INCITING JOY
Essays
An intimate and electrifying collection of essays from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it.
In “We Kin” he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid;
An intimate and electrifying collection of essays from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it.
In “We Kin” he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in “Share Your Bucket” he explores skateboarding’s reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in “Grief Suite”; and in “Through My Tears I Saw,” he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.
In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers.
- Algonquin Books
- Hardcover
- October 2022
- 256 Pages
- 9781643753041
Buy the Book
$27.00
About Ross Gay
Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of the essay collections The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Gay is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
Praise
“Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart. Ross Gay will break your heart. He will break it and advocate for breaking it over and over. Why? So we can choose our life, our survival, our full humanity. Inciting Joy is brilliant because it’s not just a book; it’s proof that the way we carve out room for joy is by acknowledging our constant teacher: sorrow.”— Ada Limón, U.S. Poet Laureate
“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
“Ross Gay has a single-minded focus: making the world a better place. …energetic… full-length essays that showcase the breadth of his interests and the vibrancy of his prose. … a consistently uplifting book. This lively set of 14 essays from a talented poet considers how to bring more joy to our lives.”— Shelf Awareness
“This is instantly one of my favorite books ever. A wondering-aloud to which I will be returning often, and a brilliant manifesto making a case for joy as a thing which is as complex and rigorous as it is lovely and free. In that sneaky way Ross Gay has of lovingly disarming you before getting you to dwell in rooms of your heart you’d left vacant, Inciting Joy uses its titular emotion as a window into sorrow and rage, into gifts and loss, into the tricky business of being alive.”— Eve L. Ewing, author of Ghosts in The Schoolyard, Electric Arches, and Marvel Comic’s Ironheart series
“With language that skips along like a game of hopscotch, Inciting Joy promises to deliver heart-swelling insights into life, death and the joyful necessity of interdependence.”— BookPage, Most Anticipated Books of the Fall
“Warm, candid … breezy and soulful… A pleasingly digressive and intimate memoir in essays.”— Kirkus Reviews