Aaron Foley Centers Black Gay Men and Native Detroit in Debut Novel ‘Boys Come First’

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Aaron Foley at a book signing. (Image courtesy of subject)

A week after his appearance on the popular pop culture podcast, For Colored Nerds, author Aaron Foley hadn’t listened to the episode. 

“I trust that it is good,” he told The Reckoning. “I am not a big fan of hearing my voice recorded, so I haven’t listened to it and probably won’t.”

Just being on the show was a career highlight for Foley, who works full-time as a senior editor for PBS NewsHour’s Communities Initiative. To be there talking about his debut novel, Boys Come First made it all sweeter. 

“It’s all been unreal, to be honest,” he said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.”

As a journalist, Foley seeks to tell authentic, informative, and educational stories about real people and real life. Boys Come First is no different. As a Black, gay, millennial from Detroit, he wanted to tell a truthful story about his beloved city and Black gay men. It is something, he said, he does not always get to do in journalism. 

“It was important for me to write this book, for myself. I have been looking for a certain kind of representation in fiction, but I just wasn’t getting it.”

- Aaron Foley

Boys is about three friends – Dominick Gibson, Troy Clements, and Remy Patton. All millennials and natives of Detroit, the three face their fair share of drama—from breakups, job loss, and even familial and relational challenges (including their relationship with each other)—to maneuver their way through to greater clarity and security. 

“It was important for me to write this book, for myself,” said Foley. “I have been looking for a certain kind of representation in fiction, but I just wasn’t getting it.”

That’s not to say there aren’t Black gay writers. 

“There are definitely Black gay writers out there who are writing brilliant and timely works, by and large,” he said, “But the list is very small.”

Whenever Foley would go to a bookstore with friends or someone he was dating, they would say, “You should read this, this is my favorite, this is a good story.” However, more often than not, he said, the suggestions didn’t satisfy him. 

“Toni Morrison once said, ‘If there is a book you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, you have to be the one to write it.’I live and die by that quote.”

“Toni Morrison once said, ‘If there is a book you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, you have to be the one to write it.’I live and die by that quote.”

- Aaron Foley

An avid reader since about the age of six or seven, Foley would read whatever he could get his hands on. English, he said, has always been his favorite class in school. It may be safe to say he inherited his veracity for reading from his mother. An avid reader herself, who was at one time a journalist. 

“She was always bringing home a bunch of books. I am actually sitting in her library right now talking to you,” he admitted, adding that he was in town, briefly, for a wedding. Foley is currently based in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. During his mother’s time as a journalist, he became familiar with E. Lynn Harris, one of the most popular Black gay authors.

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Aaron Foley (Image courtesy of subject)

Joining The Black Gay Literati 

Boys, to some extent, follow Harris's legacy and others, including James Earl Hardy and even James Baldwin. They all, intentionally and unintentionally, did what Morrison advised—told stories that were missing from the canon of contemporary Black literature at the time—the Black gay male experience. 

“What E. Lynn did was scandalous,” Foley said. “There were so many Black authors in the 90s and early 2000s—like Terry McMillan, Bebe Moore Campbell, even Omar Tyree—writing from the perspective of Black women and/or straight men. No one was writing about and talking about what E. Lynn wrote and talked about. It just wasn’t happening. And that wasn’t that long ago.”

He did not discover Hardy, he said until he was much older. 

“But still. The same is true. To revisit those books, as an adult, is like opening a time capsule. I am definitely walking in their footsteps, but those are pretty large footsteps to attempt to walk in,” he said. “You have this very small group of authors who took very big risks to capture a specific time. They were telling these stories at a time when it was very taboo to talk about these subjects.”

“You have this very small group of authors who took very big risks to capture a specific time. They were telling these stories at a time when it was very taboo to talk about these subjects.”

- Aaron Foley on Black gay authors of the 1990s

Harris and Hardy, even Baldwin and Langston Hughes, said Foley, paved a way for the likes of him and others, including George M. Johnson, Brandon Taylor, and Brian Washington. 

“Today, their books would probably show up on ‘banned books’ lists. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because book bans can, at times, cause the greater public to wonder, “What’s in this book that they don’t want me to know?” said Foley. 

Book bans have the potential to be beneficial for authors and their work. Unfortunately, not everyone is privy to the book ban experience.

“The bigger the book, the more the possibility,” he said. “I don’t think it will happen with Boys Come First. It is a novel from an indie press. I wouldn’t be against it. It’s not something I think about often, but if it were to happen… then please tell someone this book is too scandalous for them to deal!”

If he can’t reach banned status, he will take achieving the goals he had when he set out to write Boys - telling a truthful story about his beloved city and about the Black gay men he knows. 

The day before his interview with The Reckoning, he received his most recent confirmation. He was tagged in a tweet from one of the readers that said, “I’m reading the first few chapters of Boys Come First and am loving it.”

“Someone else responded, ‘I finished it last week; you’re going to love it.’ At the moment, I was like, OH MY GOSH! I did this because I knew if I didn’t, I would be unfulfilled. But also, I needed this book and so have other Black, queer men.”

“Detroit is Motown and the Motor City, but it's more than that. I wanted to give my readers and Detroiters the part of Detroit that is Detroit to me.”

- Aaron Foley

On top of that, he has also seen readers say things like, 'I did not know this about Detroit' or 'I learned so much about Detroit reading it,' which Foley tells The Reckoning was part of his goal in writing the book. 

“Detroit is Motown and the Motor City, but it's more than that,” he said. “I think about how well Issa Rae visualized Los Angeles—you saw Black Los Angeles. Or even Donald Glover with Atlanta. Or even how P-Valley is portraying the south in a very specific way, even though Chucalissa, Mississippi, is fictional. A sense of place is being provided. I wanted to give my readers and Detroiters the part of Detroit that is Detroit to me.”