On Cuddling

'A necessary book about holding, being held and the hold(s) of the past. Playful, vulnerable, ever acute - Antwi gets down with the funk of language, history, and bodies to make fugitive sense of modernity as anti-Black grammar and embrace.'

-- Nadine Attewell, scholar of intimacy, empire, and diasporic life

'Antwi invites us to look more closely at the associations between the cuddle, the choke, the hold and the coffle for Black people. But, beyond the violence of the racial embrace, he also finds a place for fugitive cuddling, the comfort that arcs back and forth between those who flee, those who escape and even those who remain held back. This book will take its place among others by Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and Hazel Carby that have investigated the violence of intimacy and the intimacy of violence.'

-- Jack Halberstam, author of 'Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire'

'An urgent and elegant text ... excavating the many meanings of cuddling under racial capitalism. Antwi's writing is lyrical and powerful; the way he harnesses epistemology and polysemy to build both dancing prose and crucial political analysis, is revelatory.'

-- Sophie K Rosa, author of 'Radical Intim