{"product_id":"the-lonely-letters-hardback-9781478007760","title":"The Lonely Letters (Hardback) 9781478007760","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eAshon T. Crawley (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781478007760\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 10 April 2020\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e280 pages, 19 color illustrations\u003cbr\u003e21.6 x 17.1 x 1.5 cm, 0.635 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e“Ashon T. Crawley pushes his readers to contemplate the intimacy of living the life of the mind as a spiritual, enfleshed, and intellectual matter. Rejecting the intellect\/emotion division through a rendering of intimacy and desire, \u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e stands as the achievement of aspirations long discussed but largely elusive in both feminist and queer criticism. A stunning and innovative work.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Imani Perry, author of (Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation) \u003cdiv\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e is a joyful mourning, a celebratory treatise, a rigorous performance, and an analysis of race and philosophy, aesthetics and blackness, and much more. I could not put it down and at points found myself laughing and in tears, all the while learning. Truly pathbreaking, it is an astounding, innovative, and deeply affecting work.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Nicole R. Fleetwood, author of (On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination) \u003cdiv\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e, from A to Moth, from Crawley to us, is ultimately an illumination of a way to Baby Suggs’ clearing in \u003ci\u003eBeloved\u003c\/i\u003e, the site of blackqueer care, the site of grace-an invitation to 'refuse the prison of \"I\" and choose the open spaces of \"we.”'\"\u003c\/div\u003e - Yumi Pak (American Studies) \u003cdiv\u003e\"I admire Crawley’s writing about queerness and sociality profoundly. I revere his embrace of the epistolary, of the way he makes academic writing feel pulsing and alive, enacted with breath and desire and shouting and song. . . . [E]ach letter is a flexing, embodied interweaving of queer theory, Black studies, music, eros, intellect, art, friendship, religion, body, breath. It is critical and creative all at once.\"\u003c\/div\u003e - Ayden Leroux (Full Stop) \u003cdiv\u003e\"Crawley opens the world of critical theory (a discipline not known best for being welcoming to all minds and approaches) to those readers who might not have a background in it.\"\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/div\u003e - Leora Fridman (Full Stop) \u003cdiv\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e, in thinking through and with Black life, challenges the reader to (re)imagine religion, mysticism, epistemology, performance, and the possibility of life together \u003ci\u003eotherwise\u003c\/i\u003e.... [It] bears the potential to push religious studies scholarship beyond what was presumed possible.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Christopher Hunt (Journal of Africana Religions) \u003cdiv\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters \u003c\/i\u003earrives as a wonderful surprise: it invites us to sit with vulnerability, and to ask what vulnerability might offer our world-imagining practices.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Keguro Macharia (GLQ) \u003cdiv\u003e“You can’t review [\u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e]. Because you haven’t just read a book. You’ve had an encounter. A beautiful, blackqueer, encounter.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Biko Gray (Reading Religion)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e, 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. \u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Lonely Letters\u003c\/i\u003e gestures toward understanding the capacity for what we study to work on us, to transform us, and to change how we inhabit the world.\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press Books","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52591026274584,"sku":"9781478007760","price":68.67,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-lonely-letters-hardback-9781478007760","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}