This one is a 4.5-into-5 stars, and because I want everyone to read it, I will try not to give a summary, as to not spoil anyone’s experience with this revelatory memoir. Darnell Moore’s No Ashes in the Fire is the book we all need to read for Pride month, another year in Trump’s America, college break, family reunion season, and every other day of our lives. He has distilled the very particular experiences of his life in and beyond Camden, New Jersey into a deeply affectionate sermon to the black folk he has encountered in his city, and in all of ours.

After finishing this book, I have to say I am in awe of Moore’s love for those around him—the people who respect him, and even those who have tried to extinguish his light. I was comforted by the way he was forgiving but demanding of the men in his book, in a way someone who truly cares about your survival and wellbeing must be. Moore ties himself to femme-presenting gay men, as well as the hypermasculine men who have been aggressors in his own life. His capacity for forgiveness is linked to his belief in our people, and his refusal to separate their experiences from his own, holding them all accountable and accepted at the very same time.

I think the most beautiful part of this memoir is that it shows Moore’s journey to this liberatory sort of love. He encounters the church and its notions of agape (or self-sacrificing) love, and my heart broke while watching Moore punish himself for his “sinful urges,” practicing an unaccepting devotion to a Levitical higher power. He witnesses failed domestic love in his own home, but doesn’t fully grasp the delineation between abuse and love until several tumultuous, closeted young adult relationships. Finally, his upbringing in Camden, an underfunded and impoverished city in South Jersey, has given him a firsthand testimony of love for one’s hometown (and the INCREDIBLE maternal family inside it), but also of the great political exploitation the Black & Latinx city has experienced for his entire lifetime.

For much of the memoir (and his life), he is misled by these detrimental forms of love, and harms people in the way he has seen before. In No Ashes, we are able to see him work through these inherited flaws, thanks to the advice of wiser friends, and also some deep introspection. In the same way that he forgives and asks more of others in the book, he does the same of himself, showing us his mistakes, but refusing to stay in them. In a way, he finds himself at a purer, New Testament theology—he has sinned by hating his more feminine brothers, himself, and those from his hometown, but in writing this book, in living and loving them whenever he now can, he has gone on to sin no more.

Moore is someone who has learned to be fearless through his politics, and it’s amazing to watch his quest for fearless, liberatory love unfold over the course of this memoir. At a certain point near the end, he says “I’ve come to value the practice of critical self-reflection,” and I must agree—yes, sir!!! Yes you have!!! Please read this book to learn about a great urban community and family, but also a great amount of heartbreak. Please read this book to gain an example of how we all might use the trials and truths of our lives to affirm *all* those around us. Moore has done his work to learn how to love himself and his people, and you won’t end this book without feeling convicted to do the same.