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...

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. 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.

Author: Ashon T. Crawley
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 04/10/2020
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.70w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781478008248

About the Author
Ashon T. Crawley is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies at the University of Virginia and author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility.