{"product_id":"9781953368904","title":"Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir","description":"\u003cb\u003eA poet’s “dazzlingly propulsive” memoir of growing up Black and gay in Knoxville, Tennessee (Kaveh Akbar, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e–bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMartyr!\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003ci\u003eBe Not Afraid of My Body\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “A memorable portrait of Black gay life, from poverty and adversity to accomplishment and poetry.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “A mammoth creation . . . Just unbelievably rich art right here.” —Kiese Laymon, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e–bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Arcadia Publishing SC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43085216809021,"sku":"9781953368904","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9781953368904_p0.jpg?v=1775259173","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.com\/products\/9781953368904","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}