Manboobs
A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
** LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY **
* LILLY’S LIBRARY NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK *
Manboobs is Komail Aijazuddin’s riotous yet intelligent memoir of searching for love, seamlessly blending humor, politics, pop culture, and the bravery required to be yourself. Aijazuddin confidently announces himself as a sharp new voice in humor with his moving, wickedly funny reexamination of the American Dream and our search for home.
"One of the funniest books I've ever read." —EDMUND WHITE
“One of the best-written memoirs I've ever read—I couldn't put it down. The humor is so sharp, so delicious, so irresistible. What a remarkable feat.” —ALOK VAID-MENON
“At once both humorous and heartbreaking, [Aijazuddin’s] memoir allows his bubbly personality to shine in a story about letting go of shame and finding self-acceptance.” —WASHINGTON POST
“[A] sterling debut . . . Aijazuddin combines blazing wit with heartbreaking candor as he recounts his path toward self-acceptance as a gay Pakistani.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
I’m just a man, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cake.
What do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and you’re ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find happiness despite years of humiliation, physical danger, and a legion of Brooklyn hipsters who know you only as a queer from Whereveristan? How do you summon the courage to be yourself no matter where you are?
Even as a young child in Lahore, Komail Aijazuddin knew he was different—no one else at his all-boys prep school was pirouetting off their desks, or bullied for their “manboobs,” or spontaneously bursting into songs from The Little Mermaid.
Aijazuddin began to believe his only chance at a happy, meaningful life would be found elsewhere: America, the land of the free, the home of the gays. But the hostility of a post-9/11 world and society’s rejection of his art, his desires, and his body would soon teach him that finding happiness takes a lot more than a plane ticket.
Searching for his place between two worlds while navigating a minefield of expectations, prejudice, and self-doubt, Aijazuddin discovered, sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously, that there are people and places he’d need to let go of to move forward.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
What seems light and breezy on the surface is roiling with deep emotion just beneath in this stellar memoir. Artist Komail Aijazuddin grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, where even in his affluent and not-particularly-religious family, his LGBTQ+ identity was a problem. This, combined with his emotional eating, made him an outcast at his all-boys school and in his Islamist society as a whole. He glamorizes North America in his mind and hopes to escape there. But once he does, he discovers that maybe it wasn’t everything he’d built it up to be in his imagination, slamming into wide-ranging forms of casual bigotry in the gay community and in the United States at large, from fetishization to post-9/11 racism. Aijazuddin writes about all of this and more, from his first furtive sexual explorations with an older schoolboy to his ever-growing love of studying and then making art, all without even the slightest whiff of victimhood. Yet the lingering pain and anger underneath even the funniest scenes is palpable. Witty, emotional, and deeply relatable, Manboobs is a knock-your-socks-off memoir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sterling debut, painter Aijazuddin combines blazing wit with heartbreaking candor as he recounts his path toward self-acceptance as a gay Pakistani. Growing up in 1990s Lahore, Aijazuddin took an early shine to musicals, Disney princesses, and Barbie dolls, all while battling schoolyard insults about his weight and resulting "moon-tits." As he realized he was gay, experimenting sexually with a friend and growing close with another closeted teen, Aijazuddin dreamed of escaping to comparatively liberal North America. Much of the memoir sees him ping-ponging between Pakistan, Canada, and the U.S.: he attended college in Montreal shortly after 9/11, where he faced xenophobia and struggled to come out of the closet, then returned to Pakistan, where his shame compounded. After obtaining a U.S. visa in 2015, he moved to New York City, where a series of relationships helped him learn to "stop loving in the shadows." Aijazuddin's prose is playful but sincere, marrying quips ("I was always a bird of paradise in a nest of sparrows") with powerful insights ("Hyphens are the price of my admission through the gates of the American dream"). The result is a stirring account of coming-of-age and coming out.
