At a recent speaking event in Chicago, Hanif Abdurraqib joked about a review he received describing him as a writer who “mostly writes about enjoying things.” Uncertain if it was an insult or a compliment, Abdurraqib said he embraced the statement as the latter because enjoying things - and subsequently sharing that enjoyment with the world - unites us in a community connected by joy. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this event and able to share in his joys as he discussed music, basketball, his fondness for sharing Youtube videos, and more in a quiltwork of topics that all amalgamated into his central theme: devotion.
This theme appears in all of his works, be it in his two collections of poetry or one of his many collections of essays. His most recent, There's Always Next Year: On Basketball and Ascension was recently longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award, following in a familiar pattern of Abdurraqib being named as a finalist for literary awards each year. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant”, and his essay collection A Little Devil in America received the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. These well-deserved awards cement his status as a must-read author and celebrate his gorgeous, accessible prose.
During the Chicago event, a teen raised their hand and told Abdurraqib that they had never realized that essays could contain as much emotion as his do, and that his words inspired them to approach school assignments with a fresh perspective and renewed attitude. I have been left similarly awed by his works, finding my jaw dropping in amazement or discovering tears welling up in my eyes while reading about subjects I would never have dreamed could be explored with such heart-wrenching insights.
In the essay collection Critical Hits, featuring writers discussing video games and how they impact society and individual lives, Abdurraqib discusses his experience playing Red Dead Redemption 2. He relates how the futile attempt to save the protagonist’s life by painstakingly choosing only the most morally sound decisions in the game taught him a lot about redemption (you can read the full essay in The Paris Review). In trying to redeem his character, he discovered that his underlying motive was a personal desire to redeem himself and his own past that he would never have admitted to himself without having found it in the context of the game. "I have not always been good, but I have always been worthy of living and fighting to become better," Abdurraqib once wrote, and his work often rejects the binaries of "good" and "bad" people to embrace a more complex reality of multifaceted people who move between actions of both but are always worthy of life and the opportunity to do better. I read the aforementioned video game essay on Christmas morning of last year and found myself huddled on the couch crying tears for a fictional character and the very real author, a result I never would have imagined when picking up a book of video game essays. Abdurraqib truly knows the fastest way to the heart and his works always exude a healing dose of empathy.
In his recent book, There's Always This Year, I didn’t even make it beyond the first page before I found myself succumbing to emotional chills and the threat of tears. It is a lovely book that explores basketball and the successes and failures of sports, but it is also so much more than that. Weaving through personal memory and discussions on the tension of expectation, the concept of role models, the redemptive power of championships on a community at large, and more, Abdurraqib crafts an altogether emotionally startling and poetically gorgeous look at how our devotion to sports and sporting communities has a deep impact on our lives.
Music fans will also find a shared joy in Abdurraqib’s works, such as his essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which follows the author through basements and bars for Midwest Emo concerts, while also exploring the underlying music culture, personal fears, racism and more. Go Ahead in the Rain is a similarly affecting collection centered on the author's love for the band A Tribe Called Quest that also becomes far more than just a discussion on music. Though perhaps Abdurraqib’s most accomplished work is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, a highly researched and far-reaching collection of essays that uses a long history of performance art as a method of discussing the very fabric of American culture through the ages.
Returning to the teenager’s comment on essay writing, Abdurraqib explained to the audience that he finds that the best way to explore a topic is to address it indirectly, to come at it through a collage of anecdotes that collect to point the way to the true purpose behind the story. It is how a discussion on Soul Train juxtaposed with a string of car bombings following the death of a mafia boss can suddenly become a clear discourse on devotion, or how his poetry can relate a story about a haunting, ruminations on soulmates, and loneliness, all amalgamating to an expression of devotion (you can read the poem online, or check out his other poetry found in A Fortune For Your Disaster or The Crown Ain’t Worth Much). Stories help us understand the world better, move us to tears, inspire joy, educate us, bewilder or fascinate us, and Hanif Abdurraqib is a master storyteller who reminds us of such power through his words. When we share stories, we build community, and I can’t think of a better way to show love for the things we enjoy than by sharing them with each other. You can read the works of Hanif Abdurraqib by checking them out through Herrick District Library.
