Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee—and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet—he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart’s explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole. Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.
“A memorable portrait of Black gay life, from poverty and adversity to accomplishment and poetry.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A mammoth creation . . . Just unbelievably rich art right here.” —Kiese Laymon, New York Times–bestselling author of Heavy
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 1, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781953368652
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781953368652
- File size: 2916 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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