Books › A Little Devil in America
A Little Devil in America
320 pages
A lyrical, deeply personal exploration of how Black performance shapes the very fabric of American culture.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting in a cramped living room with a brilliant friend who is spinning records and unraveling history through song and movement. The pace is steady and deeply reflective, allowing the reader to sit inside moments of profound poignancy and sudden, sharp humor. Abdurraqib’s prose is a marvel of rhythm and lyricism, brimming with both jubilation and pain as it weaves together the grand stages of midcentury Paris and the intimate stakes of a schoolyard fistfight or a game of spades. It is an atmosphere that feels intensely familiar yet desperately urgent, wrapping cultural criticism in the warmth of personal memoir. This will delight readers who crave generous, heart-forward essays that exalt the intersections of art, race, and everyday life.
- Mood
- poignant
- jubilant
- urgent
- intimate
- Tone
- reflective
- generous
- insightful
- lyrical
- humorous
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- Black performance and legacy · cultural resonance · personal grief and love · American empire and race · the rhythm of everyday life
- The writing
- Brimming with jubilation and pain, the prose is deeply infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the music it celebrates.
- The arc
- Moves through layers of historical resonance and personal grief, ultimately arriving at a jubilant exaltation of Black artistry and everyday life.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate lyrical cultural criticism that seamlessly blends historical analysis with deeply personal memoir.
Content notes
- grief
- racism
- references to rape and murder
About the book
At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,” she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance.
Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.
Description from Open Library.
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