
We are thrilled to welcome Darnell Moore to The Stacks. Darnell is an activist, the author of No Ashes in the Fire, and now the host of The Being Seen podcast which focuses on the gay and queer Black male experience. We talk today about Black love, reckoning in memoir, and you get to hear him rifle through his book stacks to tell you about his favorite books.
The Stacks Book Club selection for December is Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, we will discuss the book with Darnell Moore on Wednesday December 30th.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
Books
- No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell Moore
- The Reckonings by Lacy M. Johnson
- The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson
- Bird Uncaged by Marlon Peterson
- Kiese Laymon
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- Five Days at Memorial by Sherri Fink
- Dopesick by Beth Macy
- Columbine by Dave Cullen
- Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
- There There by Tommy Orange

- A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
- Stakes is High by Mychal Denzel Smith
- Breathe by Imani Perry
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- Essex Hemphill
- Jospeh Beam
- Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
- Heavy by Kiese Laymon
- Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa’ed Atshan
- Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
- How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Civil Wars by June Jordan
- Citizen by Claudia Rankine
- The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
- A Mercy by Toni Morrison
- Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
- Ghost by Jason Reynolds
- Danez Smith
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
Everything Else
- Hetrick-Martin Institute
- Amazon
- Josie Duffy Rice
- Derecka Purnell
- Being Seen (Harley & Co. and ViiV Healthcare)
- Harley & Company
- Viiv
- Kenyon Farrow
- Emil Wilbekin
- Vibe Magazine
- Moses Sumney
- Lee Daniels
- Michael R. Jackson
- The Pulitzer Prize
- Wesley Morris
- Yashua Simmons
- The Kirkus Prize
- “Ep. 122 Breathe by Imani Perry — The Stacks Book Club (Kiese Laymon)” (The Stacks)
- “Ep. 6 Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin — The Stacks Book Club (Chris Maddox)” (The Stacks)
- “Darnell Moore on feeling this moment’s ‘storm within a storm’” (Karen Ocamb, Los Angeles Blade)
- The Underground Museum (Los Angeles, CA)
- By The Book (The New York Times)
Connect with Darnell: Twitter | Instagram | Website | Being Seen Podcast
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