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A review by micareads123
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A beautiful collection of essays on a wide range of topics but mostly centring on music, culture, living in a Black body in America and grief.
As someone who was heavily into third-wave emo music during my adolescence, I especially appreciated all of the essays about that era. Abdurraqib’s decision to critique the toxic masculinity of third-wave emo through the lens of Cute Is What We Aim For in “The Return of the Loneliest Boys in Town” couldn’t have been more on the nose. “Curse of Curves” was beloved by me in the mid 2000s, and divorcing myself from that nostalgia after learning about the lead singer’s support for Brock Turner, and his belief that “rape culture isn’t real,” sucked. And that’s not to mention the terrible message behind the song’s lyrics. I know I’m not the only one who has conflicting feelings of about that nostalgic era of emo music, and Abdurraqib captured that sentiment perfectly.
But there are also essays in this book about how emo music brought people together, how it fostered community. In “Death Becomes You: My Chemical Romance and Ten Years of the Black Parade,” the author offers some very interesting reflections on the many forms of death. And in “Fall Out Boy Forever,” he uses the common thread of Fall Out Boy concerts to take the reader on a heartbreaking journey through a friendship, from start to finish.
In the essays on his experience as a Black person, Abdurraqib’s descriptions of the fear that goes along with having a Black body in American society were powerful, and some of the images he paints, such as the first time he gets stopped by the police in “My First Police Stop,” will stick with me for a long time.
Finally, closer to the end of the book, another standout essay for me was “Survivng on Small Joys,” which speaks to the challenges of being queer and trans and the need for community. In its opening paragraph, the author questions how some among us have no trouble asking “how will I explain this person in the bathroom to my child?” or “how will I explain those two people kissing to my child?” but too rarely ask “how will I explain to my child that people die and we do nothing?”
As is always the case with essay collections, some of these resonated with me more than others, but the ones that did made the read worth five stars. This is definitely a book I see myself revisiting.
As someone who was heavily into third-wave emo music during my adolescence, I especially appreciated all of the essays about that era. Abdurraqib’s decision to critique the toxic masculinity of third-wave emo through the lens of Cute Is What We Aim For in “The Return of the Loneliest Boys in Town” couldn’t have been more on the nose. “Curse of Curves” was beloved by me in the mid 2000s, and divorcing myself from that nostalgia after learning about the lead singer’s support for Brock Turner, and his belief that “rape culture isn’t real,” sucked. And that’s not to mention the terrible message behind the song’s lyrics. I know I’m not the only one who has conflicting feelings of about that nostalgic era of emo music, and Abdurraqib captured that sentiment perfectly.
But there are also essays in this book about how emo music brought people together, how it fostered community. In “Death Becomes You: My Chemical Romance and Ten Years of the Black Parade,” the author offers some very interesting reflections on the many forms of death. And in “Fall Out Boy Forever,” he uses the common thread of Fall Out Boy concerts to take the reader on a heartbreaking journey through a friendship, from start to finish.
In the essays on his experience as a Black person, Abdurraqib’s descriptions of the fear that goes along with having a Black body in American society were powerful, and some of the images he paints, such as the first time he gets stopped by the police in “My First Police Stop,” will stick with me for a long time.
Finally, closer to the end of the book, another standout essay for me was “Survivng on Small Joys,” which speaks to the challenges of being queer and trans and the need for community. In its opening paragraph, the author questions how some among us have no trouble asking “how will I explain this person in the bathroom to my child?” or “how will I explain those two people kissing to my child?” but too rarely ask “how will I explain to my child that people die and we do nothing?”
As is always the case with essay collections, some of these resonated with me more than others, but the ones that did made the read worth five stars. This is definitely a book I see myself revisiting.