Bi Book Club: Fire Shut Up In My Bones

A little while ago I was chatting with a new acquaintance and mentioned the types of articles I write for this site. “Oh,” she replied. “So you get paid to talk about your opinions. Nice.” And it is! But the other side of things that people don’t often think about with reviewers is that we can be open-minded. I love to get suggestions for articles, especially when I want to diversify what we’re putting under a microscope. So when my editor suggested I cover Fire Shut Up In My Bones, I immediately wanted to do it because it was 1) not narrative fiction, and 2) not written by a white person.

Fire Shut Up In My Bones is a 2014 memoir written by Charles M. Blow, a writer, TV commentator, and columnist for the New York Times, covering his youth up to his start at that prestigious paper.

Before I delve any deeper into this review, I should make it clear that I need to slam down a content disclaimer. In fact, I should basically give a heads up that this book needs all the disclaimers. While I will, as always, include some SPOILERS in this column, the story of Blow’s young life covers basically every trigger warning that we have come to know in the modern reading world. If you can think of it, yes, it’s probably in this book; if that halts you or you need to pause about that, no judgment whatsoever.

Take all the time you need — or click away, if you’re not ready to discuss such topics. I would completely understand that endeavor as well as applaud you for taking care of yourself and your emotional and psychological needs.

Often when I come across books for this review section, I practically have to go digging for truffles to come across bisexual themes, buried deep in a narrative or a character’s suggestive glance. But that was not the case with Blow’s memoir — indeed, his internalized biphobia is at the crux of the book’s conflict, drawn-out over hundreds of pages as his soul does some serious discernment both as to the sexual abuse that happened to his youth, and whether that fed into his burgeoning homosexual leanings during his development. 

Blow takes lots of time to explore his evolving feelings about his bisexuality (which, yes, he does eventually call it), going over feelings of guilt and shame from his sexual assaults, lingering urges, and how his attraction to men differs from his attractions to women. He talks about how those who dared to not live a heteronormative life in his small town moved in his world, and how both his repression and inner turmoil ended up coloring his approach to other facets of his life — from class and race to masculinity and power. Queerness (and his wrestling with accepting it) is front-and-center in the telling of his young life, and likely a tale that will resonate with those who have had difficulties grappling with their own queerness (read: most of the bi community).

Blow’s prose flows from lolling to gripping depending on the needs of his memoir’s structure — be it describing his now-vanished hometown and its characters and trappings, to the relationships of his parents and relatives, to the riveting first chapter where we ride with Charles as he is determined to kill the man who assaulted him as a youth. Blow’s memoir covers a dizzying number of themes and threads from the pervasiveness of loneliness, to the butterfly effect of the actions of elders, to character changes within and without himself. Ultimately, he seems to find a way to unify his many identities and accept himself as he is. 

I had to stop romanticizing the man I might have been and be the man that I was, not by neatly fitting other people’s definitions of masculinity or constructs of sexuality, but by being uniquely me — made in the image of God, nurtured by the bosom of nature, and forged in the fire of life.

It also is a study in disassociation from the perspective of an abuse victim and the many other coping mechanisms the young Blow applies to both make sense of his trauma and to move through it. I’d like to add that I would especially recommend this memoir for queer people who suffered sexual abuse as children. The sad fact is that our community has suffered a disproportionate amount of that, and while this book may be triggering, there are a lot of common threads of doubt, being chosen (or groomed or hunted), and sexual trauma response that may resonate with those members. In no way am I saying that this would make for a pleasant beach read, but Blow really draws out and examines what happened to him and his emotional reactions, much like someone may draw out the venom from a snake wound and examine its chemical makeup.

I especially appreciated reading this narrative as the lived experience of someone with intersectional identities — not only on the sexual spectrum as a person of color, but as someone coming from a socioeconomic class of near-abject poverty that rarely gets represented in bisexual literature. He takes the time to explore what those intersections really meant and how they impacted, and continue to impact, his life. Blow even takes time near the end of his book to articulate that his attractions are fluid, and that there are countless ways of being bi, pushing against the dominant stereotype that one must be equally attracted to men and women.

While the word 'bisexual' was technically correct, I would only slowly come to use it to refer to myself in part because of the derisive connotations. But, in addition, it would seem to me woefully inadequate and impressionistically inaccurate. It reduced a range of identities, unbelievably wide and splendidly varied, in which same-gender attraction presented in graduated measures — from a pinch to a pound — to a single expression. To me it seemed too narrowly drawn in the collective consciousness, suggesting an identity fixed precisely in the middle between straight and gay, giving equal weight to each, bearing no resemblance to what I felt. In me, the attraction to men would never be equal to the attraction to women — in men it was also closer to the pinch — but it would always be in flux.

Believe it or not, despite the number of themes I brought up there is still a ton of content I haven’t covered (and have complicated opinions on). Blow is a gifted writer who shows no hesitation in taking on difficult and complex subjects, ranging from college hazing someone to death to code-switching. But I wanted to try to focus on what the memoirist had to say specifically about his queerness, and how his perception of it touched many other facets of his life. Plus, hey — who wants to read a review that spoils every twist and turn? 

Whether Blow is focusing on his checkered relationship with God or the dueling emotions of repression and vulnerability, Fire Shut Up In My Bones’ prose is forever captivating. I recommend it without hesitation. It is utterly un-put-downable.

Yes, I just made up a phrase. But hopefully, y’all will have an open mind about that.