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Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation

Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation

by Nuar Alsadir

Graywolf Press ·2022 ·320 pages
Maybe Someday
Maybe Someday
I Index
48/99
Near the Top

74/99

Critics' Rating Index

Bottom of the Pile

21/99

Readers' Rating Index

n/a

Scholars' Citation Index

51/99

Volume of Reviews

30/99

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About This Book

A Time Must-Read Book of 2022 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 Aster(ix) Journal's 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 An invigorating, continuously surprising book about the serious nature of laughter. Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter's revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir's experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied. Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina's morphine addiction, Freud's un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to "Not Jokes," Abu Ghraib, Frantz's negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the author's relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions―frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking―are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from one's true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.


Reviews

"Not that all is high-flown or esoteric."

Melissa Holbrook Pierson· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The author offers resonant insight on the uses of laughter to redistribute power ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Though not svelte, Animal Joy takes the form of an extended essay."

Hephzibah Anderson· The Guardian Read review ↗ Near the Top

"These deeply specific references only heighten the intimacy Alsadir offers."

Celia Mattison· BookPage Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Over the course of a wide-ranging, sometimes scattered narrative, the author explores a host of topics ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

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