Why read Be Not Afraid of My Body?

Book cover of Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir

Book description

From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up. 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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Be Not Afraid of My Body as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Brittany Means

Author

This book made me dizzy with love. This memoir is overflowing with love. Love of the self, love of language, romantic love, familial love, pet love, fear of love, unrequited love, tough love, tender love.

Perhaps most of all, I was taken with the way the author navigates the world so internally, a very solitary yet romantic pursuit of belonging. I kept catching myself leaning forward while reading, propelled through the nonlinear story of Stewart's life by the swelling emotions and incredible control of language.

I spent two weeks reading this book on repeat because the powerful, poetic prose kept…

From Brittany's list on narrators who think and feel too fast and too much.