Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir Darius Stewart

Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir

Author: Darius Stewart
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  • SKU: 9781953368904
  • Category: LGBTQ
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Book Title
Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir
Author
Darius Stewart
ISBN
9781953368904
From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee--and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet--he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart's explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones's How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon's Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.Binding Type: PaperbackAuthor: Darius StewartPublisher: Belt PublishingPublished: 02/06/2024ISBN: 9781953368904Pages: 276Weight: 0.55lbsSize: 7.00h x 4.90w x 0.80dReview Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2023Foreword 12/27/2023
From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee--and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet--he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart's explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones's How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon's Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Darius Stewart
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 02/06/2024
ISBN: 9781953368904
Pages: 276
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.00h x 4.90w x 0.80d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2023
Foreword 12/27/2023
From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee--and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet--he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart's explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones's How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon's Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Darius Stewart
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 02/06/2024
ISBN: 9781953368904
Pages: 276
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.00h x 4.90w x 0.80d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2023
Foreword 12/27/2023