Gay shares a list of patterns in the prologue that show the range and weight of his study of delight: “My mother is often on my mind.Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Ohioana Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In addition to The Book of Delights: Essays, Ross Gay is the author of three books of poetry, including Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world-his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people.
His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture the loss of those he loves. Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays-some as short as a paragraph some as long as five pages-that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. The event for The Book of Delights will be Friday, from 5-6pm on Zoom. We hope it’ll be a great way to read new books and stay connected.
While we’re unable to meet in the theater, we’re taking our book club online. JOIN US FOR OUR VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB MEETING
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