Books are without question the most important motif in Bad Boy. This makes sense, given that Myers’s memoir traces the process through which he grew into an author himself. The books Myers reads inspire him to try his hand at writing, and also provide him with new perspectives on how writing can be used; after reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for instance, Myers wants “to sit by [his] window, [his] small dog on [his] lap, and write this intensely personal poetry” (96).

However, while they ultimately help Myers establish himself as a writer, the books he reads in childhood and adolescence also shed light on his struggles to find an identity and a community he is comfortable with. As Myers becomes more disillusioned and isolated, he is drawn to literature that seems to reflect that experience of the world; he becomes particularly obsessed with the detachment of Mersault in Camus’s The Stranger, and attempts to write about his own experiences as an outsider from a clinical and emotionless perspective. In some ways, however, Myers’s estrangement from his friends and family is actually a product of the books he is reading. The writers Myers reads are almost entirely white, which to Myers suggests that being black is incompatible with being a great writer.