Language
Status
Available
Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2022)
Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize (Longlist — 2022)
Description
The popular LGBTQ advice columnist and writer presents a memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in America's heartland to becoming the "Chicano Carrie Bradshaw" of his generation. The first time someone called Brammer "Papi" was on the gay hookup app Grindr. At first he took this as white-guy speak for "hey, handsome." What started as a racialized moniker given to him on the hookup app soon became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column. Here Brammer shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America's heartland, while attempting to answer some of life's toughest questions. This book is for anyone-- gay, straight, and everything in between-- who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world. -- adapted from jacket… (more)
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User reviews
LibraryThing member froxgirl
This is the most unusual advice column book I've ever read, and the most profound and profoundly amusing. The author, a gay man from rural Oklahoma, responds to pretty standard reader questions ("If something bad happens to me, can I still be mad about it years later?" "How do you keep chasing a
Quotes: “I have found that things beginning with a bang don’t usually end with one. Most of the time they spread out and cool off as a matter of entropy, as part of the grand cosmic plan that all things have to eventually become still.”
“I was having unexpected pangs of nostalgia for things I had hated. I missed them, I guess because I knew them, and that’s all that nostalgia requires of us.”
“What if I missed the act of loving – the moving through life while loving, the way of seeing myself while loving, the splendid shapes love makes of the world, the way it takes the mundane and twists it into something all together worthier?”
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dream when you're a failure?" "How do I forgive and forget?") with revelant anecdotes from his own experiences, and he doesn't stint on the sharing of pain and of embarrassing moments. It's also got a large vein of humor running through, and oh the humanity. It's a short and poignant arrow to the heart, very sharp on the need for self-examination, and very wise about love.Quotes: “I have found that things beginning with a bang don’t usually end with one. Most of the time they spread out and cool off as a matter of entropy, as part of the grand cosmic plan that all things have to eventually become still.”
“I was having unexpected pangs of nostalgia for things I had hated. I missed them, I guess because I knew them, and that’s all that nostalgia requires of us.”
“What if I missed the act of loving – the moving through life while loving, the way of seeing myself while loving, the splendid shapes love makes of the world, the way it takes the mundane and twists it into something all together worthier?”
Show Less
LibraryThing member iluvvideo
I really enjoyed reading this book. Written as a series of responses to questions asking for advice by gay men of varying ages and life experiences; answered by a gay Mexican-American who grew up in Oklahoma; poor, multicultural and very much struggling to find the answers to the same questions for
Never seeming to come from a place of knowing better and dispensing answers that he struggled to find for himself, he zeroes in directly on the heart of the issue at hand. When speaking of reconciling with a bully from junior high, he states 'the axe forgets, the tree remembers'. How TRUE! It's easy for the bully to forget and dismiss the abuse, but the recipient remembers and relives the experience over and over psychically. I found many touchstones to my own story while reading this book.
I recommend reading this book to anyone with questions regarding their gay path in life or anyone just looking for an insightful and thoughtful look at life's imponderable questions.
This book was given to me by Net Galley in exchange for a review. I thank them for the opportunity to read it.
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himself. Never seeming to come from a place of knowing better and dispensing answers that he struggled to find for himself, he zeroes in directly on the heart of the issue at hand. When speaking of reconciling with a bully from junior high, he states 'the axe forgets, the tree remembers'. How TRUE! It's easy for the bully to forget and dismiss the abuse, but the recipient remembers and relives the experience over and over psychically. I found many touchstones to my own story while reading this book.
I recommend reading this book to anyone with questions regarding their gay path in life or anyone just looking for an insightful and thoughtful look at life's imponderable questions.
This book was given to me by Net Galley in exchange for a review. I thank them for the opportunity to read it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member BookConcierge
Audiobook read by the author
Subtitle: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
Brammer studied journalism and creative writing and landed a job writing an advice column for INTO, which was published by Grindr, the popular gay hook-up app. He wasn’t sure he was doing “the
This collection of essays serves as a memoir and self-help guide to pressing questions about growing up, surviving break ups, finding love, and all the issues young people – both gay and straight – have to navigate in the process of becoming adults. He recounts his experiences in a small Oklahoma town, his horrible middle-school years, when he was bullied to the point where he considered suicide, his confusing teenage years in the closet, his awakening in college, and his eventual move to New York.
The beginning of each chapter poses a question asking for advice. There are some chapters where I wondered where his story was headed and if he’d ever connect to the question being asked. But Brammer’s honesty and empathy propelled me forward.
Brammer narrates the audiobook himself. He does a fine job, it IS his own story after all, and I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of narrating it. I did read about half the book in text format, however.
