No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America - Hardcover

Moore, Darnell L

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568589484 ISBN 13: 9781568589480

Publisher: Bold Type Books, 2018

Synopsis

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.
Lambda Literary Award - Gay Memoir/Biography (Winner - 2019)A New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2018)

About this title

About the Author:

Darnell L. Moore is the head of Strategy and Programs at BreakthroughUS. He is also a columnist at LogoTV.com and NewNowNext.com, and a former editor at large at CASSIUS and senior editor at Mic, where he hosted their widely viewed digital series The Movement. He writings have been published in Ebony, Advocate, Vice, Guardian and MSNBC. Moore is a writer-in-residence at the Center of African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University, has taught at NYU, Rutgers, Fordham, and Vassar, and was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2016, he was named one of The Root 100, and in 2015 he was named one of Ebony magazine's Power 100 and Planned Parenthood's 99 Dream Keepers. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Atlanta.

Review:

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
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"Stranded in the urban battleground of Camden, New Jersey... Moore struggles against a crush of bullying, bigotry, and self-loathing. He chronicles his odyssey in this piercingly vulnerable memoir, ultimately finding his way to LGBTQ activism and 'black joy' through faith and family."―O Magazine


"A staggering work that calls into question the truths we assume about ourselves and those among us."―Esquire

"In his frank debut memoir, journalist Moore recounts his experience growing up a queer black man in Camden, New Jersey in the 1980s. Loved by his vibrant but argumentative family and ostracized by many of his peers, Moore grapples with the complexities of his growing faith and burgeoning sexuality and his own self-loathing and self-acceptance in his journey to becoming an activist and outstanding voice in the Black Lives Matter movement."―Harpers Bazaar


"Darnell Moore is one of the most influential black writers and thinkers of our time--a beautiful, intentionally complex feminist activist writing liberatory futures. I cannot wait for the world to read No Ashes in the Fire."―Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty

"No Ashes in the Fire is part memoir, part social commentary. Darnell honestly tells his story with an intensity and passion that offers readers a deep understanding of a gay black male coming of age who open-heartedly claims his identity, and who embraces redemptive suffering. Ultimately, he reaches out to everyone with an inclusive love."―bell hooks

"No Ashes in the Fire illuminates the fragility of black life no matter how much love surrounds it. As he grapples with social tragedy and the insecurity of black masculinity, Moore displays magnificent self-reflection. He narrates his story in a looping, lyrical style that approaches complicated truths through metaphor.... For Moore, these efforts often take the form of an empathy that borders on the transcendent."―Dawn Lundy Martin, Bookforum

"A brutally honest investigation and interrogation of the stories [Moore] was taught to tell himself in order to live... The prose is immaculately spare and razor-sharp, honed to pierce the armor of our own role in upholding and telling similar stories. He pairs trenchant systemic analysis with interpersonal forgiveness, marking the ways those that sought to cause him pain and even death were first, possibly irrevocably, damaged by the same stories they were told in order to live... It's the stories we tell ourselves that need to burn. And with No Ashes In The Fire, Moore strikes a match."―Kevin Allred, INTO


"No Ashes in the Fire is everything that is quintessentially Darnell Moore: brilliant, courageous, transparent, and wholly original. Moore's masterful writing feels like equal parts soul music and gospel testimony. With this book, Moore positions himself as one of the leading public intellectuals of our generation. More importantly, he has written a text that will inspire, and maybe even save, many lives."―Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond

"Darnell Moore is doing something we've never seen in American literature. He's not just texturing a life, a place, and a movement while all three are in flux; Darnell is memorializing and reckoning with a life, place, and movement that are targeted by the worst parts of our nation. He never loses sight of the importance of love, honesty, and organization on his journey. We need this book more than, or as much as we've needed any book this century."―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

About this edition

• Publisher: Bold Type Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1568589484
• ISBN 13: 9781568589480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256