A review by kitnotmarlowe
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

 To rephrase what I said last year re: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, it would be an understatement to call Hanif Abdurraqib a great music journalist when he's one of the greatest essayists alive. His writing is so clear and sincere that it takes my breath away. Some other essayists (cough, Jia Tolentino, cough) can't write without sounding sanctimonious, as if they've spent their entire lives being told how smart they are. With Abdurraqib, you never once feel that he is bragging or showing off how smart he is. He's a generous storyteller who wants to meet readers on equal footing. Throughout this collection filled with compassion and vulnerability, he refers to his readers as "friends" and "beloveds." His enthusiasm is palpable. He can take a topic I know nothing or very little about and write about it so compellingly that I never want the essay to end. 

Like a symphony, the book is divided into five movements: Performing Miracles, Suspending Disbelief, On Matters of Country/Provenance, Anatomy of Closeness // Chasing Blood, and Callings to Remember. Each of these movements is introduced by a short poem detailing the times Abdurrqib has forced himself to dance (or not to dance). Suspending Disbelief was the best of the five, in my opinion. None of the movements fall flat, and none of the essays stick out the wrong ways, but Suspending Disbelief is banger after banger. Abdurraqib has a gift for mixing the personal and the public, synthesizing memoir, poetry, and pop culture history. In particular, he writes about music with so much energy that I had to restrain myself from looking up every performance he mentioned. However, I did stop halfway through the Merry Clayton chapter to listen to Gimme Shelter. Despite it being referenced in countless other pieces of media, I must have been one of five people on the planet who made it to 2023 without knowing the song. 

Overall, this is a tremendous collection. Let Hanif Abdurraqib write forever, and let him write a 400-page book about Josephine Baker. 

 

P.S. I'm not including this in my "follow the author on Twitter" category because I'd already read two of his books before following him. That said, he is a wonderful Twitter presence, and posts so many pictures of his beautiful dog.