Shemaiah Gonzalez
  • The Latest
  • Bio
  • Publications
  • Speaking/Workshops
  • Writing Coach
  • Undaunted Joy

Shemaiah Gonzalez

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/
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Shemaiah Gonzalez

Undaunted Joy

Shemaiah Gonzalez

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/

What if we weren't intimidated by the task of living with joy?

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Through a collection of short essays, I recommend a fresh view on life, using my own experiences and discovery of joy in both the mundane and magnificent. In energetic prose, we find delight together in naps, capybaras, and wandering the English countryside. When we turn our attention to the joy around us, we become attuned to God's constant presence with us and in all these things.

This is not toxic positivity. I am no stranger to the darkness present in the world. Rather, knowing both darkness and light helps us acknowledge the disparity between the two. Undaunted Joy dares to stare darkness in the eye and respond in joy as an act of defiance.

Over the course of 37 essays, I will encourage you to look at the world through the lens of joy, even when faced with the pain and hardship, and thereby revolutionize your everyday. In teaching readers to see joy as a way of life, Undaunted Joy gives us permission to claim God's goodness even in a broken world and to share it with abandon.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

“My favorite sentence in Shemaiah Gonzalez’s book is ‘He wanted to paint joy.’ It might surprise you to know that she’s writing about Van Gogh and his art. That’s what Gonzalez does with this book. She can take a person almost universally known as a symbol of desperation and see the brightness in him. We live in fraught times—we’ve always lived in fraught times—but Gonzalez teaches us that people have always found their way to joy.”
— Sherman Alexie, author of National Book Award Winner The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Don’t forget to leave a review after you’ve read the book, or share about it on social media!

 
 
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ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

“The call to joy from Job to Jack Gilbert and Chuang Tzu to Ross Gay runs through world faith traditions, world poetry, and the lives of saints and sages as one of our greatest antidotes to despair. In this quiet, family-oriented, often humorous book Shemaiah Gonzalez has boarded that good ship. May its voyages grow in number and never end.”
— David James Duncan, author of Sun House and The Brothers K

 

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/

Shemaiah Gonzalez

Thrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide. 

The Latest

Featured
Feb 19, 2026
March Generative Joy Zoom Workshop
Feb 19, 2026
Feb 19, 2026
Feb 16, 2026
Event: Philadelphia Choosing Joy: A Manifesto for Artful Living in an Age of Visual Noise
Feb 16, 2026
Feb 16, 2026
Feb 16, 2026
A New Entry in the Canon of Orphan Literature
Feb 16, 2026
Feb 16, 2026
Feb 12, 2026
A Glimpse at the Obscure Life of a Medieval English Anchoress
Feb 12, 2026
Feb 12, 2026
Feb 6, 2026
Podcast Episode: Believe to See
Feb 6, 2026
Feb 6, 2026

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