Overview

How does one approach Blackness, masculinity, otherness, and the perils of young adulthood? For G'Ra Asim, punk music offers an outlet to express himself freely. As his younger brother, Gysai, grapples with finding his footing in the world, G'Ra gifts him with a survival guide for tackling the sometimes treacherous cultural terrain particular to being young, Black, brainy, and weird in the form of a mixtape. Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother blends personal essay and music and cultural criticism to explore race, gender, class, and sexuality as they pertain to punk-rock and straight-edge culture. Using totemic punk-rock songs on a mixtape to anchor each chapter, the book documents an intergenerational conversation between a Millennial in his 30s and his Generation Z teenage brother. Author, punk musician, and straight-edge kid, G'Ra Asim weaves together memoir and cultural commentary, diving into the depths of everything from theory to comic strips to poetry to pizza commercials to mapping the predicament of the Black creative intellectual. With each chapter dedicated to a particular song and placed within the context of a fraternal bond, Asim presents his brother with a roadmap to self-actualization in the form of a Doc Martened foot to the behind and a sweaty, circle-pit-side-armed hug.

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9781662085604

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G'Ra Asim is a writer and musician based in Harlem. He is a columnist for theBaffler.com and a writing fellow at the African American Policy Forum. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University and is a former graduate teaching fellow in Columbia's Undergraduate Writing Program. His writing has appeared in Slate, Salon, Mosaic Magazine, and Punknews. When not writing prose or teaching, he sings, plays bass, and writes lyrics for the DIY-pop-punk quartet babygotbacktalk. Jordan Bellow is a New York City-based actor who trained at the South Coast Repertory and earned a bachelor's degree from Chapman University.

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