Inciting Joy: Essays
He writes about his father's illness, which is also about the joy of family and how death can bring us closer, and about having asthma as a kid (not fun) but how his body is also a source of joy (very fun). In an essay about losing his phone, Gay has to get to the airport in his rental car without GPS--horrors!--and must stop multiple times to ask for directions, which gives him the opportunity to connect with a lot of interesting folks. His essay about playing football in college and coming to hate it, becomes a meditation on masculinity and the brutally competitive aspect of team sports. But sports--such as Gay's beloved freewheeling basketball pick-up games--are also beautiful and meaningful. A piece on skateboarding becomes a celebration of the joys of transgressing together with friends. There are essays on the responses Gay receives as a Black man talking about joy (shouldn't he be focusing on fixing what's wrong?), the rewards of teaching and, of course, always, the natural world, which for Gay is a never ending source of joy.
This brilliant collection of essays reminds us that we are all connected, to each other and to the world at large.
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Become an affiliateRoss Gay is the author of the essay collections The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy and four books of poetry. The recipient of numerous writing awards, he lives and gardens in Bloomington, Indiana, where he also teaches at Indiana University. His website is RossGay.net.
Ross Gay is as insightful and lyrical as an essayist as he is as a poet. His essays are as trenchant as they are moving, finding in the minutiae of life the grand themes of human existence.
-- "Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning author"Stunning...Gay's curiosity is present on every page and his precise yet playful prose sparkles...This resonant, vivid meditation shouldn't be missed.
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"