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A review by yote_always_reading
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
This was my favorite book of 2024.
To see the progression of Abdurraqib's skill is incredible. This is a book that uses every part of the form to make something beautiful. The way that the chapters are formatted like the quarters of a basketball game. The use of the game clock counting down to create poetic pauses that break up the writing. And what a hilarious and effective choice to center your semi-memoir around the career highs and lows of Lebron James. His fusion of both poetry, cultural criticism, and memoir is just magnetic.
What a vulnerable work of art. The sense of love and grief he writes about his hometown is heartbreaking. The subtitle of this book is, "On Basketball and Ascension." Ascension is used as imagery repeatedly. There's this sense of your hometown being the one that holds you down to the ground, but also what lifts you up to the sky and waits for you when you land. It's this complex wrestling between loving one's hometown that does not feel like it loves you back. And that's a feeling I deeply relate to.
Genuinely a stunning work of writing. In form, in emotion, in skill, everything. I need to make something clear, I don't know anything about basketball. That's how good he writes about the sport.
Highly recommend for those who like
- Literary Nonfiction
- Memoir
- Basketball
- Culture
- Complicated feelings about your home
- Grief
- Questions of Hero worship
- Poetry
- Everybody should read this.
To see the progression of Abdurraqib's skill is incredible. This is a book that uses every part of the form to make something beautiful. The way that the chapters are formatted like the quarters of a basketball game. The use of the game clock counting down to create poetic pauses that break up the writing. And what a hilarious and effective choice to center your semi-memoir around the career highs and lows of Lebron James. His fusion of both poetry, cultural criticism, and memoir is just magnetic.
What a vulnerable work of art. The sense of love and grief he writes about his hometown is heartbreaking. The subtitle of this book is, "On Basketball and Ascension." Ascension is used as imagery repeatedly. There's this sense of your hometown being the one that holds you down to the ground, but also what lifts you up to the sky and waits for you when you land. It's this complex wrestling between loving one's hometown that does not feel like it loves you back. And that's a feeling I deeply relate to.
Genuinely a stunning work of writing. In form, in emotion, in skill, everything. I need to make something clear, I don't know anything about basketball. That's how good he writes about the sport.
Highly recommend for those who like
- Literary Nonfiction
- Memoir
- Basketball
- Culture
- Complicated feelings about your home
- Grief
- Questions of Hero worship
- Poetry
- Everybody should read this.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent