-
Pretty
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: KB Brookins
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
By a prize-winning young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.
Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.
“I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” Brookins writes. “Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I’m perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can’t change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean–to be a girl-turned-man when you’re something else entirely?”
Informed by KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency—whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as “other.”
Critic reviews
"Brookins’s writing thrives on well-observed juxtapositions. . . . Linguistically, Brookins pulls equally from playful internet slang and queer theory, often joining both syntaxes in the poems that punctuate each chapter. . . . Dazzling. . . . Brookins is a writer to watch."—Publishers Weekly
“This book, above all, offers a potent narrative of learning to live authentically, no matter the circumstances and challenges. Brookins relays their experiences and opinions with candor. . . . The most compelling threads of the text relate the author’s journey of self-actualization, from questioning ideas of gender to shedding shame. 'My life’s work is to make Black people, queer people, and masculine people fall in love with who they are and shed the daily violence of betraying themselves and others,' they write. This book is a powerful testament to that. An inspiring and deeply human work.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Pretty is one of the most brilliantly constructed memoirs I’ve read. There is not one wasted paragraph or scene here. The language cradles but never ever coddles. Some art just makes you thankful. I am so thankful.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Swole
- The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle
- By: Michael Andor Brodeur
- Narrated by: Mark Sanderlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Andor Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity—a concept in which many men are currently struggling to find their place. In our current moment, where “manfluencers” on TikTok tease their audiences with their latest videos, where right-wing men espouse the importance of being “alpha,” as toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are being rightfully criticized, the nature of masculinity has become murkier than ever.
-
-
Every man should read this!
- By JoJo Bear on 07-15-24
-
No Son of Mine
- A Memoir
- By: Jonathan Corcoran
- Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In No Son of Mine, Corcoran traces his messy estrangement from his mother through lost geographies as well as the lost relationships with friends and family and the sense of home that were stripped away when she said he was no longer her son. Through grief, anger, questioning, and growth, Corcoran explores the entwined yet separate histories and identities of his mother and himself.
-
-
A raw, painful, and real story about trauma and the pain of abandonment
- By Kaytee on 06-23-24
-
Coexistence
- Stories
- By: Billy-Ray Belcourt
- Narrated by: Hunter Cardinal, Trevor Mitchell, John Wamsley
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics.
-
-
Human emotion, human reflection
- By Andres Alfredo Gomez on 06-23-24
-
Boyslut
- A Memoir and Manifesto
- By: Zachary Zane
- Narrated by: Zachary Zane
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.
-
-
Great insight and information. Vain human.
- By Lauren B. on 07-27-23
By: Zachary Zane
-
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World
- A Decolonial Memoir
- By: Shayla Lawson
- Narrated by: Shayla Lawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.
-
-
An Extraordinary Travel Memoir
- By Matthew Bowles on 03-11-24
By: Shayla Lawson
-
Ten Bridges I've Burnt
- A Memoir in Verse
- By: Brontez Purnell
- Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
- Length: 1 hr and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I've Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best.
-
-
This work, this project these poems this poet 🫶
- By Lydia Paddon on 04-07-24
By: Brontez Purnell
-
Swole
- The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle
- By: Michael Andor Brodeur
- Narrated by: Mark Sanderlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Andor Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity—a concept in which many men are currently struggling to find their place. In our current moment, where “manfluencers” on TikTok tease their audiences with their latest videos, where right-wing men espouse the importance of being “alpha,” as toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are being rightfully criticized, the nature of masculinity has become murkier than ever.
-
-
Every man should read this!
- By JoJo Bear on 07-15-24
-
No Son of Mine
- A Memoir
- By: Jonathan Corcoran
- Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In No Son of Mine, Corcoran traces his messy estrangement from his mother through lost geographies as well as the lost relationships with friends and family and the sense of home that were stripped away when she said he was no longer her son. Through grief, anger, questioning, and growth, Corcoran explores the entwined yet separate histories and identities of his mother and himself.
-
-
A raw, painful, and real story about trauma and the pain of abandonment
- By Kaytee on 06-23-24
-
Coexistence
- Stories
- By: Billy-Ray Belcourt
- Narrated by: Hunter Cardinal, Trevor Mitchell, John Wamsley
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics.
-
-
Human emotion, human reflection
- By Andres Alfredo Gomez on 06-23-24
-
Boyslut
- A Memoir and Manifesto
- By: Zachary Zane
- Narrated by: Zachary Zane
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.
-
-
Great insight and information. Vain human.
- By Lauren B. on 07-27-23
By: Zachary Zane
-
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World
- A Decolonial Memoir
- By: Shayla Lawson
- Narrated by: Shayla Lawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.
-
-
An Extraordinary Travel Memoir
- By Matthew Bowles on 03-11-24
By: Shayla Lawson
-
Ten Bridges I've Burnt
- A Memoir in Verse
- By: Brontez Purnell
- Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
- Length: 1 hr and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I've Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best.
-
-
This work, this project these poems this poet 🫶
- By Lydia Paddon on 04-07-24
By: Brontez Purnell
-
In the Hands of Men
- A Novel
- By: Gin Sexsmith
- Narrated by: Devery Jacobs
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunted by the loss of her cousin, Delilah has curated a world of revenge—playing judge, jury and executioner while, you know, searching for love. Maybe murdering gives her the control she craves. Maybe it fills the gaping hole that Cedar left when she disappeared. Maybe this rage is ancestral, dating back to all of the Indigenous women before her whose cases were closed without much of a search.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Cynde on 08-18-24
By: Gin Sexsmith
-
Gender Queer
- A Memoir
- By: Maia Kobabe
- Narrated by: Maia Kobabe, Trini Alvarado, Stephen Graybill, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.
