Sink

A Memoir

By: Joseph Earl Thomas

Narrated by: Joseph Earl Thomas

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.

Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests for food were often met with indifference if not open hostility. Deemed too unlike the other boys to ever gain the acceptance he so desperately desired, he began to escape into fantasy and virtual worlds, wells of happiness in a childhood assailed on all sides.

In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the unceasing cruelty that defined his circumstances, laying bare the depths of his loneliness and illuminating the vital reprieve geek culture offered him. With remarkable tenderness and devastating clarity, he explores how lessons of toxic masculinity were drilled into his body and the way the cycle of violence permeated the very fabric of his environment. Even in the depths of isolation, there were unexpected moments of joy carved out, from summers where he was freed from the injurious structures of his surroundings to the first glimpses of kinship he caught on his journey to becoming a Pokémon master. SINK follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in—with his immediate peers, turbulent family, or the world—and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms.

Critic reviews

"Joseph Earl Thomas has created a narrative that reads like a request and loving demand. Sink is a new kind of memoir, remixing the best parts of the genre. Though cohesive, the chapters in Sink are brilliant and brilliantly different. Thomas uses the act and politics of oration to move us within the silences of desire. It’s the way Thomas narrativizes encounters that make this book different than any memoir I’ve read, but also, so more propellant than any memoir in recent years. It is criminal and absolutely delicious that Sink is a literary debut. It is stunning in its audacious goodness." —Kiese Laymon, award-winning author of Heavy

“Sink is a singular memoir; all blood and nerve and near-unbearable beauty. A brilliant and fucking fearless debut.”—Carmen Maria Machado, award-winning author of In the Dream House

"Joseph Earl Thomas’s Sink is a powerful, moving, and artful testament to the sustaining powers of the imagination. This compelling coming-of-age memoir is often brutal but also loving; it’s at turns critical, empathic, funny; it’s searching and revelatory the whole way through. Joey is a narrator for the ages, a boy whose unforgettable story dares expanding the possibilities of Black male identity."—Mitchell S. Jackson, award-winning author of Survival Math

"Joseph Earl Thomas has written an astonishing book. It’s his debut, but he’s already a master. Somehow Sink recreates the state of childhood—its immense cruelty and immense promise. This book is for Joey, coming of age in northeast Philly in the late '90s: his video games and secret drawings, his longing, loneliness, and anger, his snakes and pet alligator and what happened, the roaches spilling out of the cereal box, the brutal trap of masculinity, the violence of family and smell of drugs through the door, every moment that lacked hope, every sweetness of imagination. Books like this remind us why we need books so much. With such tenderness, fury, and wisdom, Sink dreams a world beyond this one, shows us how to live there."—Hilary Plum, author of Hole Studies

“I want this book for my younger self, to see the ideas and embodiments of Blackness and masculinity extended in these wonderful ways that allow space for nerdiness, nature, softness, and imagination with a rich interior life. This memoir has the power to keep shifting cultures and conversations into other worlds that are at first imagined, then made real. Sink is a visionary memoir.”—Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat

A Philadelphia Story

Raw and relatable growing up in the 90s in any urban city. I felt all the emotions and isolation JET wrote about. Highly recommend this read or listen.

a beautifully and humorously told story

I highly recommend this listen. The author manages to tell a painful story without losing humor. He gets at complexity through the vivid specificity of a child's memories. Hearing the memoir read in the author's voice makes it an even more intimate experience.

So sad but beautifully told

Well done, Joey. Shocking and sad childhood yet told from a safe distance. I won’t forget this one.

On your own terms…

Joseph Earl Thomas shares a series of moments for the reader to hear his younger self call into focus experiences that crystallize the urgency to protect the beauty he creates in this world via his voice—vividly narrated. Every page has us gripping onto how he makes it through the scene.

Amazing Experience

The poetry and agony in this author’s words broke my heart and filled me with amazement at his ability to survive and overcome experiences that would have broken me. This is a must read - well-performed and exquisitely written.