SKU: 13931476716

This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers

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This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of StrangersKnown for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram,

Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us.

This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA's Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin's Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips.

Early readers have called this book "incantatory," the voice "prophetic," in "James Agee's tradition of looking at the reality of American lives." Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers--night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins--This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?



Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/11/2020
ISBN: 9781324003205
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 8.40h x 6.20w x 1.10d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2019
Publishers Weekly 11/04/2019
Library Journal 01/01/2020 pg. 93
Booklist 02/01/2020 pg. 16
Shelf Awareness 03/13/2020
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SKU: 13931476716

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Steven A. Breedlove
Waukegan, US
★★★★★ 5
Eye-Opening and Heart-Expanding
Format: Paperback
I am incredibly grateful for this book. It gave me profound insight into essential truths of Christian faith and doctrine by allowing me to see them through a radically different lens than my internal lens. Plus, it opened me up enormously to the experience of black Americans who express the pain and challenge of life in our country thoughtfully and provocatively. I left this reading chastened, desiring more conversation, moved to listen better, and hoping to live differently.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2023
B
Verified Purchase
Bruce Hillyer
Grantham, US
★★★★★ 5
Best book I've read in last 10 years!
Format: Paperback
I'm absolutely blown away. I finished the book this morning. I have been recommending it to anyone and everyone who asks me "So, what you reading?". I'm known for having a book stack a mile high. I ran out of my first yellow highlighter! Profound stuff. The subtitle, How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just, doesn't do the book justice. It is soooo much more. I highly recommend!
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Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023
J
J. Brooke Chao
Battle Creek, US
★★★★★ 5
A must read
Format: Paperback
This is an amazing book! The author takes the reader through several works of black literature, expounding on how each work shows us deep things about theology and faith.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2025
J
jdmangrum
Birmingham, US
★★★★★ 5
Countee Cullen chapter
Format: Paperback
This book is a great read. I’m not even sure how to encapsulate my thoughts on it, but let me say the chapter, “Jesus,” on the poetry of Countee Cullen is brilliant and a masterclass on discipleship, suffering, identity, projecting onto Jesus. This one chapter could literally be a course in Christian discipleship handling multiple aspects of the life of faith. I feel like I’m not doing the chapter, the book, or Claude Atcho justice here, but I deeply recommend this book and urge readers to really sit with the Cullen chapter and all its implications. What a gift Claude Atcho has given us here!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2025
E
Erin Straza
Draper, US
★★★★★ 5
An exceptional, stunningly beautiful, and greatly needed book
Format: Paperback
Have you ever finished a book so heavy with truth and beauty and goodness that you don’t know how to sum it up? That’s where I am upon completing Claude Atcho’s Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just. I’m the sort who marks up books with notes, underlining, and asterisks. Pages with ideas I want to return to get a folded corner. For this book? More pages are folded than not and a flip through the book reveals copious amounts of fuchsia markings. Full disclosure: Claude is a writer friend; we’ve chatted about faith, books, work, writing, and podcasting. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of his book, knowing it would be fantastic. You might think I was biased in that assumption, considering our previous connection, considering I received an ARC from Brazos Press. What I found from the first pages was even more than expected: my friend as pastor, shepherd, prophet, counselor, guide. Claude features 10 key creative African American works to cast a vision for human flourishing rooted in the power and love of God found in Jesus Christ. Just listen to this moving excerpt: “Healing is found in the constant individual and communal turn toward the tender mercies of God, who calls us to a theological remembrance: to locate our history in his, to make sense of our memory in his memory, to process our wounds in his wounds” (126). This book is beautifully written, theologically robust, and desperately needed. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is stunning.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2022

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