{"product_id":"worth-burning-9781625571816","title":"Worth Burning","description":"A searing portrait of survival, \u003ci\u003eWorth Burning\u003c\/i\u003e traces a boy's journey from a turbulent Southern childhood--marked by parental abuse, death, and hidden queerness--through the AIDS crisis, a marriage of convenience, and finally, towards a rugged self-acceptance haunted by the past.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWorth Burning\u003c\/i\u003e crackles with the heat of a burn barrel. With a novelist's attention to character and narrative trajectory, Mickie Kennedy glides through four decades beginning with the random hit-and-run that kills the young speaker's father. The mother's mourning curdles, grief becomes addiction, and addiction becomes abuse--emotional, physical, and sexual--as mother and son persist, locked in a monstrously confused togetherness further complicated by the speaker's hidden gayness, in a small Southern town.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Through searing confession and stark image-making, Kennedy excavates the contours of a life that persistently bends, against all odds, toward a ramshackle wholeness. Suffused with efficient, image-rich narrative poems, Kennedy's debut is at once sweeping and intimate, like a love note passed in secret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Black Lawrence Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/24\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781625571816\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 98\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.27lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.23d","brand":"Mickie Kennedy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52136434630837,"sku":"9781625571816","price":15.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_21223016-9ff4-4509-9917-0f91064d4247.jpg?v=1767114544","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/worth-burning-9781625571816","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}