The Lonely Letters

By: Ashon T. Crawley

Narrated by: Benjamin Charles

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 Black Pentecostal 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.

©2020 Duke University Press (P)2022 Tantor