Inciting Joy
Essays
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes a "brilliant" intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection (Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate).
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Gay (The Book of Delights) examines in this stunning collection how joy deepens when accompanied by grief, fear, and loss. In "Joy and Losing Your Phone," he describes relying on the help of strangers; "Joy and Death" is a reflection on losing his father to cancer; "Joy and Time" covers the privilege of not being "on the clock"; and in "Joy and Laughter," he observes that "one of laughter's qualities is that it can draw us together." Gay gracefully turns from lighter pleasures (imagining a book about great album covers, for instance) to confronting cruelties, such as racist violence or the "brutal economy" of capitalism. "Grief Codex," the longest and most intricate essay, touches on football, toxic masculinity, couples therapy, and grief: "we might always be holding each other through our falling," Gay concludes, positing that "holding each other through the sorrow" is one definition of joy. Gay's curiosity is present on every page ("I am a fan of the digression," he writes) and his precise yet playful prose sparkles: a friend wears "a goldfinch of a grin," while a mall parking lot "away from the cast even of the aged streetlights" is a safe space. This resonant, vivid meditation shouldn't be missed.
Customer Reviews
Added to the list of books that changed my life
It is like a feast, this book, a feast where your teeth sink deep into each rich bite- and the flavors invite you to chew, and savor, every morsel. But then- there is more. Another dish to try. And you have to take your time. And you could never get through it all on your own, and you don’t want to. You want to share, and the slowness and abundance of that feast causes you to lift your eyes. To see who is sitting across the table. The ones you maybe forgot were there. The ones that maybe you forgot who they were, when you saw them through your own pain. The ones that you didn’t want to see. But when you see, when you taste, when you share that table- you remember- all get to share this feast. There’s room at the table.
Undeniably on of the most important books I have ever read, and will read again. Makes you think, feel, live which is to say maybe, it reawakens you to yourself, which is to all of us