[A] wide, deep, and discerning inquest into the Beauty of Blackness as enacted on stages and screens, in unanimity and discord, on public airwaves and in intimate spaces ... 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 ... Abdurraqib cherishes this power to enlarge oneself within or beyond real or imagined restrictions ... Abdurraqib reminds readers of the massive viewing audience’s shock and awe over seeing one of the world’s biggest pop icons appearing midfield at this least radical of American rituals ... Something about the seemingly insatiable hunger Abdurraqib shows for cultural transaction, paradoxical mischief, and Beauty in Blackness tells me he’ll get to such matters soon enough.
It's an absolutely brilliant book from a critic who's become one of the country's most essential writers ... Abdurraqib proves to be remarkably gifted at exploring all angles of a topic, linking them in deft and unexpected ways ... It's fascinating to witness Abdurraqib go from place to place and end up somewhere unexpected, but somehow perfect. In one of the most powerful pieces in the book, Abdurraqib reflects on performances of softness, drawing on topics like his mother's death and the Wu-Tang Clan's music video for 'Triumph' ... he's a brilliant writer, but also a deeply generous, loving one. Critics, as Abdurraqib would know, are taught to avoid superlatives, but sometimes there's no other choice. 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.
... features Hanif Abdurraqib’s considerable talents as a poet, essayist and thoughtful social commentator. Reading this book reminded me of listening to the late night DJs of my youth who used songs as the starting point to improvise a jazz solo of murmured conversation and mellifluous contemplation. Abdurraqib also belongs in the special order of those who magically entwine musicality, voice and narrative in the liminal place between sleep and wakefulness where all is possible, and temporality is fluid ... Stylistically, the repeated title points to the many stories that can be told on the same subject, but it also reflects Abdurraqib’s compelling ability to innovate and riff off the same introductory notes ... Throughout this collection, Abdurraqib underscores the freedom and the power of choosing to be jubilant in the face of pain, oppression, and others’ opinions: the way those young people used their few minutes on the dance line to express themselves in the moment, and through the videos, eternally ... Abdurraqib is especially brilliant at contemplating our humanity through the lens of the arts, and each of these essays has a sonic flair, as if prose can’t contain his innate musicality. Another hallmark is how seamlessly Abdurraqib inserts moving personal experiences into his contemplations of Black life and performance ... Abdurraqib’s book is a dance in literary form; he moves with us and entices us to move toward him, to engage in one of the most intimate of social interaction...sAnd a magnificent partner he is, both leading and leaving enough space for the reader to inhabit the experiences he creates in his exceptionally engaging prose ... Abdurraqib’s fascinating research into historical customs and rituals is deftly married to sometimes achingly personal revelations, yielding a singular poetic rumination about the self and society. He effectively uses popular culture to illustrate the repeated attempts to diminish and outright erase Black people, and, more important, elevate their undeniable contributions to the best of America. He also appropriately calls many of us to account ... After completing this collection what remains in my mind and heart—a beautiful echo—is that subtle yet mighty secondary title, the praise and celebration for Black performers and Blackness overall. There’s much joy in this book, as there is in the lives that Abdurraqib explores, including his own. We need that joy, that celebration, this book.
Music, [...] in the work of Hanif Abdurraqib, is more like a vehicle for getting closer to what it means to be feel joy, and history, and shame, and anger, and lonesomeness ... his writing, far from being the usual top-down music criticism, is spotted with small revelations and fleeting instances of recognition ...
... brilliant ... Abdurraqib dispenses prose in motions that shuffle forward, step sideways, leap diagonally and waltz gracefully through five sections exploring different facets of Black performance in America ... Performance can demonstrate self-awareness -- a chance to define yourself by how your body moves when you’re throwing down in a beef, which Abdurraqib vividly illustrates as a kind of performance. He traces the rich history of performance through sketches of Black magicians, dancers and musicians ... Clayton’s chapter may be the best in the book, if only because it gives her the recognition she deserves for her ethereal voice ... 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.
... this poet, cultural critic, essayist and music buff uses the tales of Black performers to make poignant observations about race in America while using Black performance as a metaphor for the transcendent imagination, gliding through television, music, film, minstrel shows, vaudeville and even space. The book is also a candid self-portrait of Abdurraqib’s experience as a Black man, written with sincerity and emotion ... Abdurraqib has written an important book on the transformative power of that kind of love. Where it falters are the moments when he yanks the reader from one pop culture reference to the next at breakneck speed ... Whiplash may occur, but it’s worth following along. Those not interested in Abdurraqib’s musing on Green Book and Altamont may find themselves moved by his aching writing on his family — leading to the book’s devastating final chapter.
