WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN FICTION AWARD
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.
"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
"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