Inciting Joy
Book description
A collection of gorgeously written and timely pieces in which prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships.
In "We Kin" he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on)…
Why read it?
4 authors picked Inciting Joy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Joy might not be the first thing you think of when considering grief, but then maybe you haven’t read Ross Gay.
Gay understands that joy exists because of grief, not as a counterbalance, but in a deeply reciprocal relationship. As his father is dying, he presses their faces together, and in his father’s freckles, he sees seeds, a garden. It is just one instance in this book where Gay recognizes that what grows from loss is love.
His book clarifies what I know to be true: that when we fall into the hole of loss, we find ourselves in a…
From Maddie's list on creative nonfiction books to gift your grieving friend.
This collection of essays feels so intimate in the author’s heart yet universal in all of ours. It’s a collection of essays that explore connection and meaning in our lives as a path to Joy.
It’s exactly why I describe Joy as so different than happiness. Each exploration the author offers shows how Joy can spring from whatever is happening in our life, not from a cognitive evaluation of how it is going. He speaks of how Joy springs from our pain and sorrow, which I deeply believe.
They live so close to each other, and each essay invites us…
Gay’s collection of essays is so lovingly and delicately penned.
His writing is approachable, but poetic. Matter of fact but brimming with despair and hope in equal measure. Grief can be so all consuming, but Gay’s main thesis is that Joy is an act of resistance to a callous world and art creates meaning. A valuable lesson that I keep in my pocket and worry like stone when I start to forget.
From Emily's list on grief and joy: you can’t have one without the other.
If you love Inciting Joy...
Tap Dancing on Everest
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up…
This collection of essays feels so intimate into the author’s heart, yet universal into all of ours.
It’s a collection of essays that explore connection and meaning in our lives as a path to Joy. It’s exactly why I describe Joy as so different than happiness. In each exploration the author offers shows how Joy can spring from whatever is happening in our life, not from a cognitive evaluation of how it is going.
He speaks of how Joy springs from our pain and sorrow which I deeply believe. They live so close to each other and each essay invites…
From Tanmeet's list on to find joy.
Want books like Inciting Joy?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Inciting Joy.
Share your top 3 reads of 2024!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,588
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Inciting Joy, you might also like...
Who Is a Worthy Mother?
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
A Long Way from Iowa
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
