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Reviews tagging 'Racism'
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
10 reviews
yajairat's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Have said this multiple times, but I love when poets delve into long-form writing!!! The most beautiful writing!! I loved Hanif Abdurraqib's other books, and this was no different. These were some beautiful and vulnerable reflections on what makes a home, success, and of course basketball. They way he's able to weave together basketball, his personal life, music, film, and history so seamlessly?? Just incredible. I admire the way Hanif views this world and navigates life.
"And listen, ain't that a kind of love? To say you are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you. Yes, do not waste language on our enemies, but an enemy, to me, implies a permanence"
"the difference between being naked and being bare is that in a state of nakedness, the end can be seen even if it hasn't arrived yet. It has less to do with what one is or isn't wearing or showing, and more to do with how poorly one keeps the inevitable hidden or how long a person can hold back the undoing (pleasureful or less so) that awaits them."
"Convenience is also mistaken for something a little bit like love, or a lot like love, depending on what is at stake, and what part of a life is being made easier."
"the heart doesn't break all at once. It would be easier that way, cleaner. The process of breaking begins somewhere many of us can't even recall. It accelerates in bursts throughout a life; sometimes it hums along at its steady pace. But with the accumulation of enough pain and the promise of more to come, we can only carry ourselves so far."
"America has bombed its own neighborhoods, too. It's taken whole blocks apart. Children have been killed in places of worship here, police have blown apart homes. The powerful call things "war" because it's hard to sell the plain horrors of terror"
"it might do all of us some good to reconsider what making it even means, or at least to honor a world where making it is not defined by the glamorous exit, not only by television cameras, not only by coming back with a pair of trophies riding shotgun. What, after all, do you call it when your name is good on every block you touch, or when kids gather around porches to hear stories of when you were great, even if you haven't held a ball in a meaningful game in decades... what do you call it when players who came after you fight back tears at the mere memory of you, at the mere mention of your life now, the path you made. Someone who ages, thank God. Someone who lives beyond their past selves."
"the greatest engine within the machinery of deception is mercy. the mercy visited upon you by those who know something is amiss but don't say shit. Who know the machinery is what is keeping you going, granting you a little bit of dignity... I suppose I should assume there are many people to thank for their mercies. the friends who never asked the questions I didn't want to answer about the same clothes two days in a row or why a new person opened the door of my apartment when they knocked once and then never again."
"Luck isn't always about what wins and sometimes is about what you can keep close. What doesn't get you glory but what has also never done you wrong."
"Love is like this, too. What my happily committed pal is saying, I think, is that one must become content with shedding a version of oneself that one might only vaguely remember but not be able to touch again. While my other pal has accelerated this process, shedding so frequently that there is no past self that can even stick around long enough to be remembered. Just a constant scroll of new selves to revel in and then discard."
"there are few things more intimate that the history made when a person touches a place, runs a hand along it for decades at a time. Few things more intimate than the history made when a place touches you, to, if you are open to it... The drive you take from one corner of the city to the next, avoiding the highways so that you might, again, reach for a memory that can only be seen from the street."
"What it comes down to is that some of us would rather live a long life of what some might consider failure, but do it in a place that will catch you, every time. I will take that over a triumph in a city that doesn't touch me back."
"I didn't grow up in the church but have spent enough time aligned with both religion and sports to know there is no gospel richer than the gospel of suffering, of living through large stretches devoid of pleasure for the sake of reaching some place beyond your current circumstances and feeling as though you have truly earned a right to be there. I have seen enough and I prefer the path of least resistance."
"And listen, ain't that a kind of love? To say you are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you. Yes, do not waste language on our enemies, but an enemy, to me, implies a permanence"
"the difference between being naked and being bare is that in a state of nakedness, the end can be seen even if it hasn't arrived yet. It has less to do with what one is or isn't wearing or showing, and more to do with how poorly one keeps the inevitable hidden or how long a person can hold back the undoing (pleasureful or less so) that awaits them."
