Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir
    Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir
    Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir
    Audiobook10 hours

    Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir

    Written by Charles M. Blow

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A gorgeous, moving memoir of how one of America's most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past

    New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up—a place where slavery's legacy was felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders' stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.

    Charles's attachment to his mother—a fiercely driven women with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning—cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It's damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.

    Finally, Charles escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he's ever needed and wanted, until he's called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.

    A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.

    Editor's Note

    Wunderkind’s memoir…

    Charles M. Blow reflects on the violent dichotomies that helped pull him out of poverty and into professional success in this eloquent and stylized investigation of the personal truths he's learned to accept.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 23, 2014
    ISBN9781491530191
    Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir
    Author

    Charles M. Blow

    Charles M. Blow is an acclaimed journalist and op-ed columnist for the New York Times who appears frequently on CNN. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones. He lives in Atlanta.

    Related to Fire Shut Up In My Bones

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fire Shut Up In My Bones

    4/5

    83 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I thought his writing was at times exquisite. Story paled abut halfway through and I wondered why he wanted to share his young life with the world.
    • 3/5
      I usually appreciate Blow's writing in the Times, but this book was really not for me. It reinforced for me how thoughtful and intelligent Blow is, but as many memoirs do, he also was sure of the motives of everyone else portrayed. He also did not give enough credit to those who helped him get where he wanted to go. I did not need all of the sexual details provided.
    • 5/5
      Charles M. Blow recounts the story of his childhood and growing into adulthood, a journey that was shaped greatly by his cousin's sexual abuse and his own confusion about his sexuality.This searing memoir resonates strongly with me. I did not grow up poor and black in the southern U.S., but I have experienced a similar trauma that left me with a "before" and "after" too. "Before" took a little getting into, his early memories having a sort of stream of consciousness, impressions with no particular order. But before long, I was hooked by the writing style and the vivid images he evokes. The author doesn't go into great detail about the event, which he terms the "betrayal" from then on, but he shows how it affected him, the need for affection and attention that left him vulnerable to it, and the emotional baggage he dealt with afterwards. His emotions of feeling dead and consumed by the event to coming alive and at peace was a journey I have been on too. The descriptive language he uses to convey memories is lovely, and he has a way of writing with immediacy, both remembering his child's reaction and also having a more mature understanding looking back on what happened in his life. A lovely, hopeful memoir that I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. It makes a point, we have no way of knowing the impact that things can have on us until much, later on. After, being affected and having the courage to deal with it. Especially, as children growing up, lacking the maturity to understand complex emotions. Often blaming ourselves when the reasons why, had nothing to do with us at all. Too often we feel, what makes no sense.
    • 4/5
      Memoirs are a tricky genre. Not all are factual and not all are interesting. We, the audience, have to care about the life of the person at the center of the story. Charles M. Blow succeeds admirably here, crafting a story with an explosive opening and then providing us the necessary backstory to explain it. We care about him because ultimately, he resonates with us. Even without having ever visited the Louisiana of his youth, I was still moved to care about it, because Blow's writing makes it possible to identify with his hurts, fears, and dark secrets. I felt like we were able to see not only the parts of his life where his strength shines through, but also those moments when he was clearly ashamed of his own actions. (To be honest, the scenes of fraternity hazing left me quite shocked.) If I hadn't already known about his career as a NYT columnist, I may not have picked up this book, but it was well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      The youngest of five boys in an extended family where one was rarely alone, where great effort was put into using the gifts of the land to feed everyone, where men and women rarely stayed married to each other but had bonds that didn't break, and where dignity and respect shone, Charles Blow remembers those days of his boyhood and young adulthood and brings them vividly to life in his memoir.Fire Shut Up in My Bones recounts Blow's journey from a hardscrabble family held together by strong-willed women to the beginning of his career as a respected New York Times commentator. His story from child to man has some foundational points that show why he is respected today.Poverty is there, but it is a story of how family members individually and working together did the best they could and, in some cases, surmounted it. His mother is an inspiration in showing that she didn't give up, not even with a brood of children and an absent husband. She made it back to school and became a teacher and an educational leader. And didn't give up on her children.Her drive and determination are not sugar-coated, but told simply. So are the tales of how the family was fed, whether through growing their food or taking advantage of a highway wreck involving a load of cattle, much in the way cargo from shipwrecks is saved by coastal dwellers. They all must deal with Jim Crow racism as well, which is strongly interwoven into the generational poverty.Another foundational point is Blow's search for knowing himself, including his sexuality. He was abused as a child and it both scared him and scarred him. As with many abuse victims, he thought he had done something wrong, especially as the abuser was someone he initially admired. Part of his recovery process includes a search through his spirituality, told in plain, heart-searching fashion.Blow does his readers the service of not glossing over any of his own missteps, including things he did that he is not proud of as a fraternity leader during his college days. The harm done in hazing to both abuser and victim is not connected with his physical abuse, but the way he has to work through both hazing and sexual abuse demonstrates that if a person continues to question, they can find answers.This memoir is a stirring account of how one child became a man, carrying on the respect he learned from his strong family members while seeing ways he could leave the hurtful acts behind.