Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York

Download or read book Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York written by Jeremiah Moss and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exhilarating and intimate look at what happened when the pandemic emptied the city— and a rebellious energy reclaimed the streets. Author, social critic, and “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanized and sanitized. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city? Out in streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible. Participating in a historic explosion of protest, resistance, and spontaneity, from queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, he discovers that, without “hyper-normal” people to constrain it, New York can be more creative, connected, humane, and joyful. In this genre-bending work of “autotheory,” Moss gives an account of his renewed sense of place as a transgender man, braiding the narrative with psychoanalysis, literature, and queer theory, as he offers valuable insight into the way public space—and the spaces inside us—are controlled and can be set free.