LBB Presents Online: G'Ra Asim with Jabari Asim - Boyz n the Void

Left Bank Books welcomes writer, musician, and St. Louis native G'Ra Asim, who will discuss his new book, Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother, on our Facebook Live Page at 7pm CT on May 5. Asim will be in conversation with his father, author and professor Jabari Asim. Join us on our Facebook Live Page and order a copy of Boyz n the Void from Left Bank Books to support authors and independent bookstores!

About Boyz n the Void

Writing to his brother, G'Ra Asim reflects on building his own identity while navigating Blackness, masculinity, and young adulthood--all through wry social commentary and music/pop culture critique

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, Gyasi, 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 music and cultural criticism and personal essay 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.

"Like any great mixtape, Asim's compilation is the most personalized of gifts. Layered, deeply revealing, it's a rhythmic journey through the indices, subgenres, and touchstones that encapsulate the refinement of an increasingly rare gem--Black singularity. Written with love, erudition, and the utmost respect, Boyz n the Void is a genuine keepsake." --Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout, winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award

"G'Ra Asim's Boyz n the Void is full of dopamine hits and heartbreak. You don't want to stop listening, even when it aches. It becomes part of you. These essays are rigorous and tender and funny all at once, charged with humor that doesn't deflect from difficult honesty so much as it takes you deeper into the maze of truth. Asim is attentive to small acts of intimacy and solidarity and vulnerability--a punk kid parting the curtain of his mushroom haircut, or learning to love the sweat and leather of a mosh pit--even as he dissects and illuminates, with searing, razor-sharp brushstrokes, the daily brutalities and hidden curriculums of structural racism. I'd gladly read anything by 'Ra the Exhorter--for his brilliance, his wit, his heart, and his electric illuminations of those forces of love and rebellion that might be able to remake our broken world." --Leslie Jamison, New York Times best-selling author of The Empathy Exams

About the Speakers

G'Ra Asim, a writer and musician, is an assistant professor of nonfiction writing at Ithaca College. He holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University and a BA in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College. He has served as writing director at the African American Policy Forum and as graduate teaching fellow in Columbia's Undergraduate Writing Program. His work has appeared in Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Baffler, and The New Republic. When not writing prose or teaching, he sings, plays bass and writes lyrics for NYC DIY pop punk band babygotbacktalk, who were named one of Afropunk's Top 8 Punkest Bands on the Planet Right Now.

Jabari Asim is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and the author of seven books for adults-including We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival-and ten books for children. His poems are included in several anthologies, including Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present; Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century; and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. After more than a decade at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post, he now directs the MFA program at Emerson College.

For more information, email Amber Norris at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

https://www.left-bank.com/event/gra-asim-boyz-void