Fire Shut Up In My Bones

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 pastNew York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew upa 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 mothera 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 learningcannot 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.