Publishers Weekly
★ 03/25/2024
In this stunning self-portrait, journalist Wallace (The Sixth Man) examines the role of love in his life. Growing up Black in the “blindingly white” suburbs of Pittsburgh under the care of his single mother, Wallace endured periods of homelessness that ignited a lifelong fear of abandonment. As a child, he learned that “to be a man” was “to be contained, held within, under control,” a perspective that caused him great pain as he entered adulthood and slid into alcoholism. After his drinking precipitated his divorce from his first wife, Wallace got sober, entered a new relationship, fathered two children, and began reflecting on the developments that helped him self-actualize, from attending a queer, POC-focused sex party to learning to say “no.” Early on, Wallace admits that he “can’t resist weaving stories out of aching trails of hurt,” but it’s his directive to “turn yourself over and over and over again to the honest, divine, and wholly annihilating practice of love” that characterizes this account. The elliptical chapters don’t skimp on struggle (including a harrowing, near-deadly confrontation with L.A. police), but what elevates the narrative is Wallace’s capacity for forgiveness and his virtuosic—but never indulgent—prose. This profoundly compassionate volume hugs the reader tightly and doesn’t let go. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that the author has two sons. He has a son and a daughter.
From the Publisher
"[Another Word for Love] arrives with great beauty, teeth and vulnerability . . . [Carvell Wallace] has spent his late-blooming journalism career writing bold and intimate profiles . . . He now turns his pen to his own life with the same poetic sensitivity and complexity . . . This book is funny and heartbreaking, religiously vivid and lovingly open.”
—James Ijames, The New York Times Book Review
"Intricate and exhilarating . . . An exquisite, soulful must-read."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Stunning…What elevates the narrative is Wallace’s capacity for forgiveness and his virtuosic—but never indulgent—prose. This profoundly compassionate volume hugs the reader tightly and doesn’t let go.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Another Word For Love is generous in how genuine the journey, the offering feels. Walking alongside a writer who is attempting to come to terms with the enormity of their survival, its joys and aches. And through this genuine nature, through this striking and beautiful prose, rich with touchable imagery, Carvell Wallace has you by the hand, and never lets go.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year
“Another Word for Love recounts a life marked by profound uncertainty—mother, home, self as ephemeral as fog. And yet out of this morass emerges Carvell Wallace’s voice, clear and sharp as glass—and this book of uncommon brilliance and grace. A classic is born.”
—Danzy Senna, author of Colored Television
“One of the most soulfully crafted memoirs I’ve ever read. I couldn’t figure out how Carvell Wallace blurred time, region, care, and sexuality into something so different from anything I’ve read before"
—Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division
"This is a remarkable book by one of the finest young writers I’ve come across in many years. An insightful work by a young scribe of deep talent, whose courage and ingenuity is inspirational."
—James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
“Carvell Wallace’s devastating book vibrates with a rare power—the kind of power that will help save lives. Because not only is it a brilliant evocation of the effects of marginalization on generation after generation, it is the story of how hope persists, and nourishes, despite what has come before. An unforgettable treatise on pain—and love. This book is a gift.”
—Hilton Als, author of My Pinup
"Carvell Wallace’s Another Word For Love moves us symphonically, presenting an orchestra of moving parts, sounds, ideas, exquisite images to the reader as if to a beloved. It gives us a nearly unprecedented vision of life. It is one of the most beautiful memoirs I’ve ever read."
—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
"Wallace writes with specificity and generosity about his own particular life, but in cultivating love and generosity for himself and the people around him, he manages somehow to extend the same abundant generosity to his reader. In a book filled with stories—in language that is poetic, profane, philosophical, and funny—what I will remember most is the extraordinary tenderness Wallace brings forth from stony places. A beautiful, melancholy, cathartic anthem for these hard years."
—Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility
“Carvell Wallace's Another Word For Love is more than a memoir, it is a map of how to get free, a dare to be fully awake to the world, a receipt of a life lived in resistance, an invitation to recover wholly and bravely. An inspired and ferocious book from beginning to end.”
—Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
“This book was like holding hands with a friend while they tell me everything I ever wanted to know in all the ways I never expected to find out. Every page was worth reading, and I'm sure I'll read them all again and again."
—Ashley C. Ford, author of Somebody's Daughter
"A gripping tour through one man's life and mind that is full of passion, humor, and heartbreak. Wallace's debut is no less than a guide for living, an inquiry into masculinity, fatherhood, and intimacy that brims with humility and insight."
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
"Another Word for Love is brimming with insight, poetry, and care. Wallace is a staggeringly talented storyteller whose attention to both narrative and emotional detail is awe-inspiring. This is one to read and then reread."
—Morgan Parker, author of You Get What You Pay For
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-02-09
The story of a poet and podcaster’s journey to claim the fullness of his identity and power as a queer Black American.
Wallace begins with the year he was 7, when he and his mother spent a year without a home, a time “full of endings and tiny deaths.” From there, he leads readers almost hypnotically through his youth as a theater kid, the tightrope of his addiction and recovery, and becoming a parent. The narrative cadence ebbs and flows, condensing a profession trajectory here, expanding a single morning there, and gently, seamlessly incorporating the memories that infiltrated and shaped the experience of each moment. Wallace’s lyrical eye, sharpened to every detail, lends rhythmic cohesion to a series of events whose context spans from the Los Angeles riots in 1992 to the racial protests in the summer of 2020, and he consistently investigates the collision between the systemic and the personal. In the face of an inheritance of “terror and anger” and the countless indignities conferred on Black men in America, Wallace’s text is defiant in its honoring of beauty, gratitude, and the care he takes to live and tell his story with intention. The author presses against the indoctrinating grip of traditional masculinity, with its insistence on power and control, interrogating its lessons about fear and intimacy to discover “love in a way I had been trained not to love—a love marked by awe, sensitivity, fragility, and relationships formed in consent and mutual respect. Whether writing about race, sex, climate change, or making bread, Wallace is unabashed about and humbled by the embodied human condition and the human longing for authentic connection, lending richness and vulnerability to the link between a writer and his readers. Ultimately, this is an intricate and exhilarating memoir—heartbreaking, humbling, and hopeful.
An exquisite, soulful must-read.