"Convenience is also mistaken for something a little bit like love, or a lot like love, depending on what is at stake, and what part of a life is being made easier."
"the heart doesn't break all at once. It would be easier that way, cleaner. The process of breaking begins somewhere many of us can't even recall. It accelerates in bursts throughout a life; sometimes it hums along at its steady pace. But with the accumulation of enough pain and the promise of more to come, we can only carry ourselves so far."
"America has bombed its own neighborhoods, too. It's taken whole blocks apart. Children have been killed in places of worship here, police have blown apart homes. The powerful call things "war" because it's hard to sell the plain horrors of terror"
"it might do all of us some good to reconsider what making it even means, or at least to honor a world where making it is not defined by the glamorous exit, not only by television cameras, not only by coming back with a pair of trophies riding shotgun. What, after all, do you call it when your name is good on every block you touch, or when kids gather around porches to hear stories of when you were great, even if you haven't held a ball in a meaningful game in decades... what do you call it when players who came after you fight back tears at the mere memory of you, at the mere mention of your life now, the path you made. Someone who ages, thank God. Someone who lives beyond their past selves."
"the greatest engine within the machinery of deception is mercy. the mercy visited upon you by those who know something is amiss but don't say shit. Who know the machinery is what is keeping you going, granting you a little bit of dignity... I suppose I should assume there are many people to thank for their mercies. the friends who never asked the questions I didn't want to answer about the same clothes two days in a row or why a new person opened the door of my apartment when they knocked once and then never again."
"Luck isn't always about what wins and sometimes is about what you can keep close. What doesn't get you glory but what has also never done you wrong."
"Love is like this, too. What my happily committed pal is saying, I think, is that one must become content with shedding a version of oneself that one might only vaguely remember but not be able to touch again. While my other pal has accelerated this process, shedding so frequently that there is no past self that can even stick around long enough to be remembered. Just a constant scroll of new selves to revel in and then discard."
"there are few things more intimate that the history made when a person touches a place, runs a hand along it for decades at a time. Few things more intimate than the history made when a place touches you, to, if you are open to it... The drive you take from one corner of the city to the next, avoiding the highways so that you might, again, reach for a memory that can only be seen from the street."
"What it comes down to is that some of us would rather live a long life of what some might consider failure, but do it in a place that will catch you, every time. I will take that over a triumph in a city that doesn't touch me back."
"I didn't grow up in the church but have spent enough time aligned with both religion and sports to know there is no gospel richer than the gospel of suffering, of living through large stretches devoid of pleasure for the sake of reaching some place beyond your current circumstances and feeling as though you have truly earned a right to be there. I have seen enough and I prefer the path of least resistance."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Death of parent, and Police brutality
nicklybear's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence, Racism, Confinement, and Police brutality
Minor: Death of parent and Death
cindypepper's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
(4.5 stars, rounded up to 5)
(Fleabag voice): This is not a book about basketball.
Yes, this book uses basketball as a lens to explore far-ranging themes of homecoming, what we owe the places we grew up in, the Midwest, police brutality, religion, and why people like sports so dang much.
No, I wouldn't say it's actually about basketball, so much so that basketball is an incisive and deeply personal lens to examine the above topics. And it works very well. Hanif Abdurraqib's style defies categorization; his writing is all at once cultural criticism, memoir, and poetry. There's something very dynamic about the way he writes, in the way that basketball moves at a breakneck pace, until it doesn't. Even if you don't know much about basketball, you can easily read this and understand why and how people love it, which (imo) is the hallmark of a great writer. (For context, I spent 8 years as a Dubs fan smack-dab in the Bay Area, including the year 2016, where thinking about those NBA finals stung. And I relived that trauma by reading the perspective of a fan from the other side!!! And it was more than fine! I loved it.)
All facetiousness aside, props to anyone who can make me feel nostalgic for something I never experienced. I found his meditations on the Midwest and coming back particularly resonant, especially as somebody who used to live there and was all too ready to leave.
(Fleabag voice): This is not a book about basketball.
