Since I Laid My Burden Down cover art

Since I Laid My Burden Down

A Novel

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Since I Laid My Burden Down

By: Brontez Purnell
Narrated by: Brontez Purnell
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £10.63

Buy Now for £10.63

About this listen

Whiting Award winner Brontez Purnell’s debut novel is an uninhibited portrait of growing up gay in 1980s Alabama: exploring art and sex with “more layered insight than the page count should allow” (Hanif Abdurraqib, MTV News).

DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amid prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?

A modern American classic, Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw and searing look into the intersections of memory, Blackness, and queerness.

"An antidote to the rigamarole of gay lit." (Mask Magazine)

"Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder." (The Bay Area Reporter)

“Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” (Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave)

©2017 Brontez Purnell (P)2020 Audible, Inc. African American Fiction Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Small Town & Rural Witty Alabama

The Pride List of Queer Storytelling

To mark Pride 2023 Audible teamed up with non-profit organisation, Out on the Page, supporter and champion of LGBTQIA+ writers and writing, to release an extensive Pride List of Queer Storytelling. Featuring contributions from some of the UK’s most important and exciting voices from the LGBTQIA+ community, this audiobook is one of the many featured on the list that is available to listen to on Audible.
Explore the list
All stars
Most relevant
could not recommend more, it is perfect. has left me soothed and in awe and alive with the messiness and finding balance in living x

tender hilarious deep thinking soothing invigorating perfect!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.