A celebration of Black culture beyond the white gaze, by one of America's most talked-about young cultural critics
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by BuzzFeed, Esquire, NPR, O- The Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. His most recent book, Go Ahead in the Rain- Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.
Hanif Abdurraqib's genius is in pinpointing those moments in
American cultural history when Black people made lightning
strike. But Black performance, Black artistry, Black freedom
too often came at devastating price. The real devil in America is
America itself, the one who stole the soul that he, through open
eyes and fearless prose, snatches back. This is searing,
revelatory, filled with utter heartbreak, and unstoppable joy.
-- Marlon James, author of Black Leopard Red Wolf
A rapturous exploration of black genius. Whether
heralding unsung entertainers or re-examining legends, Hanif
Abdurraqib weaves together gorgeous essays that reveal the
resilience, heartbreak, and joy within black performance. I read
this book breathlessly. -- Brit Bennett * author of The
Vanishing Half *
To read Hanif Abdurraqib is to be embraced in the middle of
chaos. In his latest book, A Little Devil In America: In
Praise of Black Performance, he does what many great writers
do, which is to illuminate and join the dots between connections
readers may once have failed to see. * Huck *
Abdurraqib is one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read.
A Little Devil In America needs to be on every bedside
table, every high school and college desktop - and basically, in
this age of a revolution, this is that ONE book that everyone needs
to read. Pure genius. I'm not even trying to get at even SOME of
the brilliance Hanif gets to with this book-there is just too much.
From Black Exceptionalism to Josephine Baker to Old Heads-he brings
it and clarifies it, then shapes it into every bit of medicine we
need right now. -- Jacqueline Woodson * author of Red at the
Bone *
Poignant, powerful, candid, written with sincerity and emotion
... An important book * New York Times *
The most important cultural critic in America right now? This
writer gets my vote. Abdurraqib has delivered a winner. *
Chicago Tribune *
Hanif Abdurraqib has a way of taking slices of our cultural
landscape, examining them, and transforming them into observations
and analyses that leave me underlining the entire page. In A
Little Devil In America, Abdurraqib brilliantly braids
together history, criticism, and prose so stunning that it makes
you want to read every word out loud just so you can hear its
music. Everything Abdurraqib writes is a must-read, but this is
his best yet. It is one of the most dynamic books I have
ever read. -- Clint Smith
Blending pop-culture essays, memoir, and poetry, A Little
Devil in America delves into the manyiterations of Black
artistic expression through an often deeply personal lens
...Startling, layered, and timely, this is an essential,
illuminating collection * Booklist (starred review) *
A thoughtful memoir rolled into a set of joined essays on life,
death, and the Black experience in America... Social criticism, pop
culture, and autobiography come together neatly in these pages, and
every sentence is sharp, provocative, and self-aware ... A
winner. -- Kirkus Reviews (*starred review*)
A Little Devil in America is so so heavy in some places that I have
to take breaks. It just hurts to read some of these truths, woven
in such beautiful writing. -- Yomi Sode
In this staggeringly intimate meditation, Abdurraqib shines
a light on how Black artists have shaped-and been shaped
by-American culture. His prose is reliably razor-sharp. Filled with
nuance and lyricism, Abdurraqib's luminous survey is
stunning. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
Abdurraqib pens respectful, heartwarming essays that reflect on
giants in music, television, cinema, and even magic...his
stories will inspire and provoke thoughtful meditations on how
Black lives matter in all areas of life and art. * Library
Journal (starred review) *
Abdurraqib uses his inimitable blend of incisive, piercing
criticism and shimmering stream-of-consciousness to explore
everything from the problem with praising Black women for being
"vessels" who have "saved America" with their votes (he points out:
"It occurred to me that Black women were simply attempting to save
themselves") to Dave Chappelle's appeal to white audiences to the
death of his mother. Moving, provocative, and infused with a
singular lyricism, A Little Devil in America is an exultant
blend of memoir and criticism, a must-read for anyone looking to
better understand this country and its people. * Refinery29 *
It's an absolutely brilliant book from a critic who's become
one of the country's most essential writers... To call
Abdurraqib anything less than one of the best writers working in
America, and to call this book anything less than a masterpiece,
would be doing him, and literature as a whole, a disservice --
Michael Shaub * Minneapolis Star Tribune *
These 'notes in praise of Black performance' encompass dance,
music, film, and standup, along with everyday affectations and
embodiments of masculinity, fear, intimacy, and belonging.
