“Hola Papi” isn’t really a book of collected advice columns it’s a memoir through essays, and he uses the form to mine the depths of his own experience. “My middle school was my antagonist, the big bad wolf that I would have to spend my whole life getting strong enough to overcome,” he writes. His voice is intentional, considered and more intimate than ever, but he does not lose the directness and clarity he’s spent so long cultivating.
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(How I, too, wish to be so fully myself that I can find gems of wisdom in my trauma.)Īnd thus, my expectations for Brammer’s debut book, “Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons,” have been lofty since its existence first came to my attention - where else - on Twitter.īrammer has been honing his sharp-witted persona for years online, but here, in book form, unbound from the constraints of a column or character limit, his queer advice is more personal and affecting. Brammer’s journey from reluctant self-parody to a full embodiment of his Papi avatar has been remarkable and enviable. In the years since it launched (it first ran in Grindr’s digital magazine, Into, and now publishes on Substack), it has become the rare email that I genuinely look forward to. His answers include both jokes and insights from his own experience. He also uses Twitter to share his work, which is how I first stumbled on his advice column, “Hola Papi.”Įach week in “Hola Papi,” Brammer shares a letter from a reader facing a quandary about modern queer life - not feeling gay enough, falling in love with straight men - and then he doles out his best guidance in response. Brammer is a queer, mixed-race Mexican American journalist who writes about race, gay love and poppers. It’s a feed that shines with subtle and riotously strange queer humor, and because of that, his tweets frequently found their way into my group chats. I first became aware of John Paul Brammer because of his Twitter account. HOLA PAPI How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons By John Paul Brammer