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A review by literarycrushes
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
4.0
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib is a masterful collection of essays that uses contemporary music as a springboard for conversations about race, violence, and the encroaching inner darkness that lurks behind everything in America. Abdurraqib’s writing is powerful and each piece, while short (most essays are only 3-4 pages long), was thought-provoking and heartbreaking.
Despite the brevity of this structure, each sentence was crafted as though it were its own poem and the book a love letter to music. While most of the music he writes about isn’t what I normally listen to (most of the music falls under the broad genres of punk, hardcore, and rap), his personal reflections on what it was like growing up as a black man in America – specifically in the Midwest – were incredibly thought provoking and moving. By the end of the book, I found myself wanting to go back and listen to old Fall Out Boy or Carly Rae Jepson albums through this lens.
Despite the brevity of this structure, each sentence was crafted as though it were its own poem and the book a love letter to music. While most of the music he writes about isn’t what I normally listen to (most of the music falls under the broad genres of punk, hardcore, and rap), his personal reflections on what it was like growing up as a black man in America – specifically in the Midwest – were incredibly thought provoking and moving. By the end of the book, I found myself wanting to go back and listen to old Fall Out Boy or Carly Rae Jepson albums through this lens.