration of getting beaten up outside a bar or being followed home from the gym.

It was more painful because the decision to interweave narration about childhood trauma revealed just how stuck the real author holding the pen in his hand was or is.

The author has obviously gone through an immense amount of suffering, violence, and trauma. And if this book was the way he needed to processes these forces in his life, I hope it brought him meaning and understanding.

But I really am tired of getting suggestions from others, from reading reviews in the paper, that create hype around depressing shit. I'm not saying this work shouldn't be published – that's censorship. I just think we need more memoirs and novels that show life as a queer person as a life of joy despite the structural and immanent forms of violence we face.

This doesn't mean glossing over suicide attempts, familial exiles, environmental degradation. What it does mean is that when we tell these stories, we stop telling them as though the suicide attempt or familial exile added more gravitas to the story than the first summer fling with the Polish boy.

[Philip Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The closeted young men in the barren Heartland -- it's almost become a trope of gay experience. But never have I read such a compelling story of coming out, and also a tribute to the native land that forms us. As much a personal memoir, Taylor Brorby's story of coming to his personal revelation and acceptance of himself as a gay man, it is also one of the most vivid calls of an eco-activist plea for us to understand the dire situation much of our national lands find themselves fighting for survival. Brorby recounts the pains and damages to both his psyche, his physical and emotional maps, as well as the geographical map of his hometown. With an engaging and intimate sense of new pride (hard won), and old demons, he brings us to the very North Dakota that was so much a part of his life, and which remained with him long after leaving it. And it is the story of how he became an activist, to fight for it. The 'fractured land' he speaks of is not only that of geography as a psychological state, but the land of the mind and body; desire as a place of erotic landscapes. A marvelous debut.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boom! It’s always easy to click on the five stars when the books are actually five star. Brorby writes an almost poetic memoir of growing up gay in the Dakotas. While he does have a penchant for falling into purple prose, for the most part, his writing is very lyrical and I really fell into rhythm with his words and descriptions of prairies, of feeling different, and of fitting in, but not quite. It’s not all gorgeous outdoor scenes though. He draws a straight line from our nation’s seemingly endless destruction of nature for quick profit to the destruction we do to gay people as well. Boys and oil is an absolutely wonderful read for this summer.

[McKenna Sumrak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the prose in this book, it was beautiful. At times it got too technical or used too many words/geological terms I was unfamiliar with that it made following the point difficult, but the overall gist was good. I’m always interested in LGBTQ+ coming out stories, growing up stories, and life experiences simply because it’s not my own and I want to try to understand. I was shocked at many things that still happen today to this community. I enjoyed the book and learning about his life—happy for book club that introduced me to a book I’d never heard of!

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listening to this while driving on I94 between the cities and Fargo felt.. weird?.. when that exact road and places you just drove through or were driving to were being talked about in the book. It also helps being able to visualize the place, even though there wasn't any descriptions. Or knowing exactly where he was talking about in Bismarck. Or knowing that the western half of the state is beautiful with the Badlands, but that the eastern part is just boring, flat prairie.

Having lived in the hellscape that is North Dakota for the last 15+ years, it absolutely is as deep red, gay hating as Brorby states. While living in Fargo provides a little bit of a barrier to the extremists throughout the remainder of the state, it's not a complete barrier and there's plenty of homophobes here as well. People forget that ND is a state, and honestly, that's probably the best way to go. Just forget about it and ignore one of the most extremist, conservative, deep red state. Significant change is going to take long here (and will only be able to happen once a generation or two have died off) and Brorby has it right that one of the only ways to survive is to escape (or if you can't escape completely, you have to make a home in Fargo, Bismarck, or Grand Forks, but anything rural is a no).

The only complaint I have is that I had some difficulty with the chronology of the book. I felt like he would be talking about when he was 'house sitting' for one of the professors, but then all of a sudden in the next paragraph he was back living with his parents again? Idk, I felt like there were some time jumps that weren't always explicitly clear. I don't mean it in the way that I thought there should have been more details on the in between happenings, but just that it felt a little jarring as the reader.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you never wanted to know about North Dakota. The author portrays the inhabitants as narrow minded miscreants living in the 1950’s!! No wonder it is the least visited of all the states.

