A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

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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.”

Pearson, Laura. "25 must-read books this fall". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on September 3, 2017 . Retrieved September 3, 2017. ABDURRAQIB: Yeah. It's - you know, the speech is really interesting because this moment is pretty brief in the speech. But to me, it was the loudest part of the speech where she's - you know, she wins the Sammy Davis Jr. Award, and she goes in to talking about Sammy Davis Jr. And there's a moment where she says that, you know, Sammy Davis Jr. just did not only have to endure humiliation and insults at the hands of white America, but also at the hands of his own people. And when she says his own people, she kind of lingers for a bit and scans the crowd, you know, enough to say, I remember - not long enough to kind of make anyone feel any kind of way, but long enough to say, I remember what happened. And then she moves on.Abdurraqib's writing has appeared in The Fader, The New York Times, and Pitchfork, [29] as well as previously serving as a columnist at MTV News, [30] writing about music, culture, and identity. The Huffington Post named his essay on Fetty Wap's song " Trap Queen" to its list of "The Most Important Writing From People of Color in 2015." [31] Discussing Abdurraqib's essay on the late Muhammed Ali as inspiration to a generation of hip-hop artists, critic Ned Raggett called the piece a "standout" among the many elegies. [32] In “A Little Devil in America,” Abdurraqib digs into historical, musicaland personal vaults to unearth layered moments of performance, such as dancing in a basement on the east side of Columbus, Ohio, to the music and videos of Whitney Houston;conversations with elders at a local BBQ joint in Memphis; andJosephine Baker working as a spy for France’s military. Abdurraqib details how these performances fit into the overall conversation centered on American culture. The best international nonfiction of 2017 | CBC Books". CBC. December 22, 2017. Archived from the original on January 6, 2018 . Retrieved January 7, 2018.

Years ago I became very familiar with Josephine Baker when our older daughter, about seven years of age at the time, was in a world premiere professional production of the musical ‘Josephine’. Our daughter played the young little white girl adopted by Josephine Baker. Edgers, Geoff (January 26, 2019). "A true fan offers a riveting tribute to A Tribe Called Quest". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 7, 2019 . Retrieved February 7, 2019. NPR's Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2017's Great Reads". NPR.org. December 5, 2017. Archived from the original on September 12, 2018 . Retrieved January 7, 2018. ABDURRAQIB: You know, Mary Wilson is kind of needling him a bit. She keeps kind of - you know, dance with me, dance with me, Don, dance with me. And he's a little uneasy at first. He's kind of flirtatious, and he's like, oh, I'll dance with you any time, you know, in his Don Cornelius voice.If, as Basquiat said, art is how we decorate space and music is how we decorate time, then perhaps writing is how we decorate memory. And no one’s writing does that quite the way Hanif Abdurraqib’s does. Abdurraqib said he set out to write a book “focused primarily on celebration, not grief or not tragedy; I wanted to become a bit of an evangelist and to say, simply, here are some miracles I’ve witnessed and I’d like to share them with you”. VICE: Hi Hanif. The extract from A Little Devil In America that you’ve kindly allowed us to publish focuses on your experience of watching music video channels when you were growing up. Can you talk a little bit about that time in your life, and what watching music on TV did for you in your formative appreciation of music and performance? ABDURRAQIB: But then she kind of kept going, and he's like, oh, she's not going to let go. And so you could see him kind of gesture to maybe a producer, and he's like, no, no, no, stop this (laughter). But she keeps going. And finally, he looks over at the crowd and very casually says, do you think I could get in that "Soul Train" line and cut up a bit? And everyone goes wild. Like, people lose their minds.

To call [Hanif] Abdurraqib anything less than one of the best writers working in America, and to call this book anything less than a masterpiece, would be doing him, and literature as a whole, a disservice.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune SN: You’re described as a poet and essayist, a cultural critic, and your work has touched on all of those elements. Do you ever get the urge to write fiction or a novel? Abdurraqib was a visiting poet teaching in the MFA program at Butler University during the fall of 2018. [27] [28] Prose [ edit ]

By Ferdinand Mount

But in that moment - that moment to me is so stark because I can't imagine what it would be like to, you know, come up only a few years later and accept this massive, massive award at an awards show that was actively rejecting your presence just a few years ago. And I imagine that takes some humility, but also some boldness and some greatness and some real heart.

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. Did that sort of introspection bring you closer in any way to sort of understanding the “capital P” performances that you talk about in the book, and the people who are performers that you talk about? Do you feel like the personal informed the historical there? MERRY CLAYTON: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. Rape, murder, yeah, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. On trauma: “One way trauma can impact us is by the way it makes us consider a polite proximity to violence and oppression as comfort.”'VENUGOPAL: You seem to have had a pretty omnivorous cultural appetite, even from a fairly young age. Is that something that started as a kid? Did it start at home? On dancing: It occurs to me now that this was the real joy of dancing: to enter a world unlike the one you find yourself burdened with, and move your body toward nothing but a prayer that time might slow down.” 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." 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.