A New York Times Notable Book | Lambda Literary Award Winner | Long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award
"Charles Blow is the James Baldwin of our age." - Washington Blade
"[An] exquisite memoir . . . Delicately wrought and arresting." - New York Times
Universally praised on its publication, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a pioneering journalist's indelible coming-of-age tale.
Charles M. Blow's mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, and a job plucking poultry at a factory near their segregated Louisiana town, where slavery's legacy felt close. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing every shot, thanks to "love that blurred her vision and bent the barrel." Charles was the baby of the family, fiercely attached to his "do-right" mother. Until one day that divided his life into Before and After-the day an older cousin took advantage of the young boy. The story of how Charles escaped that world to become one of America's most innovative and respected public figures is a stirring, redemptive journey that works its way into the deepest chambers of the heart.
"Stunning . . . Blow's words grab hold of you . . . [and] lead you to a place of healing." - Essence
"The memoir of the year." - A. V. Club
From journalist and New York Times bestselling author Charles Blow comes a powerful manifesto and call to action for Black Americans to amass political power and fight white supremacy.
Race, as we have come to understand it, is a fiction; but, racism, as we have come to live it, is a fact. The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, but to remove an existing one. After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.
Acclaimed columnist and author Charles Blow never wanted to write a “race book.” But as violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests of the summer of 2020, he felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans. He envisioned a succinct, counterintuitive, and impassioned corrective to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, Charles set out to offer a call to action by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms.
So what will it take to make lasting change when small steps have so frequently failed? It’s going to take an unprecedented shift in power. The Devil You Know is a groundbreaking manifesto, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country. This book is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, offering a road map to true and lasting freedom.
“When you finish New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s mesmerizing memoir, you will cry. And you will better understand poverty, the South, racism, sex, fear, rage, love. Then you will miss being in his grip. Then you will start reading this stunning book again.” – LAWRENCE O’DONNELL Fire Shut Up in My Bones is the story of how one of America’s most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past. Charles M. Blow’s indelible coming-of-age takes place in an arresting, out-of-time American place: a segregated town in Louisiana where slavery’s legacy was felt close, reverberating in the elders’ tales and in the near-constant wash of violence. Charles’s mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, and a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing every shot thanks to “love that blurred her vision and bent the barrel.” Charles was the baby of the family, fiercely attached to his “do-right,” not “good-time,” mother. Until one day—a day that forever divided his life into Before and After—when an older cousin took advantage of the young boy. Charles’s escape from that world—to a nearby state university, where he joined a black fraternity despite brutal hazing, and then experienced a social and sexual privilege that seemed, at first, like everything he ever needed—is a searing, redemptive story that will work its way into the deepest chambers of your heart.
