A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance – Hanif Abdurraqib
Go into this collection of excellent and impassioned essays knowing one thing: you’re going to leave with a list of performers and performances — some well-known and others less so — that demand attention.
With “Devil,” Hanif Abdurraqib seamlessly weaves personal anecdotes with historical fact and cultural observation. It’s something that many nonfiction writers and essayists try to do, but I’ve yet to come across a writer that does it as brilliantly as Abdurraqib.
In a single essay, I could be laughing out loud or dabbing away tears, all while compulsively scouring the internet to hear the songs, view photos or watch videos of the people he spotlights.
Music and dance are the primary focuses, and you find a celebration of those you’d expect — Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Merry Clayton and Don Cornelius — but not every essay includes a celebration. Abdurraqib offers critiques too, most notable of Dave Chappelle and his tendency to “punch down” with jokes.
However, the sections that struck me and have stuck with me are the parts of each essay where Abdurraqib puts the story firmly in context of times both past and present.
Three standout essays were about Josephine Baker (“The Josephine Baker Monument Can Never Be Large Enough”), Whitney Houston (“On the Certain and Uncertain Movement of Limbs”) and space (“Nine Considerations of Black People in Space”).
My words cannot do justice to how Abdurraqib discusses falling out of love with your home country, code-switching or dreaming big when the world tells you to think small.
In each essay, but these three in particular, he uses the central themes noted above to weave a narrative that starts hopeful and light-hearted but ends exposing some of the most hypocritical aspects of the United States and how we decided who is a hero and who is a villain.
Specifically, in “Nine,” when a discussion on the moonwalk and Labelle’s space-inspired outfits pivots into why Octavia E. Butler needed to create Afrofuturism and how Billy Dee Williams, a hero as Lando Calrissian, tossed the goodwill away when he started shilling Colt 45.
But, Abdurraqib, saved the strongest condemnation for last, connecting the death of Michael P. Anderson, a NASA astronaut killed when the space shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003 — and how that was reported and viewed — versus Trayvon Martin in 2012.
Please read this book. It was one of the most enlightening nonfiction books I’ve read in years. I’m grateful to Abdurraqib for introducing me to Alma Cummings, Ellen Armstrong, Ben Vereen, Bill Bailey and Howard “Sandman” Sims — and you will be too.
Rating (story): 5/5 stars
Rating (narration): N/A
Formats: eBook (personal library)
Dates read: February 9 – February 21, 2022
Multi-tasking: N/A
