Black Boy Out of Time

A Memoir

By: Hari Ziyad

Narrated by: Desean Terry

Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

An eloquent, restless, and enlightening memoir by one of the most thought-provoking journalists today about growing up Black and queer in America, reuniting with the past, and coming of age their own way.

One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes listeners on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Exploring childhood, gender, race, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations, Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them.

Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Hari Ziyad’s vital memoir is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. It offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms. It looks back in tenderness as well as justified rage, forces us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminates the possibilities for the future.

©2021 by Hari Ziyad. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Narrator Desean Terry gives an intimate and emotional performance of this beautiful memoir in essays. Author Hari Ziyad explores the complexities of gender, queerness, and Black childhood…. Terry's tone is soft and gentle, reflecting the person Ziyad has become. His voice sometimes catches in sadness or deepens in anger while capturing every rise and fall of Ziyad's flowing prose. Terry makes it easy to forget it's not Ziyad themself narrating this honest story.” —AudioFile Magazine

“In Black Boy Out of Time, Ziyad reflects on the longterm impacts of assimilating into a more normative society shaped by prison-based ideologies and how it left them with little understanding of who they were. Ziyad notes that Black people are refused access to childhood due to the punitive social conditioning that protects gender and class categories, and asserts that Black childhood can only be reclaimed through prison abolition.” —Black Youth Project

“Although Ziyad writes explicitly as a Black writer with Black readers in mind, this extension of kindness in the place of opprobrium can be applied across cultures. They bring the same righteous energy in their writing about Black experience to the chapters on awakening to a queer identity. In the final sections, it’s heartening to find Ziyad committed to a loving relationship. With eloquence and compassion, the author examines ‘how to manage a serodiscordant relationship’—their fiancé is living with HIV, ‘a widely criminalized disease’—and how ‘to deal with the trauma from past sexual violence that refuses to stop rearing its hideous head from time to time.’ It’s an ongoing project, one that the author tackles with grace and insight via the act of writing…Ziyad successfully extracts the essence of being Black, queer, and full of tenderness.” —Kirkus Reviews

Inner Thoughts Articulated Publicly

Engaging self reflection, wonderfully performed. Thought provoking on a number of levels and complex enough to be a book club reading.

This Should Be Required Reading

Hari’s story is beautifully written with so many examples of representation for QPOC that are lacking in society. Thankful to have been able to have access to this!

Thoughtful and thorough

it was so thoughtfully curated! brought up the conversation of what it means to be BLK and Queer and unpack. this was so BEAUTIFUL!

Not what I hoped it would be.

I am a white female so o was looking for a book or narrative that could explain the black experience and white privilege to me. The author uses examples of what makes growing up black so hard that also happened to poor white kids. Lead in the water, asbestos in the houses, lead paint, etc are just some of the examples used. Because those things also happen to white kids, I could not understand what it was about those things that formed his basis any differently than white kids in the same houses and cities. Nothing that happened to him was based solely on his blackness. His queerness (his words, not mine) did add a layer to his childhood that others don’t experience. I think more of his reality was brought about by the abuse he endured at the hands of his mother’s and grandmother’s religion. I would have liked a more thorough dive o to that and how those experiences shaped him. I was disappointed in the book.

Salvation in honesty

An honest memoir of race, gender, identity and loss.
Not an easy read, given the subject matter, but the evocative writing and honesty of the author are simply captivating despite the darkness they experienced and retell in their memoir.

an important read

important book... they are telling their story, and it is a kind of story that more people need to hear. if you call yourself an ally to the Black community, queer community, or both, you need to add this book to your list of reads... it was a little scattered at times for my liking, but I was intrigued by the story at all times and loved educating myself further

enjoyed the narration, also love the fact that the author is friends with George M. Johnson (mentioned in book) who is an author of another very important memoir on the queer Black experience! thanks to the author for sharing with us.

Healing inner child

This work is genius
The way the author speaks to god younger self thru letters is powerful and so relating I love the intersections of family, black queerness, a carcerial state and love
Must read!

Excellent

One of the best books I’ve ever read. Beautifully written and thought provoking. The narrator is easy to listen to.

Fascinating memoir

Author truly takes readers in to their personal demons with a winding and thought provoking tale on spiritual life, finding your inner child and building for a more just future. Everyone but especially Black queer folk and people in ‘new age’ spiritual life must read

Important and revealing!

I did not know what to expect from this book but upon reading it I could not put it down. I have learn so much from the author about myself and the many struggles of Black people. Thanks Hari for sharing you.