Try free for 30 days
-
Since I Laid My Burden Down
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
- Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $17.00
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Boyslut
- A Memoir and Manifesto
- By: Zachary Zane
- Narrated by: Zachary Zane
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.
-
-
F*** yeah
- By Amazon Customer on 10-12-2023
-
The Salt Eaters
- By: Toni Cade Bambara
- Narrated by: Mia Ellis
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this novel set in a fictional city in the American South. Though they all united in their search for the healing properties of salt, some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.
-
Long Division
- By: Kiese Laymon
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long Division contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: After an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
-
-
excellent book and readers
- By Anonymous User on 01-12-2021
-
Getting Lost
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these diaries, it is 1989, and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris, and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there, and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write; she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world; she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
-
-
Addictive
- By Maisie on 21-07-2023
-
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
-
The Humble Lover
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aldwych West, an eighty-year-old modern-day aristocrat living alone in his Manhattan townhouse, is used to having what he wants. And when he sets eyes on August Dupond, a strong, stunningly beautiful soloist in the New York City Ballet, he decides he must have him. Soon they strike up a closeness that falls between the blurry lines of friendship, sponsorship, and love, and August moves in with Aldwych. But eventually August starts bringing home other men, and a formidable woman in Aldwych's circle named Ernestine also takes a deep interest in the enchanting young star.
-
Boyslut
- A Memoir and Manifesto
- By: Zachary Zane
- Narrated by: Zachary Zane
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.
-
-
F*** yeah
- By Amazon Customer on 10-12-2023
-
The Salt Eaters
- By: Toni Cade Bambara
- Narrated by: Mia Ellis
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this novel set in a fictional city in the American South. Though they all united in their search for the healing properties of salt, some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.
-
Long Division
- By: Kiese Laymon
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long Division contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: After an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
-
-
excellent book and readers
- By Anonymous User on 01-12-2021
-
Getting Lost
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these diaries, it is 1989, and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris, and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there, and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write; she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world; she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
-
-
Addictive
- By Maisie on 21-07-2023
-
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
-
The Humble Lover
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aldwych West, an eighty-year-old modern-day aristocrat living alone in his Manhattan townhouse, is used to having what he wants. And when he sets eyes on August Dupond, a strong, stunningly beautiful soloist in the New York City Ballet, he decides he must have him. Soon they strike up a closeness that falls between the blurry lines of friendship, sponsorship, and love, and August moves in with Aldwych. But eventually August starts bringing home other men, and a formidable woman in Aldwych's circle named Ernestine also takes a deep interest in the enchanting young star.
Publisher's Summary
Whiting Award winner Brontez Purnell’s 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 he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amid 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 Magazine)
"Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder." (The Bay Area Reporter)
“Since 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)