67 pages • 2 hours read
The Book of Delights
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Key Figures
Ross Gay (The Author)
Ross Gay is the author and narrator of these autobiographical essays. He was born in 1974 in Youngstown, Ohio, but spent most of his childhood in Levittown, Pennsylvania, which features in many of his essays. He and his brother grew up in near poverty, an experience he references frequently. He is the second son of a white mother and a Black father, which influences his experiences as a Black man in the United States and informs his understanding of societal and political events. He is a poet, author, and professor of English at Indiana University. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Poetry, the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, all for his poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. He is 42 at the start of the book and 43 at the end.
Personally and professionally, Gay is a student of joy, and his works are focused on the effects of joy, gratitude, and delight. From his essays, one can see his focused social intelligence and emotional awareness. Many of his essays describe his emotional state surrounding current events, his childhood, and his present circumstances. He is a loving son to his elderly mother, a kind partner and stepfather, and an enthusiastic and supportive friend. He loves bright colors despite the stereotypes he was taught as a child, loves gardening and the outdoors, and values community. He works in a community orchard and writes about his gardening, demonstrating his deep belief in community and connection to the outdoor world.
One of his main characteristics is his awareness. As a student of joy, he pays close and careful attention to the world around him. He notices small details wherever he is, like plants growing out of cracks in the sidewalk or pure black bumblebees. He also pays attention to people and records things he considers beautiful and reminiscent of the inherent awkwardness of being alive, like people laughing at themselves or fishing an eyelash out of their mouth during a poetry reading. Gay is also very aware of the socio-political state of the country, which often leads him to feel anxious and paranoid. Many of his essays are about his experience as a Black man in the United States, honestly recording how he feels about the perpetual violence inflicted against the Black community and how he finds peace and joy in spite of it.
Gay is also very determined. He persistently finds delight and beauty in the world despite the brokenness, pain, and grief around him. He does not ignore the grief but focuses on the positivity he finds in mundane things. This determination is courageous considering how he considers one of the objectives of popular culture to be to “make blackness appear inextricable from suffering” (185). Gay’s consistency in finding delight demonstrates his determination and reinforces the theme of The Symbiotic Relationship Between Grief and Joy.
Gay’s Mother, Judith Irene Gay
Gay’s mother met his father in Guam in 1967 and married him, despite having never met a Black man before and coming from a conservative family in Minnesota. She is a strong woman and endured many slights against her family, like people not renting apartments to a couple from different races and people telling her she had doomed her children. Similarly, she raised her family in near poverty and held her children to high standards. Many of Gay’s beliefs are traced directly to how she raised him and her fear for Gay betrays her own experiences. In “Among the Rewards of My Sloth…” Gay writes that in “a kind of terror I must think is informed by some unspoken knowledge (black husband, brown kids in the early seventies kind of knowledge),” his mother begged him to mow his lawn so the neighbors wouldn’t burn his house down (106). She is wise and fierce, and she raises Gay with a similar knowledge of the greater lengths her family would need to go to simply to maintain their basic needs.
Gay also records how his mother has changed over the course of her life. While she was a strict parent who didn’t allow her children to curse, she relaxes in her later years and refers to her niece’s teacher as a “dickhead” (172). Similarly, Gay remembers his mother holding herself to very high standards and expecting perfection from herself. However, in her old age, she can laugh at herself and her imperfections. Her character growth demonstrates the motif of how beliefs and perspectives change as one grows, and her growth matches Gay’s own acceptance of himself as human and deserving of the same mundanity as others.
Gay’s Father
Though Gay’s father died before the start of this book, he features in many of Gay’s essays. He is never named but instead referred to as “father” and “dad” throughout the essays. Gay’s father is a Black man from Youngstown Ohio and was drafted after failing out of Central State University. He joined the Navy and was stationed in Guam, where he met Gay’s mother. In his marriage, he endured much discrimination from his wife’s family and the public. Because of these experiences, he taught his sons to be well-spoken and tried to protect and prepare them for the hatred they will endure. As a child, Gay found his father to be tough and exacting, but as an adult, he appreciates the way his father tried to protect him.
Despite being emotionally unavailable in many ways, Gay records many pleasant and loving memories with his father. He respects how hardworking his father was, as he had to work multiple jobs to keep the family afloat. He was also an innovative man, even if that innovation was begotten by poverty. He was very straightforward, once telling Gay at age seven that after death “The worms eat you” (84). Still, Gay fondly remembers trips to the Asian market with his father and writes that “There is some profound lyric lesson in witnessing some unfathomably beautiful event […] while leaning your head into your father’s hip” (187).
Stephanie
Stephanie is Gay’s romantic partner, and he shares a home in Indiana with her. Stephanie and her two daughters feature in many of Gay’s essays, bringing new thoughts to his attention or delighting him in many ways. Stephanie once owned a vegetarian café called Pulp and shares Gay’s love for gardening. Gay and Stephanie have been together for many years at the time of this book, and Gay lived with her family in New Jersey for a year. She and Gay share quarrels like many domestic partners in the form of cabinet doors left open and bathroom lights left on, but they share in tasks like gardening and visiting parents. Gay’s relationship with Stephanie again shows the bonds of love as more mundane and less exciting than the commodified version often depicted in media, but Gay presents his version as infinitely more rewarding.
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