Darnell L. Moore & Kleaver Cruz on No Ashes In The Fire
Join us on Thursday, July 19th with Kleaver Cruz and Darnell L. Moore on his memoir
No Ashes In The Fire. From a leading organizer with the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ movements comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir of radical black love.
When Darnell L. Moore was fourteen years old, three boys from his Camden, NJ neighborhood tried to set him on fire. Darnell was tall and awkward and constantly bullied by those who saw him as other. That afternoon, the boys doused him with gasoline and tried lighting a match—but it was too windy. It was not the last time he would face death.
No Ashes In The Fire is a story of beauty and hope, giving voice to the rich, varied experiences of all those who survive on the edges of the margins. As he reckons with what it means to be free, Darnell charts a glorious path toward liberation.
“Darnell Moore is doing something we've never seen in American literature. He's not just texturing a life, a place, and a movement while all three are in flux; Darnell is memorializing and reckoning with a life, place, and movement that are targeted by the worst parts of our nation. He never loses sight of the importance of love, honesty, and organization on his journey. We need this book more than, or as much as we've needed any book this century.”—KIESE LAYMON, author of How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
“No Ashes in the Fire is part memoir, part social commentary. Darnell honestly tells his story with an intensity and passion that offers readers a deep understanding of a gay black male coming of age who open-heartedly claims his identity, and who embraces redemptive suffering. Ultimately, he reaches out to everyone with an inclusive love.”—Bell Hooks
Darnell L. Moore is an editor-at-large at CASSIUS (iOne Digital), a columnist at LogoTV.com and NewNowNext.com, and a contributor at Mic, where he hosted their widely viewed digital series The Movement. He writes regularly for Ebony, Advocate, Vice, and Guardian. Moore is a writer-in-residence at the Center of African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University, has taught at NYU, Rutgers, Fordham, and Vassar, and was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2016, he was named one of The Root 100, and in 2015 he was named one of
Ebony magazine's Power 100 and Planned Parenthood's 99 Dream Keepers. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Atlanta.
Kleaver Cruz is an Uptown native of NYC, a writer and creative. His work has been featured in La Galería and African Voices Magazine as well as on Vibe.com and the Huffington Post among others. He is an alum of the VONA/Voices of Our Nation Foundation's Emerging Writer's Workshop where he studied essay writing. Kleaver is the creator of The Black Joy Project, a digital and real-world initiative to center Black joy as a form of resistance. He is a member of We Are All Dominican. a U.S.-based collective that works in solidarity with movements for inclusion and citizenship led by Dominicans of Haitian Descent as well as educating and activating the Dominican diaspora in order to challenge anti-Haitian and anti-black discourses. Kleaver believes in the power of words because they allow him to tell the stories that did not exist when he needed them the most.