Late Night Library: Late Night Conversation with Kristin Maffei. Featured Guest Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib and…. These and’s will make you smile if you choose to read or listen to this wonderful book. Nobody enhances the word AND more than Hanif…with purpose and love…

But he is most invested in what might be called ordinary miracles, the “mundane fight for individuality” against the depersonalising effects of racism. Abdurraqib ends by describing a profoundly moving moment when his brother drove many miles to find him and lift him out the depths of a depressive episode. They held each other tightly and Hanif cried in his arms. Through this performative embrace, this motionless dance, he found his footing for another day. Certain writers can take a pop song or musician as their subject and turn what they write into a stunning evocation of some aspect of society. That’s very much the case with Hanif Abdurraqib, and in this new collection he covers everything from the Columbus punk scene to Chance the Rapper, coming up with stunning observations along the way."

Fiction Book Review: The Crown Ain't Worth Much by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib". Publishers Weekly. June 20, 2016. Archived from the original on October 13, 2016 . Retrieved July 19, 2016. More: Scholastic pulls book by 'Captain Underpants' author Dav Pilkey with 'harmful racial stereotypes'

It was a very internal thing. Because I found myself asking myself, ‘How have you performed? Be honest.’ I thought about times I’d stepped outside of myself in an attempt to make myself in any way larger, or to make myself in any way more of something, and then broke that down. I ran into a wall, because I think the word performative has such a negative connotation. But I wanted to detach myself from that and kind of say, well, there are ways I perform that are not entirely for the satisfaction of other people. There are ways that I perform that propel me through a day that I don't know if I could get through otherwise. There are ways I perform that serve very specific interests that bring me closer to the people I love. And that is also a type of performance. And the type of performance that deserves to be honoured as any other performance would. And so I think first asking myself the question of, ‘how have I performed?’ and ‘how have I felt ashamed of performing?’ And then kind of trying to crawl my way out of what that shame felt like and seemed like to me. Thompson, Erica (July 14, 2016). "People: Poet Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib explores the changing landscape of Columbus". Columbus Alive. Archived from the original on July 15, 2016 . Retrieved July 17, 2016. On grief: “And I realized then that this was yet another funeral. I was reminded, once again, that our grief decides when it is done with us.” a b Shukla, Nikesh (October 21, 2018). "They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib – review". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved February 21, 2023. Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. November 27, 2019 . Retrieved February 21, 2023.

SN: The section in that essay on dance marathons destroyed me. Do you think that dance marathons and other endurance contests like the old “hands on a hard body” contest are exploitive, especially of marginalized groups of people in ways that it’s just difficult for those empowered to understand? It almost seems like simply trying to vote has become this new form of the dance marathon or the endurance contest for many people, unfortunately.

It’s a joy to get to be in their company,” he said. “And it’s especially a joy to get to have work that has reached an audience far beyond my home. That means a lot. A Little Devil in America focuses largely on American culture, but there’s also an eye towards global storytelling. The issues raised in the book, the concerns and celebrations raised in the book, are not uniquely American, these aren’t American issues or American excitement, and I feel like this is some confirmation of that.”

Finalist, National Book Awards 2021 for Nonfiction

W]arm, immediate, and intensely personal...This lush and generous book is a call to pay proper respects not just to a sound but to a feeling.” ABDURRAQIB: He really attempts to do this ill-advised split. And I don't know - and it's funny because there's no real buildup to it. And so you don't really know what compelled him to attempt to do the splits. But almost out of nowhere, he attempts a split, and it just is a disaster.