I am surprised that in this day and age, when Taylor’s parents couldn’t accept his being gay that he didn’t just buck up and blow them off. Since they created him maybe guilt was their reason for shame and abandonment. The rest of the family didn’t seem to have any qualms with it???

He is overly emotional, all that constant crying seems very abnormal. He is whiny and way to preoccupied with his gayness. They gay people I know are happy and well adjusted and live productive lives. Taylor treats it like a terminal disease. I think he is highly intelligent, but just can’t seem to get his act together. He hides by staying in school way beyond his sell-by-date and can’t settle down to any real job.

His writing style is superb and I enjoyed the nature aspect of the book, but his sour demeanor and negativity cost him a star.

[Skylis]

i do not believe i was the target audience for this, but i honestly don’t know who is. i feel mislead by everything i expected as different identities the author holds were revealed. this memoir had a large span, but held few throughlines tying the identities to multiple times in Brorby’s life. and the jumps in time to connect threads through his life were often disorienting and i’d forget key points like if an event described was before or after his relationship with his parents shattered.

while reading this, i asked myself “why was this story included? what is the purpose of this image?” and came up empty. many stories could have been edited out or more tightly written.

overall, an underwhelming read. likely much more valuable for someone looking to feel seen as a semi-out gay man in the midwest and west.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir, although I will say the writing style won’t work for everyone. The extensive metaphors and descriptive language makes this book feel more “art-house” than other memoirs, but for me, that worked. Maybe because as someone who has lived in southwestern North Dakota for much of my life, I could really relate to Brorby’s complicated feelings about our shared home state. I can understand the push and pull of loving home and also feeling isolated and different here, needing to be somewhere else. I would definitely recommend this one, and hope that other readers will take away the raw emotion and vulnerability from it that I did. I applaud Brorby for putting himself out there this way.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but it felt a little disjointed at times. The book talks about boys and it talks about oil, but it jumps between them in an abrupt way and there doesn't seem to be much connecting these two concepts from the title. And ultimately, the strongest thread, I think, is the story of the author's relationship with his family -- and his personal relationships. That is the core of this memoir, in my opinion, and his writing about family is some of his strongest.

It's clear he loves North Dakota and the physical environment he grew up in, but he uses the same descriptions repeatedly and it gets a bit -- much. I will say, though, that I always admire a writer who can write about a place. Brorby can do that.

[Dallas Shattuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a memoir!

First of all, Brorby's lyrical writing and descriptions of North Dakota's landscape was mesmerizing. I've never been, but it sounds beautiful, and I can understand his love for this place. And I fully resonated with loving the place you grew up, but still knowing you need to get out. I think it's a message that will resonate with a lot of other readers, too.

This memoir made me feel a variety of emotions. I laughed and smiled at times, and I was also very sad. When Brorby's describes the night he was "outed" by his aunt (and his parents subsequent reaction)...I cried. When he later details the days he came out to his grandfathers, I SOBBED. His grandfathers are the epitome of unconditional love.

Overall, I really enjoyed this memoir and even learned about about environmental advocacy in North Dakota.

Thank you Netgally and Liveright Publishing for this gifted e-book!

[Hannah Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. Didn’t get a full five stars because of a few writerly preferences o’ mine (timeline, some knowing voice, whatever whatever). I couldn’t put it down and I wanted more—it turned me into my childhood bookworm self again. (And I had to read it for school, so that’s saying a lot.) would highly recommend!

[Sean Coyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randomly grabbed this book one night at the library, and I fear this might change things for me. Overall I found it phenomenal, even though there were some odd parts. A very unique experience of a gay man, but has similar beats/themes of queer stories that make them so compelling and heartbreaking. So goddamn good.

[Marta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I support the writer in sharing his coming out story with the world. We always need more coming out stories, especially for those still in the closet - so they know that they are not alone.

On the other hand, the author's writing style was more than I could take. The story just took too long to get started. 80+ pages before it got interesting. Maybe that was the point? I don't know, but I just couldn't continue at the writer's pace.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful autobiography of a young man growing up in a part of the world where being gay is not exactly a good idea.