Bones Worth Breaking
A Memoir
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- CHF 12.00
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- CHF 12.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
Bones Worth Breaking is a portrait of the unbreakable bond between brothers and a reckoning with the global forces that shaped them.
Nobody around David Martinez saw how quickly he was breaking apart except for his younger brother, Mike. They stood out in Idaho: mixed-race in a Mormon community that, in the years before David’s birth, considered Black people ineligible for salvation. The Martinez brothers were raised to be “good boys,” definitely not to get high, skateboard all night, or get arrested, all of which they did with zeal. Then their paths diverged. David went on a two-year mission trip to Brazil like his father before him, and Mike stayed in the States, finding himself in and out of prison. When David returned, in the middle of the still-unnamed opioid epidemic, things had irrevocably changed, and in 2021, Mike unexpectedly died in prison.
Martinez writes with a serrated edge, as viscerally felt as an exposed nerve, and transforms from a stoic boy constantly seeking escape to a vulnerable man eager to contextualize the legacies and losses that have shaped his life. With a wild, ragged velocity—flipping and soaring like a pro skater—Martinez defies a linear telling of his life and tackles topics from abuse and racism to writing and capturing the meaning of the specific nostalgia of saudade.
Bones Worth Breaking is a portrait of the unbreakable bond between brothers who were robbed of the chance to grow old together, and a reckoning with the brutal global forces that let so many poor young men of color fall perilously through the cracks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martinez's immersive debut chronicles his tumultuous early life and the bond he shared with his late younger brother, Mike. The boys' family moved often across the U.S., Brazil, and Puerto Rico, before settling in a small Idaho Mormon community, where their mixed-race household stood out—their mother was half Black, half Indigenous; their father was white and adopted by Mexican parents who raised him Mormon. Early on, the brothers learned to avoid or repress discomfort: when Martinez was caught "playing doctor" with a neighbor girl, his father told him he was "making Jesus cry"; when he and Mike began to sustain cuts and broken bones from skateboarding, they hid their wounds to avoid a fuss. "Fear ruled our household," Martinez recalls. "Fear of mistakes, fear of anger, fear of god.... Fear of letting others down." By the time the boys entered middle school, both began using drugs as an escape from the severity and coldness of their home life. In late adolescence, their paths split: Martinez attended various colleges and embarked on a mission to Brazil, while Mike's opiate use worsened and he became homeless. Then, in 2021, after Martinez began writing the memoir, Mike died of sepsis in prison, and Martinez resolved to confront through therapy the lifelong saudade (Portuguese for a "feeling of absence") that plagued both brothers. The author revitalizes well-worn themes of racism, addiction, and religious trauma with his sense of urgency and vivid language. This marks Martinez a writer to watch.
