The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay (Paperback) Like New!

Selected for ONE MARYLAND ONE BOOK. 

National Book Award Finalist.

Award-winning poet Ross Gay, one of today’s most original literary voices, offers a genre-defying collection of short essays, written daily over a tumultuous year and reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.

The Book of Delights is Gay's first nonfiction book. Among his funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room.

But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything other subject, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world--his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.

The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.