It’s largely the ugly that High-Risk Homosexual is concerned with, and though often heavy, Edgar Gomez’s debut is also a breath of fresh air.

Edgar Gomez’s High-Risk Homosexual sashays and shantays readers through the author’s teenage years and into his early 20s.

That search for a way to exist at the intersection of ethnic identity and sexuality—a fraught expedition filled with alarming discoveries and awkward encounters—is fiercely articulated in this excellent debut memoir.

With alternating notes of gut-wrenching emotion and humor, High-Risk Homosexual chronicles not only Gomez’s coming-of-age and coming out, but also his choppy navigation of a culture and family that refused to accept him.

In this crackling debut, Gomez recounts his coming-of-age as a queer man, passionately exploring what it means to celebrate one’s identities and to make space for joy in the most unlikely places.

Poignant, vivid, and often hilarious, this coming-of-age memoir fearlessly explores intersectional identity and shows what it means to live and love authentically as a gay man today.