Inciting Joy
Essays
Published on 25. October 2022
256 pages
978-1-64375-348-5 (ISBN)
Description
From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes an intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection.
"Brilliant. Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart." -Ada Limón, US poet laureate
"A gift that's meant to be shared." -The Washington Post
"It's impossible to read [these essays] without feeling a shift in your awareness of joy and its unexpected possibilities." ―The Boston Globe
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it.
Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.
In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?
Winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Memoir/ Nonfiction
Boston Globe Best Books of 2022
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2022
Shelf Awareness Best Adult Books of 2022
Salon.com Favorite Books of 2022
San Francisco Chronicle Favorite Books of 2022
BookPage Best Audiobooks of 2022
"Brilliant. Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart." -Ada Limón, US poet laureate
"A gift that's meant to be shared." -The Washington Post
"It's impossible to read [these essays] without feeling a shift in your awareness of joy and its unexpected possibilities." ―The Boston Globe
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it.
Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.
In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?
Winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Memoir/ Nonfiction
Boston Globe Best Books of 2022
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2022
Shelf Awareness Best Adult Books of 2022
Salon.com Favorite Books of 2022
San Francisco Chronicle Favorite Books of 2022
BookPage Best Audiobooks of 2022
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Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
