Summary

One day in July, Ross Gay decided to write a mini-essay on delight every day for a year. Though he skipped some days, this became a regular practice in which certain recurring topics emerged including his mother, gardens, racism, kindness, pop music, and more. Writing these essays made Ross more aware of delight and he learned that delight grows when it is shared.

Analysis

Though this is a preface that introduces the material to come, it was written at the end of Ross' project and therefore reflects the conclusions he came to on the nature of delight after a year of writing about it. One important conclusion he has reached is that the awareness of delight actually works to beget further delights: "It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight...