A review by lancakes
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

5.0

I can’t recommend this book enough. What a feelings trip. Cultural critique essays are hit or miss for me because sometimes all an article has going for it is that I know of the thing they’re writing about. But with Abdurraqib, even if I don’t know that Ohio punk band or I hadn’t yet caved and discovered the genius of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, there is still plenty in his writing for me to dig into. The themes that he explores he churns away at as they keep cropping back up and receiving increasingly intersectional analysis before ultimately being tightly woven together in his sweeping, transcendent piece on Marvin Gaye.