Yes, this book uses basketball as a lens to explore far-ranging themes of homecoming, what we owe the places we grew up in, the Midwest, police brutality, religion, and why people like sports so dang much.
No, I wouldn't say it's actually about basketball, so much so that basketball is an incisive and deeply personal lens to examine the above topics. And it works very well. Hanif Abdurraqib's style defies categorization; his writing is all at once cultural criticism, memoir, and poetry. There's something very dynamic about the way he writes, in the way that basketball moves at a breakneck pace, until it doesn't. Even if you don't know much about basketball, you can easily read this and understand why and how people love it, which (imo) is the hallmark of a great writer. (For context, I spent 8 years as a Dubs fan smack-dab in the Bay Area, including the year 2016, where thinking about those NBA finals stung. And I relived that trauma by reading the perspective of a fan from the other side!!! And it was more than fine! I loved it.)
All facetiousness aside, props to anyone who can make me feel nostalgic for something I never experienced. I found his meditations on the Midwest and coming back particularly resonant, especially as somebody who used to live there and was all too ready to leave.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Racism
christie_esau's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
The autoethnography of Black men connected to basketball is a subject I cannot read enough about. A wonderful (though, as predicted, sometimes difficult) read. Highly recommend.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Gun violence, Racism, and Violence
sheridan_powell's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Police brutality
sarahyjackson's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Abdurraqib’s pitch perfect poetic prose winds its way through meditations on home, place, love, death, hate, fear, fury and, of course, basketball.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Racism, Gun violence, Grief, Child death, and Blood
tenderbench's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Grief, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Racism
Moderate: Child death and Death of parent
uranaishi's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Grief, Police brutality, and Racism
Moderate: Death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Car accident, Abandonment, Death of parent, Murder, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Violence
Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, Slavery, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, Classism, Drug use, Alcohol, Blood, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Confinement, Addiction, and Sexual content
mmccombs's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I’ve never read a love letter to basketball that felt quite like this. I love the sport, have loved it since I was a kid, but Hanif Abdurraqib has unlocked some of the magic that makes it so special. But this book is not even really about basketball so much as it is about the people that play it, the people who make the mythologies around it, the towns that rally for a team or a player.
Abdurraqib has a way of writing moments to feel like personal memories I’ve lost and have just now recovered. I’ve not once been to Cleveland or Columbus or Ohio, but it almost feels like I have, his writing flowing into and illuminating the cracks in the concrete, the corners of his neighborhood. This is a book firmly about Home, about coming home and loving home even when home is called a “war zone” by the people who will never understand it. This is also a book about how difficult it is to be alive or to survive, how hard and violent and lonely life can be. But there’s basketball. There are underdogs and miracles and dreams. There is longing and love songs. There are people who love us and people who we have loved, even if they are gone and can’t return home.
If you have already read and loved Hanif’s other works, you will once again fall in love here. And if you haven’t, this is a great place to join in! So much thanks to Netgalley and Random House for this eARC, this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year and it certainly delivered!
Abdurraqib has a way of writing moments to feel like personal memories I’ve lost and have just now recovered. I’ve not once been to Cleveland or Columbus or Ohio, but it almost feels like I have, his writing flowing into and illuminating the cracks in the concrete, the corners of his neighborhood. This is a book firmly about Home, about coming home and loving home even when home is called a “war zone” by the people who will never understand it. This is also a book about how difficult it is to be alive or to survive, how hard and violent and lonely life can be. But there’s basketball. There are underdogs and miracles and dreams. There is longing and love songs. There are people who love us and people who we have loved, even if they are gone and can’t return home.
If you have already read and loved Hanif’s other works, you will once again fall in love here. And if you haven’t, this is a great place to join in! So much thanks to Netgalley and Random House for this eARC, this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year and it certainly delivered!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Grief, Racism, and Death
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
ktkeps's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Gun violence, Death, Classism, and Grief
Moderate: Racism, Mental illness, Death of parent, Suicidal thoughts, and Child death
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