Subtitle: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
Brammer studied journalism and creative writing and landed a job writing an advice column for INTO, which was published by Grindr, the popular gay hook-up app. He wasn’t sure he was doing “the
Show More
gay thing” right, or that he had any business giving advice, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. His column, ¡Hola Papi!, took off like wildfire. This collection of essays serves as a memoir and self-help guide to pressing questions about growing up, surviving break ups, finding love, and all the issues young people – both gay and straight – have to navigate in the process of becoming adults. He recounts his experiences in a small Oklahoma town, his horrible middle-school years, when he was bullied to the point where he considered suicide, his confusing teenage years in the closet, his awakening in college, and his eventual move to New York.
The beginning of each chapter poses a question asking for advice. There are some chapters where I wondered where his story was headed and if he’d ever connect to the question being asked. But Brammer’s honesty and empathy propelled me forward.
Brammer narrates the audiobook himself. He does a fine job, it IS his own story after all, and I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of narrating it. I did read about half the book in text format, however.
Show Less
LibraryThing member reader1009
adult nonfiction/memoir (gay man from Oklahoma relates his experiences, including some traumatic homophobic incidents and sexual assault)
This isn't really a book you would casually pick up and read for funny stories, it is full of serious content that I hope will help a lot of readers. Brammer
This isn't really a book you would casually pick up and read for funny stories, it is full of serious content that I hope will help a lot of readers. Brammer
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offers his own experiences rather than trying to provide advice (since everyone's situation will be different and he acknowledges that he is unqualified to answer some questions). Show Less
LibraryThing member richardderus
Real Rating: 3.75* of five
FINALIST FOR THE 34th Lambda Literary Award—BEST GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY!
The Publisher Says: From popular LGBTQ advice columnist and writer John Paul Brammer comes a hilarious, heartwarming memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in
The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer “Papi” was on the popular gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for “hey, handsome.” Who doesn’t want to be called handsome? But then it happened again and again...and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi?
What started as a racialized moniker given to him on a hookup app soon became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!,” launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere—and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first—what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early 20s? Sometimes the best advice to dole outcomes from looking within, which is what JP has done in his column and book—and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and of course, a few laughs.
In ¡Hola Papi!, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America’s heartland, while attempting to answer some of life’s toughest questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he’s out of the closet? Questions we’ve all asked ourselves, surely.
¡Hola Papi! is for anyone—gay, straight, and everything in between—who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: There are a lot of quotable quotes and pithy aperçus in this book:
We can't change the events of our lives. They happen, and there they are. But the lines we draw to connect those events, the shapes we make and the conclusions we reach, those come from us. They are our design.
–and–
But one thing I’ve learned, and I’ve learned it more solidly than maybe I’ve learned anything else, is that humans are incapable of looking at anything clearly. Even the facts of our own lives—we can only hold a few at any given time, and they shift, they slip through our fingers, they rearrange themselves into new shapes and conspire to tell a different story.
–and–
I thought of myself more as “a person with unique difficulty accessing heterosexuality.”
See? I defy you not to lard these into your next all-gay klatsch and smile becomingly modestly as everyone tells you how wise you are. (Don't front...you know that's exactly what you thought as you read them.)
But as a story of JP Brammer's life the structure is wanting, and I wanted. I didn't reject the advice-column bits. I didn't resent their presence or simply find their simplicity simplistic. There is virtue in simplicity! Matisse was certainly correct, quoted in the "How to Describe a Dick" chapter, "First you have to forget all the {advice/memoir tales} that have been {written} before." And that is a tall, skinny, mushroom-headed problem. (This was occasioned by a question lobbed at Brammer, "how can I go on when I'm so obviously a failure?") Again, to quote but this time Brammer himself, with a freeze-framed penis before him, "I stared at it blankly. It stared back." (Which reminds me, go watch Amazon's The Boys season 3, episode 1. Haw.) But that dick, the one JP Brammer needed to describe? He needed to describe it for work and where there's work there's deadlines and one of those was barrelling down on him. The dick in question, paused on his screen, needed to be described for the porn-ad website...one of those with glitzy photos and ads for things the guys doing the sex acts unquestionably do not need to concern themselves with...that needed clicks. That his words needed to elicit, because this isn't one of the dirty-boy blogs where the scenes are still-framed on, um, action shots shall we say.
This existential crisis..."what the hell is there to say about this tediously same-ol' same-ol' goverment issue genital organ?"...is resolved, of course, though honestly it's by no means certain that his inspired choice made it onto that site. It's really not an area in which I have a lot of interest or expertise, those teasy-squeezy parts of the porn world. "All or nothing" is more my motto but at sixty-plus I'm just not, erm, titillated by suchlike carryin' on as in days of yore.
(Okay, I think Rob's already bored reading this so I can safely add "it says here.")
The issue for me in this read isn't the framing device or the chatty tone or the unabashed goofiness. It's the way it doesn't make *a*book* but a collection of columns. While there is charm in that, it's not what I expected when I was told that it was a memoir. I got the message from the subtitle, which is perfect..."How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons"...but it doesn't make a memoir. The Lambda Literary folk didn't just make up the category it was nominated within...the marketing stresses memoir. Advice, yes; essay, certainly; gay, goodness me yes! Not memoir.
