Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize 
Winner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award 
Finalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay 
Shortlisted for the National Book Award 
A New York Times, Financial Times, New Statesman, TIME, Vulture, Chicago Tribune and Pitchfork Book of the Year\n'Gorgeous' - Brit Bennett 
'Pure genius' - Jacqueline Woodson 
'One of the most dynamic books I have ever read' - Clint Smith\nAt the March on Washington, Josephine Baker reflected on her life and her legacy. She had spent decades as one of the most successful entertainers in the world, but, she told the crowd, "I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too". Inspired by these words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a stirring meditation on Black performance in the modern age, in which culture, history and his own lived experience collide.\nWith sharp insight, humour and heart, Abdurraqib explores a sequence of iconic and intimate performances that take him from mid-century Paris to the moon -- and back down again, to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. Each one, he shows, has layers of resonance across Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and his own personal history of love and grief -- whether it's the twenty-seven seconds of 'Gimme Shelter' in which Merry Clayton sings, or the magnificent hours of Aretha Franklin's homegoing; Beyoncé's Super Bowl show or a schoolyard fistfight; Dave Chapelle's skits or a game of spades among friends.

A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

Biographies & Memoirs

Abdurraqib, Hanif

Arts & Literature

Penguin

Allen Lane.

About the Author\nHanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic. His work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, PEN American, Muzzle, and Vinyl. He is the author of multiple books, including They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, and NPR, among others; and Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest, a New York Times Bestseller and Kirkus Prize nominee. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.\nAshley Evans is an artist, and the illustrator of the popular picture book Welcome to the Party by Gabrielle Union. When she’s not creating art, you can find her decorating cakes, enjoying time with her family or catching a much-needed nap. Born and raised in Queens, she now lives in Charlotte, NC with her boyfriend and their daughter.\nA young Aretha Franklin captivates her community with the song “Respect” during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, in this striking picture book biography that will embolden today’s young readers to sing their own truth.\nWhen Aretha Franklin sang, she didn’t just sing…she sparked a movement. As a performer and a civil rights activist, the Queen of Soul used her voice to uplift freedom fighters and the Black community during the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Her song “Respect” was an anthem of identity, survival, and joy. It gave hope to people trying to make change. And when Aretha sang, the world sang along.\nWith Hanif Abdurraqib’s poetic voice and Ashley Evans’s dynamic illustrations, Sing, Aretha, Sing! demonstrates how one brave voice can give new power to a nation, and how the legacy of Aretha Franklin lives on in a world still fighting for freedom.

Sing, Aretha, Sing!: Aretha Franklin,"Respect," and the Civil Rights Movement

History

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, talent and allegiance, and of course, LeBron James-from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our culture's most insightful critics, he is most of all, at heart, an Ohioan. Growing up in Columbus in the 1990s, Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron were forged, and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with memoir. "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jumpshot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time." There's Always This Year is a classic Abdurraqib triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. It's about basketball in the way They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us is about music and A Little Devil in America is about history-no matter the subject, Abdurraqib's exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Community & Culture

Random House]

A New York Times Best Seller A February IndieNext Pick Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Buzzfeed, Nylon, The A. V. Club, CBC Books, and The Rumpus. And a Winter's Most Anticipated Book by Vanity Fair and The Week Starred Reviews: Kirkus and Booklist "Warm, immediate and intensely personal."—New York Times How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group’s history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.
Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast–West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels’ shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he’s remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe’s 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg’s death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that—like the low end, the bass—are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)

University of Texas Press

Poems of Resistance, Poems of Hope

Literature & Fiction

Harjo, Joy

Limón, Ada

Parker, Morgan et. Al

Poetry

Independent Bookstore Day Publishing

*2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" ―TODAY Show *Best Books of 2018 ―Rolling Stone "A Best Book of 2017" ―NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads' *Midwest Indie Bestseller
In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.
In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others―along with original, previously unreleased essays―Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
"Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him." ―Greil Marcus, Village Voice

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Two Dollar Radio

The Crown Ain't Worth Much, Hanif Abdurraqib's first full-length collection, is a sharp and vulnerable portrayal of city life in the United States. A regular columnist for MTV.com, Abdurraqib brings his interest in pop culture to these poems, analyzing race, gender, family, and the love that finally holds us together even as it threatens to break us. Terrance Hayes writes that Abdurraqib "bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy." The poems in this collection are challenging and accessible at once, as they seek to render real human voices in moments of tragedy and celebration.

The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry)

Button Poetry

“When an author’s unmitigated brilliance shows up on every page, it’s tempting to skip a description and just say, Read this! Such is the case with this breathlessly powerful, deceptively breezy book of poetry.” ―Booklist, Starred Review In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside―from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs―to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.

A Fortune for Your Disaster

Self-Help

Relationships

Tin House Books

* 2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" --<a title="The TODAY Show featuring They Can#39;t Kill Us Until They Kill Us" href="https://www.today.com/popculture/12-best-books-gift-holiday-season-t144873" target="_blank">TODAY</a> (Elizabeth Acevedo) * A "Best Book of 2017" --Rolling Stone&nbsp;(2018), NPR, Buzzfeed,&nbsp;Paste Magazine,&nbsp;Esquire,&nbsp;Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC,&nbsp;Stereogum, National Post,&nbsp;Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot,&nbsp;Chicago Review of Books,&nbsp;The Los Angeles Review,&nbsp;Michigan Daily * American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads' * Midwest Indie Bestseller In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of Black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays--Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Abdurraqib, Hanif. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Abdurraqib, Hanif

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Abdurraqib, Hanif. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

Sing, Aretha, Sing!: Aretha Franklin,"Respect," and the Civil Rights Movement

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)

Poems of Resistance, Poems of Hope

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry)

A Fortune for Your Disaster

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us