Black Sheep Boy: A Novel in Stories

(Paperback)

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Winner of the 2017 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction
Meet Boo, a wild-hearted boy from the bayou land of Louisiana. Misfit, outcast, loner. Call him anything but a victim. Sissy, fairy, Jenny Woman. Son of a mixed-race Holy Ghost mother and a Cajun French phantom father. In a series of tough and tender stories, he encounters gender outlaws, drag queen renegades, and a rogues gallery of sex-starved priests, perverted teachers, and murderous bar owners. To escape his haunted history, Boo must shed his old skin and make a new self. As he does, his story rises from dark and murk, from moss and mud, to reach a new light and a new brand of fairy tale. Cajun legends, queer fantasies, and universal myths converge into a powerful work of counter-realism. Black Sheep Boy is a song of passion and a novel of defiance.

Reviews

A Los Angeles Times literary pick of the week

"Martin Pousson writes with such lush honesty, such charged intimacy, about the real and the unreal, about danger and sex and home. I don't know quite how to describe the hypnotic power of Black Sheep Boy, except to say that the book is somehow a spell and a mercy, both."
--Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

"An unforgettable novel-in-stories about growing up gay in French Acadiana, so vivid and almost fairy tale-like, drawing on folklore from the region, and yet so brutally realistic. Brilliant. I loved this book."
Susan Larson, NPR's The Reading Life

"Black Sheep Boy frames its fear through tragic misunderstanding, violence, and sexual confusion, and it illuminates the terrible aching divide of understanding between family members."
--The Millions

"Black Sheep Boy represents an entertaining and dazzling read, and serves as a heartfelt ode to those the author addresses in his dedication: the "odd ducks, strange birds, and queer fish" among us."
--Zyzzyva

"This is the kind of book that you don't need to be LGBT-plus to enjoy; you just need to pick up a copy and start reading."
--Los Angeles Times

"What Pousson does so masterfully is to take such a dazzlingly fantastical and specific world and render it universally recognizable to anyone who's grown up queer in a world that would--sometimes violently--prefer he or she did not. While he artfully lifts the veil on a world outside of most people's experience, he also offers an outstretched hand of solidarity to every black sheep boy and girl who's lucky enough to pick up a copy of his book."
--John Bavoso, Lambda Literary

"Pousson has created something exhilarating: a novel-in-stories that shows religion, class, and race as inextricably entwined to the challenges of coming of age as a gay man in the South."
-- Arizona Daily Sun

"Beautifully impressionistic, and also raw, open and vulnerable. Pousson's bayou is such a frightening and vibrant place, generous and punishing, and the narrator's perspective pulls us in, and brings the reader close."
--Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"Electrical, convulsive, hallucinatory, elemental... A book to give you fevers, chills, and visions."
--Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

"Seductive and thrilling... depths of passion and longing...this book really does cast a spell on you, and the effect is wild and wondrous. Magical realism has moved north to Acadiana, and the spell takes. This is a novel of masks, hidden shames that explode into ecstasy."
--Jeff MacMahon, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide

"The title story of this novel-in-stories is wonderful, as are all the rest. Pousson is a huge talent."
--Ilana Masad, The Other Stories

"Pick up and read this f**king book. It's intensely wild."
--Jake Shears, Lead singer of Scissor Sisters

"If you like coming of age stories about freaky and fabulous southern sissies (and who doesn't) Black Sheep Boy is a must read. Set in the bayou land of Louisiana, this fabulist tale kept me entranced. Queer lit at its finest!"
--Justin Vivian Bond, author of Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels

"A fantastic read! Poetic and honest, painful yet beautiful."
--Candi Sary, author of Black Crow, White Lie

"Black Sheep Boy is a harrowing story of survival...of being an outcast...an excellent read that reminds us that gay life is not always "gay."
--Carlos Allende, author of Love, Or The Witches of Windward Circle

"The beauty of the novel is in the way that author Martin Pousson makes the fantastic and specific world of the bayous...recognizable to all of us growing up gay in a place that does not provide solace and comfort."
--Amos Lassen, Reviews By Amos Lassen

"The writing style is deeply visceral... embodies the spirit of Whitman's "I am large and I contain multitudes." Pousson does a fantastic job using language to set the stage for...the stunningly rich backdrop of the Louisiana bayou starring a hodge podge cast of characters that mirror the kaleidoscope of individuals that might crop up in anyone's life"--Joyfully Jay

"What I loved: the beautiful prose, the Louisiana setting, and a story that wasn't a romance. I appreciated the almost tall tale quality to it all and the rich history and cultural flavor. Because it isn't tied with direct reference to a particular era, it has a timeless quality to it. A phenomenally well-written book."
--A.M. Leibowitz, Inked Rainbow Reads

"Martin Pousson is a wizard with words."
--Rich Ferguson, New Jersey Me

Author Bio

Martin Pousson was born and raised in Acadiana, the Cajun French bayou land of Louisiana. His novel, Black Sheep Boy, includes stories that won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Two of his stories were finalists for the Glimmer Train Fiction Awards. His collection of poetry, Sugar, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and his first novel, No Place, Louisiana, was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Advocate, Antioch Review, Epoch, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He now lives in Los Angeles.