Queer writer reflects on assault, drug use, more in ‘Mean Boys’
Queer Chinese American writer Geoffrey Mak takes the personal essay to new, and sometimes unsettling, heights, in his book “Mean Boys: A Personal History” (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Described as a “memoir-in-essays,” Mak, the gay son of an evangelical minister, takes readers on his volatile and visceral personal journey, which includes the techno clubs of Berlin, various illicit substances, his sexual assault, and ultimately an examination of mass-murderer Elliot Rodger.
Mak generously made time for an interview in advance of his November appearance at the Miami Book Fair. BLADE: In the author’s note for your book “Mean Boys: A Personal History,” you said, “I wrote most of these essays for the Internet,” and that awareness of your readership extended to “what they wanted to hear, and what they were wearing.” Is that still your target audience or were you looking to expand it with the book? GEOFFREY MAK: If I could go back in time and inspire my 26-year-old self to keep writing, I would say, “Babe, in 10 years, you’ll get everything you’ve ever dreamed of, just online-only.” I still see the natural habitat of the personal essay; yet the internet has a tendency for fragmentation and bubbles.
When I decided to write a book at a mainstream press, I thought a lot about how a book—unlike a painting—is a mass-produced object, which makes it a more democratic medium, almost humble.
