I was raised of course to imagine the minstrel show as only shameful. I’d gotten into reading about minstrelsy and minstrel shows – journals of old minstrel show performers, some of them talking about how they did not only feel shame when performing. So what inspired you to write a book about black performance? His new book, A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, weaves together moments of personal recollection with a profound meditation on the performances of black American artists from Josephine Baker to Beyoncé. His 2019 follow-up, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us(2017), was named a book of the year by O, the Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork and the Chicago Tribune among others. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (2016), was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer book prize and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright legacy award. H anif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio.
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