A Little Devil in America
By Hanif Abdurraqib
- Genre
- Art, Culture & Creative Life
- Publisher
- Random House (Penguin Random House)
- Publication year
- 2021
- ISBN
- 9781984801197
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance is an essay collection by the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib, published by Random House in March 2021. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize, and was a National Book Award finalist.
Hanif Abdurraqib writes about culture the way the best DJs mix records - associatively, rhythmically, with sudden turns that land as revelation. A Little Devil in America is a book-length meditation on Black performance, moving from Josephine Baker to Soul Train, from card games to Whitney Houston, from Merry Clayton's wail on 'Gimme Shelter' to the author's own griefs. It is criticism, memoir and elegy braided so tightly they become one form. Abdurraqib's gift is to make you feel the stakes of a dance move or a note, to show how performance carries the weight of a people's joy and survival. intendle recommends it as a masterpiece of the essay, dazzling in its music and generous in its attention. Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize and a National Book Award finalist, it confirmed its author, a MacArthur Fellow, as one of the essential critics of his generation.