A review by rainbowofcrazy
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

 This book was simply amazing.

“After all, what is endurance to a people that have already endured?”

 

This was my first time reading anything by Hanif Abdurraqib, and it certainly won’t be my last. I absolutely LOVED this book. It is an experience and I devoured it. I was so engaged with the beautiful, honest writing, while learning so much about black performers through the years, about race and black culture and American culture.

I loved Hanif Abdurraqib’s insights and what each figure personally meant to him. One of my favourite parts of this book was actually all of the personal stories because they were just beautiful and real and sad and poignant. This felt like such an intimate book and I’m grateful to have experienced it.

The writing is beautiful enough already, but I highly highly recommend getting a hold of the audiobook because JD Jackson’s narration was perfection. It truly felt like a performance piece, especially the narration of the different poems for each of the movements through the book. I kept going back to relisten to the poems because they were so beautiful to my ears and my soul.

This was definitely a book to savour. I’m excited to experience more.