ARC Review
📚 Book Title: Joy in the Belly of a Riot
✍🏽Author: Barbara Fant
📕 Format: 📱
⭐️ Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

💕What I Loved:
This is a beautiful book of prose that speaks of love, social justice, grief and loss, community violence, nostalgia for the past, and the integration of faith, hope, and healing.

My favorites were:
- And the bullets still got caught in my grandmother’s hair
- I keep trying to write about trauma, but the joy won’t let me
- Running
- I Am Not My Grief Not
- There must be angels walking with me
- Be the Joy

💭Final Thoughts:
I was happy to have the opportunity to read ARC. I can definitely see myself gifting this to others. I highly recommend Joy in the Belly of a Riot: Poems, Prayers, Memories, and Meditations.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amistad for this advanced reader copy.

Beautiful. powerful. i finished in about a day and a half.
I found myself highlighting many parts and I cannot wait to get a physical copy of this book.

These collection of poems are heartfelt, healing, eye opening, resilient, and full of joy. I really enjoyed reading them and find myself already wanting to go back to read and savor them more. I'll definitely be sharing this book with my friends and family. I was so moved by the author's ability to capture the fullness and experience of life.

Exceptional. Heartbreaking. Soul-finding.
It took me awhile to read this because I simply didn't want it to end. Every time I put it down I had a hard time picking it up because I knew how short the collection was.
Every poem was a love note on grief, on someone the author had known/knows, on being black in America, on finding your faith and freedom as a woman. I wanted more and yet every one was perfectly structured. No more needed to be said but I craved MORE.
I will be needing a copy for my shelves.