Congratulations to Gabrielle Civil for getting on the longlist of The Believer Book Awards in the Non-Fiction category for Experiments in Joy.
She talks about her amazing book, her work and other dope ass things with Jeff Alessandrelli over at Full Stop.
Yes, vulnerability is definitely a big part of Experiments in Joy. I mention my lost fertility in the book, messages I received as a girl about my body, and certainly the piece with Moe brings in love, sexuality, anger, and desire. The use of the letter form helped these vulnerable topics appear organically in my writing. So in my letter to Moe, I can both proclaim: “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT” and go ahead and talk about it anyway.
Gabrielle also speaks on joy, especially during COVID-19 times at Playwrights’ Center.
What is irresistible to us?
Black feminist joy is uplifting survival and possibility.
Black feminist joy is transformation.
Black feminist joy is not a feeling but a practice.
And finally, here’s some Gabrielle video of her reading from Experiments in Joy for the Poetry Project. Enjoy.
“Choi recasts the familial legacy of war and displacement, but also of joy and triumph, into a private spiritual kingdom, where “even after the city is destroyed” he writes, “I will touch you on the surface of everything.” This is poetry as preservation, as an unrelinquished archive of ghosts, but mostly, it arrives, to our luck, as a testament of a self earned and re-earned, like how yellowness, caught in its own dizzying light, turns itself golden. This book is golden.”
“This book is so meticulous and so absorbing, I am in awe. It is declamation, reflection, proposal, documentation, blueprint. Gabrielle Civil is revealed as an artist perfectly poised to speak to how race, gender and sexuality enact embodied performativity. She writes and performs herself into history in ferociously intelligent and relentlessly personal ways. How the specificity of identity mixes with desire to confound, comfort or disrupt public space. As with so many things that I love, I want everyone to read this book.”
The essays and poems contained within this anthology are not only compelling but also harrowing stories of sexual assault. None of these pieces were easy to write–and were born out of traumatizing and terrible experiences. CCM believes in providing a safe space within the literary community where we can not only talk about painful experiences and issues but also necessary considering the current political climate.
“Living in San Francisco, I’ve known of Lorenz’s work for years, and now the secret is out. Here’s an artist whose palette holds the colors beauty and brutality, squalor and tenderness. Lucky for us, he mixes them into literary combinations we’ve never known before. One Way Down (Or Another) might be the best debut I’ve ever read!”
“Rathore’s writing is exhilarating; funny, daring, and deeply, deeply moving. This collection is one of the best I’ve read all year; it’s a book of rare ambition and scale.”