-
-
For the first time in 30 years, I heard things out loud that were said in my brain as a child.
- By Anonymous User on 06-09-24
By: Maia Kobabe
-
Another Word for Love
- A Memoir
- By: Carvell Wallace
- Narrated by: Carvell Wallace
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.
-
-
Vulnerability, accountability, queerness and love while black in America
- By FM on 10-10-24
By: Carvell Wallace
-
Rainbow History Class
- Your Guide Through Queer and Trans History
- By: Hannah McElhinney
- Narrated by: Rudy Jean Rigg
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rainbow History Class is your entry into LGBTQ+ history, sharing queer and trans stories from Ancient civilisations all the way up to the internet. So much of queer and trans history and culture has been erased, but Hannah McElhinney, writer and creator of Rainbow History Class (as seen on TikTok), is here to help us all with this crash course.
-
-
An absolute fantastic read!
- By Anonymous User on 06-03-23
-
The Bump
- By: Sidney Karger
- Narrated by: Ryan Spahn, Michael Urie
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Wallace is a practical, super organized director of TV commercials. Biz Petterelli is a child-actor-turned-magazine-writer who thrives on spontaneity. Though polar opposites, they are fully committed to their relationship and their life in Brooklyn with their dog, Matilda. They’re also about to have a baby together. And they’re freaking out. They’ve both dreamed of becoming parents, but now that it’s happening, they’re doubting everything. Their baby is due in a few weeks and instead of flying to California just before the birth as planned, Biz has a better idea.
By: Sidney Karger
-
Lesbian Love Story
- A Memoir in Archives
- By: Amelia Possanza
- Narrated by: Amelia Possanza
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.
-
-
Exactly what I was looking for
- By Amazon Customer on 03-13-24
By: Amelia Possanza
-
The Tricky Part
- A Powerful Performance of Abuse and Forgiveness in this One-Man Off-Broadway Play
- By: Martin Moran
- Narrated by: Martin Moran
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Only for Audible, Martin Moran performs his hit Off-Broadway play, heralded as "a translucent memoir of a play…shattering” by The New York Times and "surprising and moving! Startling, marvelously told" by New York Newsday.
-
-
Simply sublime
- By Amazon Customer on 02-20-23
By: Martin Moran
-
The T Guide
- Our Trans Experiences and a Celebration of Gender Expression—Man, Woman, Nonbinary, and Beyond
- By: Gigi Gorgeous, Gottmik (a.k.a Kade Gottlieb), Swan Huntley
- Narrated by: Gigi Gorgeous, Gottmik (a.k.a Kade Gottlieb)
- Length: 4 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fabulous, fashion-forward guide, transgender icons Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik discuss the ins and outs of being transgender with their honest, hilarious, and GORGEOUS tales of what it means to be true to oneself—and they've picked up a few friends along the way. Whether you're embarking on your own transgender journey or seeking the knowledge to be the best ally you can be, there is something to be learned from every story they tell.
-
-
So great to hear from their personal lives!
- By glyny on 07-26-24
By: Gigi Gorgeous, and others
-
Shae
- A Novel
- By: Mesha Maren
- Narrated by: Kira Fixx
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When sixteen-year-old Shae meets Cam, who is new to their small town in West Virginia, she thinks she has found someone who is everything she has ever wanted in a companion. The two become fast friends, and then more. And when Shae ends up pregnant, Cam begins a different transition—trying on clothes that Shae can no longer fit into and using female pronouns. Shae tries to be fully supportive as Cam becomes the person she wants and needs to be.
-
-
Wow
- By Jessica Long on 05-28-24
By: Mesha Maren
-
Fieldwork
- A Forager's Memoir
- By: Iliana Regan
- Narrated by: Iliana Regan
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long based in Chicago, Iliana and her new wife, Anna, decided to create a culinary destination, the Milkweed Inn, located in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, where much of the food served to their guests would be foraged by Regan herself in the surrounding forest and nearby river. Part fresh challenge, part escape, Regan’s move to the forest was also a return to her rural roots, in an effort to deepen the intimate connection to nature and the land that she had long expressed as a chef, but experienced most intensely growing up.
-
-
Loved every bit of this
- By Pamela C. Fogg on 03-06-23
By: Iliana Regan
-
Make It Count
- My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner
- By: CeCé Telfer
- Narrated by: CeCé Telfer
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
CeCé Telfer is a warrior. The first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA championship, she has contended with transphobia on and off the track since childhood. Now, she stands at the crossroads of a national and international conversation about equity in sports, forced to advocate for her personhood and rights at every turn. After spending years training for the 2024 Olympics, Telfer has been sidelined and silenced more times than she can count. But she's never been good at taking no for an answer. Make It Count is Telfer's raw and inspiring story.
By: CeCé Telfer
-
Gay Bar
- Why We Went Out
- By: Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the era of Grindr and same-sex marriage, gay bars are closing down at an alarming rate. What, then, was the gay bar? Set between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London, Gay Bar takes us on a time-traveling, transatlantic bar hop through pulsing nightclubs, after-work dives, hardcore leather bars, gay cafes, and saunas, asking what these places meant to their original clientele, what they meant to the author as a younger man, and what they mean now.
-
-
Gay Bar : A Review
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-21