Beneath the Skin of Sorrow

“Nnenna Freelon’s resonant and skilled voice sings through this genre-bending, profoundly performative text. As she explores with passion and sorrow the multifaceted spaces of grief—a subject that becomes more and more a part of our national discourse—she has crafted a compelling, elegant, and extraordinary book.” - Karla FC Holloway, author of Gone Missing in Harlem: A Novel

“This deeply learned, uniquely beautiful book is full of brilliant insights into the deep philosophical and spiritual dimensions of grief and its relationship to creativity by one of our foremost artists. Nnenna Freelon’s serious intellectual and artistic reflections search for the possibilities to be found in grief. Not in avoiding it, but in going there, living with and through, listening closely to it, and seeing anew through it.” - Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays

“Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is a sensuous, subliminal, and sacred siren that embraces an intimate void reminding us all that those silenced in death become defiant choruses in the forest. Nnenna Freelon has woven a rich forest for the wailing of losses texturized by remembrances of joy. This text is a tender requiem for all the portals closed and all the portals reopened inside of her journey with grief. She acknowledges that her history is now on fire but her illuminating heart invites us to this new interior that looms with raging, unapologetic truth.” - Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate

"This volume is a gift of prose, poetry and compositions for all who’ve had to improvise life and healing in the face of unimaginable grief." - Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

"Freelon is clearly deeply engaging with her emotions throughout the book, but she’s also constantly on the lookout for messages from nature and her departed loved ones. What might that turtle have to say to her? How might her handy-as-hell husband talk her through fixing the dishwasher? As a book, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is full of white space, and if there is a how-to, it is a call to leave space for the unexpected, despite the allure of a full, frantic schedule." - Shelbi Polk, Indy Week