Title: The Lonely Letters
Description: In The Lonely Letters, A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy primarily because I always have it. I write about joy, Black joy, because I want to generate it, I want it to emerge, I want to participate in its constant unfolding.” But alongside joy, A admits to Moth, come loneliness, exclusion, and unfulfilled desire. 

The Lonely Letters is an epistolary blackqueer critique of the normative world in which Ashon T. Crawley—writing as A—meditates on the interrelation of blackqueer life, sounds of the Black church, theology, mysticism, and love. Throughout his letters, A explores blackness and queerness in the musical and embodied experience of Blackpentecostal spaces and the potential for platonic and erotic connection in a world that conspires against blackqueer life. Both a rigorous study and a performance, The Lonely Letters gestures toward understanding the capacity for what we study to work on us, to transform us, and to change how we inhabit the world.
Subjects: Christian sects, Pentecostal churches, Loneliness, Sexual minorities, Church music, African americans, race identity, Experience (religion), LGBTQ religion & spirituality, LGBTQ essays, Lambda Literary Awards, Lambda Literary Award Winner, African American Pentecostals, Biography, Christianity, African American sexual minorities, Religious life, African American Pentecostal churches, Social aspects, African American churches, African Americans, Race identity, Pentecôtistes noirs américains, Biographies, Minorités sexuelles noires américaines, Vie religieuse, Églises pentecôtistes noires américaines, Aspect social, Noirs américains, Identité ethnique, Expérience religieuse, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Black Studies (Global), Religious aspects