A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Hanif Abdurraqib (1983–) is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic. Born into a Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio, he attended Capital University and earned a degree in marketing before embarking on his writing career.

Abdurraqib’s poetry has been published widely. His first collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (2016), was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and a nominee for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award; his second collection, A Fortune For Your Disaster (2019) won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. Abdurraqib’s essays and musical criticism have appeared in The Fader, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and MTV News. His first essay collection, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2017), was selected as the book of the year by many publications, while his second collection of essays, Go Ahead In the Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest (2019) was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.

A Little Devil in America was published in 2021, the same year Abdurraqib was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

In his work, Abdurraqib weaves his personal experiences as a Black man, his expertise on music and pop culture, and historical research to connect the individual lives to collective experiences, and to America’s identity and systems.