"With his consistently engaging writing, keen eye, and generosity of spirit, Lanham is a writer to whom we should all listen closely. Lanham memorably, vibrantly shows how choosing joy is an act of resilience, courage, and power." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
"Lanham is warmly contemplative, righteous, incensed, funny, and grateful. His poetics, knowledge, and dissent run deep; his poems are winged."--Booklist, Starred Review
"Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a melodious collection--an ode to choosing joy and to the resilience that such choosing requires." --Brooke Shannon, Foreword Reviews
"A deeply personal book that evokes joy and reflection by a writer whose generosity of spirit emanates from the page." --Amy Brady, Literary Hub
"Interweaving poetry and prose, Black joy shines through in this eco-aware, Black-centered book that offers a refreshing point of view and demands that Black bodies receive the same beautified Earth on which we were all born." --The New York Amsterdam News
"These poems don't speak to us as readers alone, though. They feel deeply personal, as if we're getting a glimpse into Lanham's journal entries on a morning after he's been birding. He's instructing himself, as well. Perhaps these instructions are his way of practicing the justice of joy--how to stay alive and thrive as a Black man in a nation where Black joy has been long fought for centuries." --Ciona Rouse, Chapter 16
