Sink: A Memoir

In his wrenching debut, Thomas recounts his foray into nerd culture while coming of age amid squalor and abuse in 1990s Philadelphia. Writing in the third person, Thomas introduces Joey, “a little black man in training” who owned an Easy-Bake Oven, drew sea monsters, and kept a secret list of people he wanted to die, which included his grandfather, Popop, who beat Joey and called him homophobic slurs. Thomas also reflects on his grandmother, who pawned electronics to buy drugs, and his crack-addicted mother, Keisha, who was in and out of jail and had sex with men for money in front of her kids: “Keisha was sick, or high or gone, not a woman.” But Joey’s interest in all things geekdom offered a means of escape. Thomas charts his obsessions with Pokémon, anime, and video games, noting how, when playing the game Crash Bandicoot, Joey was “lulled into an unfamiliar state of comfort from which he did not intend to return.” Thomas’s prose delivers an emotional gut punch, as when watching a group of older boys, he realized, “You want to be them, but you also want to be dead.” The result is a lyrical exploration of identity and survival. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)