Since I Laid My Burden Down

Whiting Award winner Brontez Purnells 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 hes called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncles funeral, hes hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst 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 MagazineSlim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder. The Bay Area ReporterSince 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