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.