He addresses the reader and skates between subjects. He might consider astrology, Michael Jackson, Blade Runner 2049 and the musician Sun Ra in pursuit of a single thought, as if in late-night, errant conversation with a friend. This is not to say the essays lack discipline. Every subject is carefully chosen in the service of a broader critical project ... This is an affirmative project...but also a melancholic one ... The melancholy may at times be prohibitive. Abdurraqib believes in transformative politics, in 'reimagining ways to build a country on something other than violence and power' but chooses not to develop this vision ... Paying attention to culture also sharpens one’s sensitivity to the social shape of the world; it allows Abdurraqib to clarify the many 'miracles' that have been performed by artists who shone in a universe not made to their measure.
Of all the writers currently working on the American scene, there are few capable of producing prose I admire as much as Hanif Abdurraqib’s and none whom I have less interest in trying to emulate. His perspective is idiosyncratic and coolly confident. He gives the impression that he can transfer his entire self onto the page and remain completely at ease while doing so. His store of knowledge is intimidating, and his style inimical ... It shares much with Go Ahead in the Rain—sharp reasoning and keen observation, moving lyrical passages, and confessional sections of memoir—but its scope is more ambitious and, as it turns out, the author’s talents are well suited to a large canvas ... no single thesis, but Abdurraqib revisits a number of themes within its pages, folding new meaning into his observations each time he adopts a fresh perspective ... Abdurraqib possesses both a conversational narrative voice and great faith in his readers, the combination of which can be deceptive. Often, it seems that he’s meandering along with no terminus in mind, slipping from subject to subject and latching onto stray details as his curiosity dictates. But just when it appears that he’s hopelessly lost in his narrative, he’ll deliver an insight of such clarity that he stops you dead.
... yet another domain of performance is Black masculinity and its heartbreaking negotiation of love and violence, which Abdurraqib depicts, skillfully and tenderly, toward the book’s finale. Indeed, when seen from this vantage, Abdurraqib’s meditations on performance could extend ad infinitum. In his mind it becomes not so much a discrete event or object but rather any attempt to bridge the questions who am I? and what could I someday be, and who will be there with me? That bridge is life itself, and one walks across it until one grows insensate, abandons the company of others, or otherwise reaches the other side ... Even after such lengths are crossed, encores continue to impress ... The imbrication of performance and life is familiar territory, too, for readers of theorists like Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, who suggested that the improvisation required of Black life was not unlike jazz or the freestyle. If not in such lofty terms, Abdurraqib makes a contribution to this discourse with his latest collection ... If everyone is putting on an act, how could a person live fully, with a sense that their relationships were real and worthwhile—not merely objects of interpretation? But if Abdurraqib does not come across as a cynic, it is entirely because of the ubiquity of his earnest narration. His highly sincere style recalls Black poets like Ross Gay and Lucille Clifton, whose celebratory incursions are a salve for Black mourning, and a rebuke of its easy ubiquity in representations of Black life. As with the works of these writers, the essays fulfill a timely desire for literature that can console. Abdurraqib’s ebullience for pop culture and history is meant, similarly, to feel infectious—after all, as long as the job is done well, the care a writer takes with the subject can alchemically become our own. To artfully induce surprise while conveying one’s adoration proves difficult all the same, and Abdurraqib’s insights about such well-known cultural figures are more often straightforward and agreeable explanations rather than opportunities for close attention and careful use of rhetoric to speak for themselves ... Such apologies for one’s own subject matter can cause a writer’s voice to lapse, besides often doing less to clarify matters than they suggest on first reading ... In sections like these which cover relatively unknown artists, one often desires more straight reportage to supplement the book’s predominantly lyrical style. These sections, along with prose-poetic interludes titled 'On Times I Have Forced Myself to Dance,' embody what can be both exciting and frustrating in the lyric essay as a genre: the reliance on affect, memoir, and leaps of association to construct meaning. With Abdurraqib’s instinct toward fragmentation, precision (and all that makes his subjects memorable) can be lost, along with an accurate representation of the sensuality, obscenity, and risk that drive so much of Black performance.
