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A review by madhav_makes
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I am in awe at the end of reading this book. I have felt a plethora of emotions- rage, sadness, joy, vindication, curiosity, grief, and many more- sometimes page to page. I am emotionally spent and charged, and I am the better for it.
This book has the love Hanif Abdurraqib put into it and it shows. He effortlessly weaves together so many different narratives and emotions that are seemingly unrelated at first but are just waiting for you to realize the connection. I often had to stop and re-read sentence or passages just to let the full weight of the words I was reading hit me- sometimes to understand, and other times to feel the emotions they brought me again and again.
There is poetry and prose and triumph and heartache and joy and grief all recorded in these pages. The book is very much in praise of black performance yes, but it is also a celebration of black culture and identify in a world that seeks to diminish it overtly or covertly. I need to sit with this book and my thoughts and feelings on it for a while, but I will most definitely read it again in the future- both to experience those thoughts and feelings again, and find the things I’ve surely missed.
This book has the love Hanif Abdurraqib put into it and it shows. He effortlessly weaves together so many different narratives and emotions that are seemingly unrelated at first but are just waiting for you to realize the connection. I often had to stop and re-read sentence or passages just to let the full weight of the words I was reading hit me- sometimes to understand, and other times to feel the emotions they brought me again and again.
There is poetry and prose and triumph and heartache and joy and grief all recorded in these pages. The book is very much in praise of black performance yes, but it is also a celebration of black culture and identify in a world that seeks to diminish it overtly or covertly. I need to sit with this book and my thoughts and feelings on it for a while, but I will most definitely read it again in the future- both to experience those thoughts and feelings again, and find the things I’ve surely missed.