Bad Boy: A Memoir

Among other things, Bad Boy is a coming-of-age story. It traces and explains the process by which Myers became the man that he was when he wrote it, describing how, for instance, the sound of his mother reading to him as a young boy lays the groundwork for his eventual sense of himself as a reader and writer. In fact, as he grows older, Myers’s sense of himself evolves not only to accommodate his interest in literature, but also to accommodate the particular ideas and values at play in the works he reads; he adopts, for example, the interests of the predominantly white writers he studies, wondering, “If an Englishman could appreciate beauty, why couldn’t I? If Shakespeare could write about love and jealousy and hatreds, why couldn’t I?” (86). For Myers, this interplay between what he reads and who he is is an active process: “[Books] spoke to me, and I responded, not in words but in appreciation and consideration of their thoughts. More and more, I would respond with my own writing” (127). In fact, it is partly because this is an active process that it appeals to him; Myers, as a young man, fiercely resents the efforts of others to categorize him, and hopes that by writing and reading he can construct a unique and wholly personal identity for himself as an “intellectual” (179).