The way in which Abdurraqib writes about performance in Little Devil in America' posits Black freedom ... Overall, Little Devil in America is reminiscent of the brilliant scholarship of Robin D.G. Kelley, whose questions center on everyday forms of resistance in popular culture and in the lives of general laborers. Little Devil in America sheds light on repeated small acts of joy that lift us during traumatic experiences.
His approach to blending research and memoir imbues the lives of historical figures with a genuine warmth and care that is often missing from other approaches to reportage and history. No rigor is lost because of this love; in fact, Abdurraqib is even more incisive than critics who may have a bone to pick with the object of criticism. It’s through his love that he is able to reveal insights into the artists and performers themselves, as well as the way that history links to the present—both in his own life and in the wider world ... This is the type of criticism that can grow from a place of love: a criticism that refuses to fall into clichés or sensationalism, a criticism that addresses something more meaningful about its subject. It is a love that is willing to be clear-eyed, to everyone’s benefit ... There is power in a love that feels strongly enough to write itself into being, a power that can reach out beyond the book, grabbing the reader by the heart in a way that demands action ... While love propels much of A Little Devil in America, there is also a sense that there is still a limit to how much that love can do. For all the love I now have for Clayton, the love I send will not erase the years she was passed over by the industry, nor the suffering she experienced later in her life. Yet, in Abdurraqib’s work, I see the power of a love that leads to action—love that summons names and faces that deserved so much more, love that is able to peel back the superficial layers to let us explore deeper questions.
At heart a personal essayist, [Abdurraqib] prefers to approach big themes stealthily, often from an unusual angle. He has an enviable ability to move from a wider cultural phenomenon to the personal in a couple of sentences ... He also illustrates how culture can expose fault lines in everyday life ... Each of his portraits of cultural figures is carefully etched and distinct, such as that of the virtuosic Juba, a brilliant dancer whose energetic, skilful act was witnessed by Charles Dickens, and whose final performance might well have been in Dublin.
... confirms that The Can’t Kill Us was no one-hit-wonder. The same keen intelligence, boyhood exuberance, thoughtful soul- searching and zinging wit are all happily present in these essays on dancing, singing, fighting, spying, electioneering, cinema, magic, card playing, going to the moon… you get the picture ... Abdurraqib’s trick, or rather natural knack, is to follow a train of thought that is most engaging when it wobbles, veers off-track and suddenly takes off like a more elegant Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ... Many of his subjects have been written about countless times but Abdurraqib’s unapologetically personal take on their lives is as compelling as a first-time encounter with a legend ... Abdurraqib is an affable, generous host whose company is always a pleasure.
... delves into the many iterations of Black artistic expression through an often deeply personal lens ... Whether pondering the dynamic life and contributions of Josephine Baker or meditating on his own various performances, the author’s ruminations are an invitation to think deeply about Black performance on both cultural and individual levels. Abdurraqib consistently engages the reader, mixing conversational tones and poetic turns of phrase, with surprising, succinct insights. Startling, layered, and timely, this is an essential, illuminating collection that advances Abdurraqib’s already impressive body of work.
Abdurraqib pens respectful, heartwarming essays that reflect on other giants in music, television, cinema, and even magic. From intense dance marathons to afternoon sock hops, from the funerals of Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin to games of spades to barroom brawls, he examines the feeling of invisibility that haunts so many Black Americans ... The author also calls out the use of blackface and the sanitization of race relations in today’s films and laments the exploitation of violence against and by African Americans ... Told with humor and grace, Abdurraqib’s stories will inspire and provoke thoughtful meditations on how Black lives matter in all areas of life and art.
staggeringly intimate meditation, essayist and poet Abdurraqib, chronicles Black performance in American culture ... Broken into five 'movements' consisting of essays, fragments, and prose poems, Abdurraqib weaves cultural analyses with personal stories ... his prose is reliably razor-sharp. Filled with nuance and lyricism, Abdurraqib’s luminous survey is stunning.
A thoughtful memoir rolled into a set of joined essays on life, death, and the Black experience in America ... tightly constructed, smart essays—in this case, about the history of marathon dancing, the exhilarating contributions but tragic life of Soul Train host Don Cornelius, the deaths of both his mother and Aretha Franklin, and numerous other subjects. In another essay, Abdurraqib considers the concept of the magical negro and the unenviable role of being the Black friend who provides an escape route for White racism ... social criticism, pop culture, and autobiography come together neatly in these pages, and every sentence is sharp, provocative, and self-aware. Another winner from Abdurraqib, a writer always worth paying attention to.