Subjects include Josephine Baker, Michael Jackson, blackface, "Soul
Train," and brotherhood. ...Combines meditations on personal
experiences-losing his mother, navigating the Midwestern punk
scene-with affectionate studies of cultural moments and
figures, beloved and under-sung alike. Abdurraqib views
performance as an expression of life and a means of survival *
The New Yorker *
[Abdurraqib] has brought to pop criticism and cultural history
not just a poet's lyricism and imagery but also a scholar's rigor,
a novelist's sense of character and place, and a punk-rocker's
impulse to dislodge conventional wisdom from its moorings until
something shakes loose and is exposed to audiences too lethargic to
think or even react differently -- Gene Seymour * Bookforum
*
A book that brims with wonder and introspection while also
honoring the significance and contributions of so many of the lives
within it. Abdurraqib's passions are fully on display, and his
widespread love is infectious in the best way possible, resulting
in a masterwork that will not only move readers but will also
send them off into their own personal rabbit holes of joy and
wonder. This is, perhaps, the greatest gift a writer can give to
his readers, and A Little Devil in America delivers
it in spades -- Daniel Modlin * The Daily Beast *
contemplative and scholarly... it is a joy to watch
[Hanif's] mind work. In his new collection of interconnected
essays, the author...excavates the bits of pop culture that
often get paved over by white supremacy and our collective
short-term memory. As for the parts we think we know -
Abdurraqib has lots to say about Whitney Houston, Dave Chappelle,
Green Book, Altamont, and more - it's his pointed and
frequently personal re-examinations that set A Little Devil
soaring -- Patrick Rapa * The Philadelphia Inquirer *
A vibrant showcase of sharp writing, Abdurraqib's A
Little Devil in America attests that Black performance at its
root is not simply an outward show of talent but also a means of
survival. Read carefully. Abdurraqib's book is a challenge not
to accept the usual explanations for the performances we
witness. * BookPage *
Abdurraqib's great strength is his ability to present broad,
canny observations through the lens of his personal experience, and
his intimate exploration of what these specific moments meant to
him as a Black Muslim coming of age in the US is what lingers long
after you've finished the book * Buzzfeed *
Abdurraqib has written a profound reflection on how Black
performance is woven into the fabric of American culture... A
Little Devil in America is a joyous ode to Black performance
throughout history. * PureWow *
Throughout, Abdurraqib writes with urgency as he highlights what
these performances mean, how they connect to his own feelings on
grief, love and life,
and where they fit into American history.* TIME Magazine *
From Josephine Baker to Soul Train to 'Sixteen Ways of Looking at
Blackface,' Abdurraqib takes us on a wild ride through the
history of Black performances, artists who crushed boundaries
and carved out spaces for vigorous forms of African American
expression. His is an intimate, conspiratorial voice, musically
inflected, blending scholarship with anecdote, a 'waltz in a
circular chamber of your homies and not-homies, shouting chants of
excitement.' * Oprah Magazine *
Abdurraqib breathes new life into performers of significance in
his life, both legendary and unsung * A.V. Club *
Abdurraqib is one of our finest writers period. A
brilliant poet, essayist and cultural critic, he handles nostalgia,
pop culture, Blackness and friendship in ways few writers can.
Here, he examines Black America's changing views of Whitney
Houston, the death of Michael Jackson, the spiritual properties of
dancing, Afrofuturism and more. The early chapter "Sixteen Ways of
Looking at Blackface" is a deeply humane piece of virtuoso writing.
Longer dispatches are broken up by lyric,
stream-of-consciousness pieces that refresh the soul and remind
readers that there's little Abdurraqib can't do -- Aarik
Danielsen * Columbia Star Tribune *
In his new collection of essays, A Little Devil in America,
the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib surveys this sprawl of
expression. Here he charges himself with quite an ambitious task,
pinning down and contextualizing the historic scale of such a
globally significant cultural output, and it is one that would
appear to call for an equally ambitious scope... Contemplations
of legendary voices, sleights of hand, and charismatic
choreographies are in dialogue with his own stories of grief, love,
faith, and the search for freedom within the confinements of
borders and a body...Abdurraqib expands the conception of
"performance" to include the whole realm of behavior and
culture...Playfulness, seduction, artistry, and reinvention:
Abdurraqib wants us to know that these devilish gestures have their
place, too, among the saints that line the corridors in this
tiresome, captivating, and essential struggle * The Nation *
In A Little Devil in America, Abdurraqib walks readers
through Black archives of dance, film, social struggle, and song as
though these "intimate histories" of performance (as Saidiya
Hartman calls them) could free us from anything that misses the
beat. For this collection of essays, he does the work of a DJ:
he digs through the crates, selects the most appropriately
unexpected songs/topics/subjects, builds a collage between cuts and
scratches, and presents his set. His books are soundscapes
in print, and I was somehow listening to each sentence as if it
were a breakbeat of personal narrative and socio-historical
commentary...Hanif is one of the most exciting writers of his
generation * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Abdurraqib, known for his playful, intelligent sense of humor on
Twitter, highlights amazing performances that shed light on
societal constructions and moments of sheer joy his book about
Black culture in America. Writing about joy is challenging;
falling back on cliche is a constant temptation that Abdurraqib
avoids in this insightful tome * Forbes *
That sense of limitlessness wraps itself around every
essay in Abdurraqib's newest book, A Little Devil in
America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. In it, he writes
about Black performance in America-from Great Depression-era dance
marathons to the enduring cool of Don Cornelius to the art of Mike
Tyson entering a boxing ring-with both great reverence and
rigorous analysis. The book, in the way Abdurraqib's work so often
does, erects monuments to our should-be legends and our unignorable
icons alike, and paints an expansive, deeply felt portrait of the
history of Black artistry -- Leah Johnson * Electric Literature
*
This deft consideration of seemingly irreconcilable values,
between the personal and private dimensions of performance,
can be found throughout the essays in A Little Devil in
America...Abdurraqib sees performance as a site of radical
questioning, experimentation, and dream-making. This book is not a
work of theory. It is sensual. We watch him watching his idols
and we watch him dancing along with them, sometimes clumsily. If
Brooks's goal is to make a case for performers' intellectualism,
Abdurraqib's is to help us understand how they teach us to live
richer, more embodied lives -- Danielle A. Jackson * Vulture
*
Engrossing and moving ... A new, poetic take on essays that, I
think, changes the game in many ways. -- Roger Robinson * New
Statesman Books of the Year *
Astonishing, impressive ... the connections he makes point to
the enduring influence of Black art ... a book as bold as it is
essential * TIME Book of the Year *
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