I knew of Charles Blow from his columns in the New York Times. His writing is lyrical and powerful. Fire Shut Up In My Bones, Charles Blow’s memoir, is a powerful description of his life and its influences. He conveys a built-up rage since he believes his childhood was traumatized by abuse, poverty, and uncertain sexual identity. His racial identity also figured into his story of finding himself and becoming comfortable with his adult manhood and bisexuality. He emphasizes how he never felt like others in his family, school, and neighborhoods. He was a loner and social outcast in many life situations.
He describes the role of guns in his upbringing and many violent episodes in his life. Blow conveys many themes in this poignant story, including power, religion, sexuality. Although heartrending and disturbing in the gory details, I especially enjoyed his descriptions of choosing a college, joining a fraternity, and eventually landing a job as a journalist.
Fire Shut Up In My Bones was used as the basis of a modern opera, and snippets are available online. Both book and opera are worth exploring for a first-person account of this journalist’s turbulent life.
