Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir

A poet’s “dazzlingly propulsive” memoir of growing up Black and gay in Knoxville, Tennessee (Kaveh Akbar, New York Times–bestselling author of Martyr!).

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 des...