Women Lit #UNBOUND Presents: Following the Joy with LaRayia Gaston

• Spirituality
• Women/Gender

When LaRayia Gaston was a child, her mother told her “I don’t care what you do; you just have to do your part.” It was a directive LaRayia took to heart, touching thousands of lives in the process. With her debut book, Love Without Reason: The Lost Art of Giving a F*ck, this firebrand activist, visionary, and documentarian offers a powerful antidote to the culturally-sanctioned apathy that prevents us from really seeing and reaching each other in all our messy, beautiful, complex humanity.

LaRayia’s “giving a f*ck” credo began when she was working at a restaurant at 14, and took it upon herself to offer an unhoused man “perfectly good food” that would otherwise have gone to waste. Today, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit she founded in her twenties, Lunch On Me, redistributes organic food, providing meals to 10,000 people on Skid Row every month. And, because nourishment doesn’t end with food, Lunch on Me also feeds the minds and spirits of those who are struggling, offering yoga classes, community parties, and healing gatherings. All in all, LaRayia lives by “following the joy,” and Love Without Reason is the latest stop on that can’t-lose path. Says bestselling author Dr. Will Cole, “The radical love you will learn to tap into in this book is not the vapid ‘love’ so flippantly used today, but a deep, authentic love. This book is a beautiful manual of how to live from that love above all else.”

An infectiously warm and inspiring public speaker, LaRayia is living proof that compassion and humility come from a place of formidable strength. Shape calls her a “badass,” and we have to concur: this is radical love served with a side of bracing truth. Joining LaRayia is another powerhouse woman, award-winning journalist and author, Jeneé Darden. In addition to her essays and poetry, Jeneé is the host of the weekly arts segment Sights and Sounds, and covers East Oakland for KALW. If you’ve ever wondered whether the actions of a single person, in a single moment, can take root and empower countless lives, this event is for you, and for everyone you love and cherish.

Event Details

Each ticket includes private access to the event recording for 10 days following the live event. Signed bookplate copies are limited and all copies will be shipped by Green Apple Books in San Francisco starting March 16. We can only accept book orders that ship within the United States.

Women Lit members may reserve a free ticket and will have the option to order a copy of Love Without Reason after signing in to their account. If you would like to join Women Lit, please sign up here.

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