Sink A Memoir

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES‘S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2023, BET’S FAVORITE MEMOIRS OF 2023, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023

LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD 2024

“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, now in paperback. 

Surrounded by the failure of systems including his family, the public school system, and democratic society, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling like he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, most lessons were taught through violence, and, to make matters worse, he always seemed to be hungry. To escape these foes, he began retreating inward. In Sink, Thomas queries the possibility of escape through fantasy worlds, while grappling with children’s inability to change their circumstances. 
 
In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the trouble of cruelty without heroics or reprieve and explores how the cycle of hostility permeates our environments. And yet even in the depths of isolation, there are unexpected moments of joy carved out as Thomas finds kinship. Sink follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms.

Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, as well as the Director of Programs at Blue Stoop in Philadelphia.