Boys and Oil

Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

219 kr

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“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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-06-06
Mått140 x 211 x 23 mm
Vikt284 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor352
FörlagW W Norton & Co Ltd
ISBN9781324096788

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"Years ago, I had a student who wrote wonderful short stories but struggled to translate her skills to creative nonfiction. At 18, she didn’t think anyone would want to read about her life because she’d grown up in a small Midwestern town where ‘nothing ever happened.’ How I wish Taylor Brorby’s new memoir, ‘Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land,’ had existed back then so I could share it with her... As in Tara Westover’s ‘Educated,’ learning allowed Brorby to envision a different kind of future for himself, one that would eventually lead him to places where people were more accepting of his sexuality.... A great memoir, however, renders moments wholly outside of the reader’s experience in ways that evoke emotion and understanding. I tensed with fear at Brorby’s recollections of harassment and beatings, felt the still-unhealed wound of his being outed by his aunt and effectively estranged from his parents, and teared up with hope when he came out to his beloved grandfathers.... 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."