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  • Since I Laid My Burden Down

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Brontez Purnell
  • Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
  • Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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Since I Laid My Burden Down

Written by: Brontez Purnell
Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
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Publisher's Summary

Whiting Award winner Brontez Purnell’s debut novel is an uninhibited portrait of growing up gay in 1980s Alabama: exploring art and sex with “more layered insight than the page count should allow” (Hanif Abdurraqib, MTV News).

DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amid prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?

A modern American classic, Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw and searing look into the intersections of memory, Blackness, and queerness.

"An antidote to the rigamarole of gay lit." (Mask Magazine)

"Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder." (The Bay Area Reporter)

“Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” (Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave)
©2017 Brontez Purnell (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Literature & Fiction Genre Fiction
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Profile Image for Cheryl McClorey

Potent read!

I listened to Brontez Purnell on a podcast and was instantly captivated by him. I was hoping to listen to his new book 100 Boyfriends, but Audible only had this one. I wasnt disappointed. Humourous and heartbreaking, you should definitely read this!

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