How the Boogeyman Became a PoetKatherine Tegen Books, 2024. 5 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written February 4, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Odyssey Award Winner, Young Adult
I try to listen to all Odyssey Award winners and honor books, because they're specifically given for the best audiobooks, and the quality is always outstanding. This book was no exception.
How the Boogeyman Became a Poet is a memoir from a Black poet and spoken word artist about his years in high school and starting college when he was coming to terms in his own heart and mind with being gay.
And he tells the story himself, with many poems included and performed. There are sound effects adding to the production, and this is a powerful audiobook.
The story starts his senior year of high school. He's missed deadlines to apply to college and is taking the SAT for the third time, but gets a chance to apply. He's got a girlfriend, but somehow is never in the mood to "do business" with her, and he doesn't dare tell anyone that he thinks he might be gay - that fear is a boogeyman that he sees in the mirror and hiding in his closet - but he works out a lot of his thinking and feeling by writing poems and playing with language.
He was known as a poet in high school, writing love poems for his friends to give to their girlfriends on Valentine's Day to make a little money, and performing in the student talent show. In college, he found that open mic nights with all their acceptance were better for him than competitive poetry slams. But always, poetry was where he turned with his feelings that he didn't always understand.
I think my favorite poem was about the joy he got out of singing in youth choir. Yes! It's a lovely expression of what singing in a choir can be. Unfortunately, it was also at church that he was taught that being gay would send him to hell, and why he resisted so hard admitting what was going on inside.
This book is a true coming-of-age story, told in an award-winning audio package. When I looked up the author's website, I was delighted to learn that he went on to earn a PhD. Not bad for the first person in his family to go to college! Listeners are honored to get to share in his journey.