Cover of The Lonely Letters

The Lonely Letters

In The Lonely Letters, A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy primarily because I always have it. I write about joy, Black joy, because I want to generate it, I want it to emerge, I want to participate in its constant unfolding.” But alongside joy, A admits to Moth, come loneliness, exclusion, and unfulfilled desire.

Read more

The Lonely Letters is an epistolary blackqueer critique of the normative world in which Ashon T. Crawley—writing as A—meditates on the interrelation of blackqueer life, sounds of the Black church, theology, mysticism, and love. Throughout his letters, A explores blackness and queerness in the musical and embodied experience of Blackpentecostal spaces and the potential for platonic and erotic connection in a world that conspires against blackqueer life. Both a rigorous study and a performance, The Lonely Letters gestures toward understanding the capacity for what we study to work on us, to transform us, and to change how we inhabit the world.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 280 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Lonely Letters? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Lonely Letters. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Straight Talk on Loneliness Shares loneliness, religion, Christian
  2. The Naked Soul Shares loneliness, Christian, religion
  3. Malcolm X Shares biography, African American, race identity
  4. Surviving the White Gaze Shares biography, African American, race identity

“If you want more of the same (biography about african american), start with these.”

  1. The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors
  2. The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church
  3. Augustine on the Christian Life: Transformed by the Power of God
  4. Francis: Pope of a New World

“If it was the race identity that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Open Mike
  2. The African diaspora
  3. Global dimensions of the African diaspora
  4. W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Body's Recollection of Being: Phenomenological Psychology and the Deconstruction of Nihilism
  2. Deeper Waters: Immersed in the Life-Changing Truth of God's Word
  3. History of My Brief Body
  4. Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week