So readers are cautioned to adjust expectations going in to the fun, the roller-coaster of emotions, the single-mindedly survival focused, read. I'll say this for Author Brammer: He knows the structure of an anecdote, the precise emotional trajectory of a story, like the veins on...um...well, he knows what he's up to.
There is no way I can get off this horse (!) without sounding double-entendre-y as hell. Go on and buy it.
FINALIST FOR THE 34th Lambda Literary Award—BEST GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY!
The Publisher Says: From popular LGBTQ advice columnist and writer John Paul Brammer comes a hilarious, heartwarming memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in
Show More
America’s heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation.The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer “Papi” was on the popular gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for “hey, handsome.” Who doesn’t want to be called handsome? But then it happened again and again...and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi?
What started as a racialized moniker given to him on a hookup app soon became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!,” launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere—and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first—what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early 20s? Sometimes the best advice to dole outcomes from looking within, which is what JP has done in his column and book—and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and of course, a few laughs.
In ¡Hola Papi!, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America’s heartland, while attempting to answer some of life’s toughest questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he’s out of the closet? Questions we’ve all asked ourselves, surely.
¡Hola Papi! is for anyone—gay, straight, and everything in between—who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: There are a lot of quotable quotes and pithy aperçus in this book:
We can't change the events of our lives. They happen, and there they are. But the lines we draw to connect those events, the shapes we make and the conclusions we reach, those come from us. They are our design.
–and–
But one thing I’ve learned, and I’ve learned it more solidly than maybe I’ve learned anything else, is that humans are incapable of looking at anything clearly. Even the facts of our own lives—we can only hold a few at any given time, and they shift, they slip through our fingers, they rearrange themselves into new shapes and conspire to tell a different story.
–and–
I thought of myself more as “a person with unique difficulty accessing heterosexuality.”
See? I defy you not to lard these into your next all-gay klatsch and smile becomingly modestly as everyone tells you how wise you are. (Don't front...you know that's exactly what you thought as you read them.)
But as a story of JP Brammer's life the structure is wanting, and I wanted. I didn't reject the advice-column bits. I didn't resent their presence or simply find their simplicity simplistic. There is virtue in simplicity! Matisse was certainly correct, quoted in the "How to Describe a Dick" chapter, "First you have to forget all the {advice/memoir tales} that have been {written} before." And that is a tall, skinny, mushroom-headed problem. (This was occasioned by a question lobbed at Brammer, "how can I go on when I'm so obviously a failure?") Again, to quote but this time Brammer himself, with a freeze-framed penis before him, "I stared at it blankly. It stared back." (Which reminds me, go watch Amazon's The Boys season 3, episode 1. Haw.) But that dick, the one JP Brammer needed to describe? He needed to describe it for work and where there's work there's deadlines and one of those was barrelling down on him. The dick in question, paused on his screen, needed to be described for the porn-ad website...one of those with glitzy photos and ads for things the guys doing the sex acts unquestionably do not need to concern themselves with...that needed clicks. That his words needed to elicit, because this isn't one of the dirty-boy blogs where the scenes are still-framed on, um, action shots shall we say.
This existential crisis..."what the hell is there to say about this tediously same-ol' same-ol' goverment issue genital organ?"...is resolved, of course, though honestly it's by no means certain that his inspired choice made it onto that site. It's really not an area in which I have a lot of interest or expertise, those teasy-squeezy parts of the porn world. "All or nothing" is more my motto but at sixty-plus I'm just not, erm, titillated by suchlike carryin' on as in days of yore.
(Okay, I think Rob's already bored reading this so I can safely add "it says here.")
The issue for me in this read isn't the framing device or the chatty tone or the unabashed goofiness. It's the way it doesn't make *a*book* but a collection of columns. While there is charm in that, it's not what I expected when I was told that it was a memoir. I got the message from the subtitle, which is perfect..."How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons"...but it doesn't make a memoir. The Lambda Literary folk didn't just make up the category it was nominated within...the marketing stresses memoir. Advice, yes; essay, certainly; gay, goodness me yes! Not memoir.
So readers are cautioned to adjust expectations going in to the fun, the roller-coaster of emotions, the single-mindedly survival focused, read. I'll say this for Author Brammer: He knows the structure of an anecdote, the precise emotional trajectory of a story, like the veins on...um...well, he knows what he's up to.
There is no way I can get off this horse (!) without sounding double-entendre-y as hell. Go on and buy it.
Show Less
Publication
Simon & Schuster (2021), Edition: First Edition, 224 pages
Original publication date
2021
ISBN
1982141492 / 9781982141493
Physical description
224 p.; 8.38 inches
Original language
English
