‘Sink’ Review: A Distinctive Debut Memoir

Joseph Earl Thomas’s debut memoir, “Sink,” is a lesson in style. His lightly experimental yet always acute prose takes readers through his childhood and adolescence in Philadelphia, ever-surrounded by varying levels of hostility and indifference in his home and at school. Thomas carefully crafts vignettes, full of intense awareness and capacious emotion. His writing follows a singular stream-of-consciousness style that is almost like prose poetry at times, yet always culminates in a sharp, cogent bit of insight — which lends the book its astonishing quality.

Young Joey lives with his grandparents and younger sister Mika in Philadelphia, with various other family members, including his mother, coming in and out of the picture. Adults are confusing to Joey, by turns abusive and neglectful, yet he, observant and astute, notices the patterns of harm that might lead them to behave in such a way towards him. He is curious, sensitive, loves animals and video games, and is continually pushed by his grandfather to be more masculine.

Readers follow the author’s younger self, Joey, through his journeys in the third person, yet this perspective doesn’t keep the reader from accessing his internal consciousness. Unlike traditional memoirs, the writing mostly utilizes third person narration, giving readers a sense of Joey’s detachment from his own emotions, as if he is watching his childhood unfold from a detached perspective. The memoir includes many distressing accounts of Joey encountering situations that were far too adult for his age, from drugs to sex, and Thomas captures his youthful bewilderment through form and description beautifully.

Occasionally the memoir dips into second person during short interludes about specific video games. This stylistic break drastically contrasts the heart wrenching reality of Joey’s life with the traditional video games present in an unencumbered childhood.

“Will he simply grow up, come of age, and forget all about it in order to pen a more insightful story about the many nuances of Black joy despite his own subjective experience, overcoming individuality in the service of lifting every voice to singing?” Thomas writes. “Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z.”

In this interlude, Thomas writes a self-conscious voiceover placing Joey as the hero of the game “Dragon Ball Z,” but the video games described range, including “Star Ocean: The Second Story,” or “Azure Dreams.” Video games, shows, and nerd culture are ways in which Thomas escaped from his hazardous world, and how he was able to understand it.

“Much like Sonic the Hedgehog,” Thomas writes, “Joey just knew that life would be about navigating the machinery of other people’s lust, greed, anger, or hurt, spinning signs and jumping high over the spikes, but not too high, skirting just under the sharp thingies on the ceiling, and most of all, being thankful that if all else failed, at least there was a roof.”

Violence and hostility are a given in Joey’s world, yet Thomas remains matter of fact in the presentation of his childhood, as Joey is in his interiority. Readers may find the work difficult to read at times, yet Thomas’s unassuming language allows for Joey’s rich internal world to remain the focus of the work. When Joey’s sister comes home crying after getting slapped by a boy, Joey spends three pages ruminating on their relationship and their places in the social world through an internal dialogue that all occurs while he tries to tie his shoelaces. Thomas wants to express love for his sister, but also doesn’t want to appear weak in front of his abusive father. These moments of deep awareness and consciousness, though often lengthy, are where the memoir is most clear and poignant.

In “Sink,” Thomas debuts a distinctive voice and a unique, impressive sense of style, unlike any other memoir. Though at times the level of detail reaches the point of feeling gratuitous, Thomas utilizes it adeptly to capture the consciousness of his younger self. Joey’s bewilderment and naïveté are hauntingly real, and Thomas has created a work full of candor and power that establishes him firmly among writers to watch today.

—Staff writer Sara Komatsu can be reached at sara.komatsu@thecrimson.com.