[A] wide, deep, and discerning inquest into the Beauty of Blackness as enacted on stages and screens, in unanimity and discord, on public airwaves and in intimate spaces.

It's an absolutely brilliant book from a critic who's become one of the country's most essential writers.

... features Hanif Abdurraqib’s considerable talents as a poet, essayist and thoughtful social commentator. Reading this book reminded me of listening to the late night DJs of my youth who used songs as the starting point to improvise a jazz solo of murmured conversation and mellifluous contemplation. Abdurraqib also belongs in the special order of those who magically entwine musicality, voice and narrative in the liminal place between sleep and wakefulness where all is possible, and temporality is fluid.

Music, [...] in the work of Hanif Abdurraqib, is more like a vehicle for getting closer to what it means to be feel joy, and history, and shame, and anger, and lonesomeness.

... brilliant.

... this poet, cultural critic, essayist and music buff uses the tales of Black performers to make poignant observations about race in America while using Black performance as a metaphor for the transcendent imagination, gliding through television, music, film, minstrel shows, vaudeville and even space. The book is also a candid self-portrait of Abdurraqib’s experience as a Black man, written with sincerity and emotion.

He addresses the reader and skates between subjects. He might consider astrology, Michael Jackson, Blade Runner 2049 and the musician Sun Ra in pursuit of a single thought, as if in late-night, errant conversation with a friend. This is not to say the essays lack discipline. Every subject is carefully chosen in the service of a broader critical project.

Of all the writers currently working on the American scene, there are few capable of producing prose I admire as much as Hanif Abdurraqib’s and none whom I have less interest in trying to emulate. His perspective is idiosyncratic and coolly confident. He gives the impression that he can transfer his entire self onto the page and remain completely at ease while doing so. His store of knowledge is intimidating, and his style inimical.

... yet another domain of performance is Black masculinity and its heartbreaking negotiation of love and violence, which Abdurraqib depicts, skillfully and tenderly, toward the book’s finale. Indeed, when seen from this vantage, Abdurraqib’s meditations on performance could extend ad infinitum. In his mind it becomes not so much a discrete event or object but rather any attempt to bridge the questions who am I? and what could I someday be, and who will be there with me? That bridge is life itself, and one walks across it until one grows insensate, abandons the company of others, or otherwise reaches the other side.

The way in which Abdurraqib writes about performance in Little Devil in America' posits Black freedom.

His approach to blending research and memoir imbues the lives of historical figures with a genuine warmth and care that is often missing from other approaches to reportage and history. No rigor is lost because of this love; in fact, Abdurraqib is even more incisive than critics who may have a bone to pick with the object of criticism. It’s through his love that he is able to reveal insights into the artists and performers themselves, as well as the way that history links to the present—both in his own life and in the wider world.

At heart a personal essayist, [Abdurraqib] prefers to approach big themes stealthily, often from an unusual angle. He has an enviable ability to move from a wider cultural phenomenon to the personal in a couple of sentences.

... confirms that The Can’t Kill Us was no one-hit-wonder. The same keen intelligence, boyhood exuberance, thoughtful soul- searching and zinging wit are all happily present in these essays on dancing, singing, fighting, spying, electioneering, cinema, magic, card playing, going to the moon… you get the picture.

... delves into the many iterations of Black artistic expression through an often deeply personal lens.

Abdurraqib pens respectful, heartwarming essays that reflect on other giants in music, television, cinema, and even magic. From intense dance marathons to afternoon sock hops, from the funerals of Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin to games of spades to barroom brawls, he examines the feeling of invisibility that haunts so many Black Americans.

staggeringly intimate meditation, essayist and poet Abdurraqib, chronicles Black performance in American culture.

A thoughtful memoir rolled into a set of joined essays on life, death, and the Black experience in America.