"'No More Ashes': A Review of Darnell Moore’s ‘No Ashes in the Fire’" by Tommy Klein

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America by Darnell L. Moore is the 2019 Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir of an extraordinary man finding himself. His life and journey teach us many lessons; lessons about self-love and self-acceptance, lessons about loving and accepting those around us, and lessons about the harsh and unforgiving world we live in. The fires that Moore has walked through tempered his soul into something beautiful, but, as all fires do, it left its marks. These stories of the scars left over a lifetime create a tapestry of a beautiful and complex journey that culminates in a far-reaching and powerfully-affecting life.
Moore’s memoir was additionally listed as a 2018 NYT Notable Book and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers' pick. He is a writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University, and a 2019 Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. Other writings have appeared in the New York Times Book Review; Playboy; VICE; The Guardian; The Nation; and EBONY. Currently living in L.A., he is the Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content and Marketing at Netflix, and he is at work on his second book, which is tentatively titled Unbecoming: Visions Beyond the Limits of Manhood. 
Growing up in a home where domestic abuse tarnished the love between his father and his mother, Moore’s preconceived notions of his father shattered. His best attempts to stop the violence could not stop the anger of a man so deeply unhappy with his own life. The beatings would not stop until Moore’s father left the house, and his family, behind. Out from under the violence in his home, Moore’s fires were far from done burning.
The title No Ashes in the Fire points to a way to change the world without sacrificing others. Without burning out those who may not understand your own struggle, you can create change and work toward a better life, and world, for everyone. In some of the last lines of his memoir, Moore emphasizes that it is time for “No more ashes. No more fires. Only love.” That people should be focused on helping each other, loving each other, instead of burning each other down. When Moore was only 14, a group of boys in his neighborhood decided that the taunting and name-calling was no longer sufficient to feel appropriately superior to him. They escalated things to horrific levels of violence when they doused him with gasoline and tried to ignite a flame. This is the fire that Moore means to extinguish.
The hate that those boys carried is still burning in the souls of so many in our country today. It is not a unique hate, or a hate only directed in one place. The hate that burns today, and for so many centuries past, is one of fear. It is the fear of inadequacy. No one is safe from it, it rises out of the darkest corners of our minds, and it motivates unspeakable atrocities.
Moore speaks to it and of it from a place of understanding because, in his own life, he too has felt that fearful hate. The point here is that those moments of fear are not the definitive moments of his life. The true definitive moments of his life are the moments of love. How Moore loves is beautiful, and, throughout his memoir, he examines how he has loved and how it has impacted his life.
As a gay black man, Moore has had to navigate a journey of discovery in order to arrive at the place of self-acceptance he is at now. This journey was not linear, and throughout his life he has faced resistance, both from external sources — like those who would commit violence against him because of who he loved or how he presented — and — even more devastatingly — from the internal sources of doubt and conflicted faith. Faith is a central part of Moore’s life, and it creates a sanctuary for him, a sense of purpose and service. It also becomes a prison.
The image of Moore praying for a simpler life, for God to take away the torture of a heart that loves who it loves, haunts this reader. Hands clutched in prayer, begging — not for acceptance, but to be able to conform — which would mean to be transformed into something less beautiful than what he is. The visible clash between faith and self-love, tormenting someone who acts selfless in relation to others, is heartbreaking. It raises questions about faith, and how loving God can be if the teachings of the disciples of the faith can lead to such bitter inner conflict — especially when the conflict is centered around love and who and how one loves.
After a lifetime of fighting against his own heart, Moore comes to see the beauty in who he is and projects that beauty onto those around him in a blanketing acceptance that seeks to heal divisions based on fear. The hurt that has pained Moore throughout his life has also hurt people in his life, through Moore’s own actions. He discusses the tendency of people to pass on pain that they experience to others. People they consider to be in a lower position in the social hierarchy become the target of their own frustrations, and they (we) perpetuate a cycle of trauma.
Breaking this cycle is Moore’s focus in this memoir. By examining his own missteps, he comes to understand the pain that he has suffered, and the pains he has contributed to others’ lives. These are the ashes in the fire that he wants us to be aware of. Our own pain, our own suffering, cannot be allowed to spill over onto our neighbors, our parents, our lovers. It is no small task because it is so conditioned into us. We witness it in film and television; we experience it in our lives; it is the instinctual reaction to pain.
Moore’s father beat his mother. To claim to know exactly why would be inappropriate, but it is reasonable to infer that Lee Moore was suffering at the hands of a life he did not choose. That suffering was passed on to the bodies of his family, and years later, that same pain would be passed on by Darnell Moore himself. In a captivating passage, Moore remembers swinging his fists in anger at his partner. The moment was fleeting, not habitual abuse — a brief moment of anger and fear. That moment did something for Moore that changed his life. It put into perspective how easy it is to lash out instead of putting in the hard work of finding resolution.
Moore has since done so much of the hard work to get to a place of resolution. In 2014 the nation was faced with yet another instance of a black person dying at the hands of police, this time 18-year-old Mike Brown. Moore, who at this point in his life was living and working in New York City, could not just stand by as the nation mourned, and over the following days organized a caravan to Ferguson, Missouri, in the Black Life Matters Freedom Ride. The outpouring of support from across America and Canada triggered the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
Moore’s story is unique, but not singular. His life has afforded him opportunities for understanding the world through multiple lenses, including in his work as an activist for the black and gay community. In late April, Moore joined the MORIA staff and members of Woodbury University’s Black Intellectual Groundworks in a Zoom reading event, where he shared with us some of his writings, process, and thoughts on the world at this moment in history.
I was given the honor of asking him some questions personally. I wanted to know how we could heal as a nation in such a tumultuous moment of our history. He shared this goal with us: “healing, or let’s call it . . . a new infrastructure of a life, or way of being, can only come when we sit with the ruins. Let’s be clear, when I say we are all responsible in many ways for the biases, the deep hurts, the structural inequalities that exist . . . We are all complicit in both pushing forth [and] in embodying ideas that I think create obstacles, difficulties in other people’s lives. We are all therefore responsible for fixing it.” This collective responsibility to make our world a better place, not only for ourselves, but for everyone, is an enlightened ideology. The hope of the future relies on all of us to do better and to be gentler with those whose lives we are in a position to impact.
Now truly is the time for love, it is truly the time to put out the fires we ignite in our own lives, and to help the world heal. It is time for No Ashes in the Fire.

Tommy Klein

Tommy Klein is the Production and Design Editor for MORIA’s 7th issue and a Woodbury Senior, finishing his degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. His lifelong passion for acting, music, and writing have led him to the creative mecca of Los Angeles, where he has lived for 6 years. An amateur marine biologist and a professional bartender, his hobbies include deep-sea Rubik’s cubing and dragon taming!

Headshot: Tommy Klein