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I Don't Remember
  • Published: 14 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780241342664
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

I Don't Remember

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A fierce and unforgettable story of queer America in the age of the AIDS crisis, by Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Hilton Als

Hilton Als was raised in a corner of Brooklyn marked by riots, racial segregation and sexual prejudice. As a teenager, he began to glimpse other ways of living through school, through art, and in the black men and white men he saw making lives together. Later, in a Manhattan alive with hip hop, Basquiat, nightclubs and new wave, he found, at last, the gay family he had longed for—just as reports of a 'rare cancer' began to emerge.

Lyrical, wry, and searching, I Don't Remember tells the story of queer America through Als's own life among others. At once personal confession, cultural portrait, and elegy, it pays tribute to an unsung generation of gay men: lovers and friends, visionary artists and makers, the loved and the lost. Exquisite in its poetic, rapid-fire storytelling, I Don’t Remember sees Als at the height of his powers, bearing witness to the beauty and necessity of love in the face of stigma, loss, and collective catastrophe.
  • Published: 14 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780241342664
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

Hilton Als

Hilton Als is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. He has received numerous awards, including the New York Association of Black Journalists' first prize for Magazine/Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment, a Guggenheim fellowship for Creative Writing, a George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and the American Academy's Berlin Prize. He is a Professor at Columbia University's Writing Program, and his work has appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City.
portrait photo of Hilton Als

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The Women
White Girls
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Praise for I Don't Remember

Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin

Observer

There are few more fearless, thought-provoking writers at work today.

i-D magazine

Mr. Als is a national treasure

New York Observer

No one understands the intersections of race, gender and sexuality as intuitively as Als does or explodes them with more brio

Washington Post

Als is a poet on the page, and his insistence on breaking the essay form defines his liberation as a writer

The Rumpus

Als' work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It's about being human

Kirkus

Als is pyrotechnic, lifting off the page in a blast of stinging light and concussive booms that somehow coalesce into profound cultural and psychological illuminations

Booklist

Als is one of the most consistently unpredictable and surprising essayists out there, an author who confounds our expectations virtually every time he writes.

Los Angeles Times

A writer of many moods-meditative, sardonic, haunting, funny, reflective, and unconventional ... a compassionate writer looking for unity--even if it can't always be found

Publisher's Weekly