No Ashes in the Fire
Coming of Age Black and Free in America
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir.
When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death.
Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive.
No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moore, an editor-at-large at the content distributor Urban One and a columnist at Logo, describes his bold and candid memoir as "snapshots of my life," molded by forces of "brutality, poverty, and self-hatred." During the 1980s, he is one of a family of 11 in a three-bedroom home in Camden, N.J.; he shares memories of barbecues, dance contests, hip-hop music, and dark family secrets. One grim secret is his abusive father, a regular resident of jails in the 1970s and '80s, who routinely abused his wife. Moore's most eye-opening event occurred when neighborhood boys yelled gay slurs at the 14-year-old Moore and tried to set him on fire before an aunt came to the rescue. At age 19, Moore suffered a near-fatal heart attack, which quickened his resolve to succeed at Seton Hall University even while dealing with the stigma of being gay. Moore offers insightful comments on racism and sexual identity throughout ("The consequences of black queer desire seemed more lethal than poetic. And I did everything in my power to resist becoming what I sensed society hated"); eventually, he moved past self-hatred to a firm commitment to service and activism as a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. Moore's well-crafted book is a stunning tribute to affirmation, forgiveness, and healing and serves as an invigorating emotional tonic.
