In Conversation: On Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons & Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir

Brian Broome is a poet and screenwriter. He’s been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and has won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Writing Awards, as well as a 2019 VANN Award for journalism from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation. In his debut Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir (Mariner Books), Broome writes about his early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys. His recounting of his experiences – in all their cringeworthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory – reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly trying to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and drug use help soothe his hurt young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, while his voice in the retelling shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys. Framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Augusten Burroughs, New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors, praised the book as “some of the finest writing I have ever encountered and one of the most electrifying, powerful, simply spectacular memoirs I – or you – have ever read. … It contains everything we all crave so deeply: truth, soul, brilliance, grace.”

John Paul Brammer is an author, illustrator, and columnist. He runs the popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!” on Substack. His work, including essays, short fiction, and illustrations, has appeared in The Washington Post, Food & Wine, Catapult, Business Insider, and many more. Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons (Simon & Schuster), a funny memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in America’s heartland, is his first book. As he shares his story, Brammer attempts to answer some of life’s toughest questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he’s out of the closet? The Advocate said that “John Paul Brammer brings his trademark heart and wit to essays that reveal how he grew up queer and mixed-race in the American heartland, came out in a Walmart parking lot (he does not recommend it), and became the LGBTQ+ community’s favorite advice columnist – the ‘Chicano Carrie Bradshaw’ of his generation.”