RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBroome refuses to pare down his interrogation of manhood, and he offers up his own life as a window, writing with lyricism, vividness and unflinching honesty as he ushers readers through the stages of his becoming ... his writing is as lucid, heart-rending and, on occasion, hilarious, as it is necessary ... Broome exposes with elegiac detail the malaise that eats away at Black boys because of the pressures they face to become the ideal image of manhood — even if the consequence of that refashioning is the annihilation of Black boys’ spirits ... feels like a gift. There will come a day when some Black child like Tuan will have read Broome’s masterwork and possibly commit to staying alive because of Broome’s words. They will tell him that Punch Me Up to the Gods is a testament to the insurgent and ineradicable power of Black queer being. That it reveals that Black queer men are our own best creations.
Mitchell S. Jackson
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"Jackson’s work is a model of autobiographical writing that demonstrates how reportage and critical attention to the complexities of black life — its intersectional textures — can be the source material for an inimitable memoir ... Throughout Survival Math, Jackson writes with a keen attentiveness to the social contexts shaping the lives of his family, offering nuanced depictions that upend the stereotypes that often cage us in ... Jackson, like his contemporary Kiese Laymon, author of the recent memoir Heavy, has produced a work that faces this task head on ... Survival Math makes it clear that blackness is never a deficit. And yet as Jackson reminds us, even those of us who are black men must be certain not to rely on a computational system, steeped in anti-black racist patriarchy, to save ourselves while harming others.\