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 de...