Black Sheep Boy by Martin Pousson [e-book]

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

"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

About the Author

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.