A Little Devil in America

Notes in Praise of Black Performance

By: Hanif Abdurraqib

Narrated by: JD Jackson

National Book Award Finalist

“A masterpiece” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), a “devastating” (The New York Times) meditation on Black performance in America from the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author of Go Ahead in the Rain

One of the 10 Best Books of the Year: Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, Publishers Weekly • One of yhe Best Books of The Year: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Rolling Stone, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, She Reads, BookRiot, BookPage, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, LitHub, Library Journal, Booklist

“Gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance.” (Brit Bennett, number one New York Times best-selling author of The Vanishing Half)

“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines - whether it’s the 27 seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder”, a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt - has layers of resonance in Black and White cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance.

Touching on Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Billy Dee Williams, the Wu-Tan Clan, Dave Chappelle, and more, Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space - from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.

©2020 Hanif Abdurraqib (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Hanif Abdurraqib’s genius is in pinpointing those moments in American cultural history when Black people made lightning strike. But Black performance, Black artistry, Black freedom too often came at devastating price. The real devil in America is America itself, the one who stole the soul that he, through open eyes and with fearless prose, snatches back. This is searing, revelatory, filled with utter heartbreak, and unstoppable joy.” (Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf)

“Poignant...Abdurraqib has written an important book on the transformative power of...love.” (The New York Times)

“Abdurraqib sees performance as a site of radical questioning, experimentation, and dream-making. This book is not a work of theory. It is sensual.” (Vulture)

Great writing, great narration.

Loved it start to finish. I look forward to more books by this amazing author.

Powerful and beautiful story, insights, and flow

I loved the poetry mixed in with the storytelling. I appreciated the vulnerability and deep truths within. I'm very glad I was guided to this book.

Required reading

I cried, happy tears and sad tears so many times listening to this book. I will come back to it over and over again profoundly beautiful..

Magical

I learned about Hanif Abdurraqib from and interview with Brene Brown. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes in to realize what a gift this man and his writing is to this world. I immediately dove into this book and it did not disappoint. I will come back to this masterpiece again & again.

Stunning, perfect book.

This is a stunning, perfect book. I was changed by it’s honest and brave truths.

Blurring the lines between essays and poetry

Abdurraqib won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for his book A Fortune for Your Disaster, which I had read, and so I knew of his deep capacity to infuse language with pathos. His essays are always profound, and continually weave together seemingly disparate notions into seamless perfection. As an author, Abdurraqib revels in pressing against the boundaries of our expectations and so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I discovered as much poetry as prose in this beautiful, elegant volume of essays. But I was surprised. Again and again, the author surprises us with things that are so obviously true that they appear simple because they are honest. Abdurraqib’s hard-won vulnerability is anything but simple, however, as he illuminates an emotional landscape where “tenderness and rage are braided together”. In a book which celebrates Black performers, Abdurraqib manages to explore the innumerable ways we perform our racial identities, regardless of the color of skin we inhabit. And throughout it all, his words play harmony to his subject matter. whether he is turning last lines into first lines, or using ‘and’ as part line break, part metronome, Abdurraqib creates rhythms and incantations that get inside you as surely and unrelentingly as any of the songs or singers he writes about. By memorializing the subjects he does, Abdurraqib recovers and humanizes a series of unforgettable moments in our cultural tapestry even as they each slowly traced their own inevitable trajectories toward the stage exits of our social history. I, for one, am grateful that he did.

Poetic and lyrical in the most profound way

This is one of those books that makes you sit with your thoughts long after you’ve put it down. Hanif blends memoir, cultural critics, and history in a way that’s poetic, personal, and moving. He honors Black performers and moments in American history that often go overlooked and many have no idea about. His writing is thoughtful and I was often times hurt or excited through his words. He made me reflect with my own emotions about race.

There were parts that had me pausing just to take it all in, whether it was a reflection on dance, grief, or growing up Black in America. His writing is lyrical, but it also hits hard when it needs to(I reflected a lot of my time at Wittenberg experiencing race for the first time in my life-SMH) I appreciated how he weaved in his own stories, giving the book a flow that was intimate and intentional.

My favorite movement was the last one. Hanif gets really personal and talks about what it feels like to want to be seen but also feel the need to stay safe. He shares his own experiences and how he’s moved through the world, and there’s this deep sense for connection, for recognition, and for freedom. I loved how he ended the book by honoring Black performance and how it makes space for all the pain, the beauty, the struggle, and the joy.

The only reason I didn’t give it a full 5 stars is that some essays felt so layered or abstract that I needed to reread them to fully grasp the message, but even then, it didn’t take away from the reading. If anything, it made me want to go back and read the words over and over again.

This book is powerful, creative, and unlike anything I’ve read before. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves storytelling that challenges, honors, and resonates.

Appreciation

I do not think I am able to fully appreciate this to the extent it deserves but the poetic writing style used to tell both a personal history as well as an overall history of an under appreciated topic was impressive and insightful.

A Don’t Miss

I loved everything including the reader! JD Jackson is one of my favorite readers, and I hope he reads all of this author’s books

Flawless

Perfectly written with vulnerability and insight, and read so sincerely that I often forgot that the reader and the writer were not the same person.