No Ashes in the Fire
Books | Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
4.4
Darnell L Moore
From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir.When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death.Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive.No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.Lambda Literary Award - Gay Memoir/Biography (Winner - 2019)A New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2018)
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Author
Darnell L Moore
Pages
272
Publisher
PublicAffairs
Published Date
2019-02-19
ISBN
1568589409 9781568589404
Community ReviewsSee all
"So I was at a reading by Darnell L Moore back in February at my school. He read the part of the book about being queer and having his first experience with a boy. It was so eloquent. No accolades can make it clear how important this man is to our society. He organized the freedom ride to Ferguson, he helped serve on the the Newark City LGBTQ advisory board. However, Moore is also human. He had struggled with accepting himself and his sexuality for a while. His struggles are ones that many queer people face during their time both in and out of the closet. His book resonates with me after the countless murders of trans Women of Color this year. Moore’s personal fight against Anti-LGBTQ violence in the inner city of Camden, NJ is still sobering in a year where we are supposed to be celebrating 50 years of our queer liberation but the same group of people that started this whole mess are being murdered in the streets. I was at the rally on Stonewall Day on June 28. And there was a protest against the silence of the murders of trans women. There is a national march on Washington for trans visibility on September 28 and these women were chanting “we will not be erased” and holding up the banner for the march. We need to be aware of how we react to some murders and not others. And Darnell Moore’s book explains how to deal with violence by fighting back."
Finn Hughes