Unfinished Grief

<p><b>Takes up the work of artists and theorists who ask what happens when we learn to linger, dwell, live, and work with queer grief</b><br><br>What if, instead of overcoming grief, we learned to live with it? <i>Unfinished Grief</i> invites readers to linger within loss and to understand mourning not as an endpoint, but as a mode of relation, continuance, and care.<br><br>In this lyrical follow-up to his acclaimed <i>After the Party,</i> Joshua Chambers-Letson turns toward the art and theory of grief as a way of imagining queer survival. Drawing from queer of color critique, performance studies, Asian American studies, and Black studies, Chambers-Letson explores how love and loss are inseparable conditions of queer life. Engaging artists including Yoko Ono, Gertrude Stein, Bimbola Akinbola, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joshua Rains, and Kia LaBeija, he considers the lessons art and performance teach about living with what remains unfinished.<br><br>Set against the backdrop of public and private catastrophe, from war and pandemics to the ravages of racial capitalism, <i>Unfinished Grief</i> insists that mourning and political struggle are entwined practices. Through sensuous, reflective prose and a deeply personal critical voice, Chambers-Letson reveals how grief can be both a sustaining and shattering site of vulnerability, creativity, and communal becoming. Intimate, meditative, and defiantly alive, <i>Unfinished Grief</i> reflects on the queer art of mourning in this guide to the beautiful, difficult work of staying with loss and finding life within it.</p>