The Paris Review – What to Celebrate? An interview with Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib spent the winter with shovels. In his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, he would often spend hours clearing the snow from his driveway only to start again as soon as he was done. Sometimes his neighbor was out there too, and as they prepared for the cold and the work ahead of them, they exchanged grins, raised eyebrows, and nods as if to say, Ain’t that some shit. Abdurraqib laughs as he offers this anecdote, not only because it’s funny, but also because of the simple, bubbly joy that arises from such interactions – when you’re with your people and things don’t need to be explained or even spoken, understood will.

But how do you bring these moments into language? In part, this is the project of A little devil in America, Abdurraqib’s new collection of essays on the history of Black Performance in the United States. It’s Whitney and Michael, minstrels and blackface, school dances and sports games. Soul train and a spade table and so many other cultural artifacts that have been preserved under a loving microscope for Abdurraqib’s careful examination. A skilled author, poet, and critic with books like Go ahead in the rain: Notes on a Tribe called Quest (2019) and They can’t kill us until they kill us (2017) under his belt, Abdurraqib is in complete control here, balancing the personal and the public as he explores the heritage, nuance, and sometimes, yes, the shame of black achievement while surrendering himself to control – the limits his past itself, the limits of all this love.

As we spoke on the phone earlier this year, discussing optimism, gratitude and grace, I was reminded of the poem by Lucille Clifton, which reads, “Come celebrate / with me that every day / something has tried to kill me / and is failed. “I thought about it again as I reread the last essay of the book in which Abdurraqib writes,” Isn’t that the whole point of gratitude? To have a tireless understanding of all the ways you could have disappeared, but Not? “

Although Abdurraqib admits that he feels cynical at times, A little devil in America is proof of still being here and still finding moments to celebrate despite everything else. If you were to turn a nod into something that could be on the pages of a book, it would look like this. If you were to tell someone that you love them, miss them, and be happy to know them, you would hope it sounds like that. There is no exaggerated sentimentality, but there is music and even dance, even in the midst of grief.

INTERVIEWER

in the A little devil in AmericaThey celebrate the joy of Black’s performance but don’t shy away from the difficult story. Can you talk a little about it

ABDURRAQIB

When I first wrote the book, I spent a lot of time surrounded by minstrels and black faces. Much of this is still in the finished book, but it anchored the original designs. I don’t want to belittle my previous books, of course, but I think it was a different kind of thrill to spend time deep in the archives of performances that I might once have considered just embarrassing or just frustrating. Adding humanity and lighting up some corners of those felt really good. In the reports I read, minstrels often talked about how the stage, in some ways, brought them closer to a kind of freedom to which they otherwise would not have had access. And that way has redefined my thinking about shame and survival – making something of what they had at the time, soaring to heights denied every other round. That doesn’t mean I am in favor of minstrel shows, but it was important to re-contextualize, think about what it is like to be an enslaved person or relative who had been enslaved and had very few resources to get on to act in a way that gave power to the people.

INTERVIEWER

You spend time doing so many different public and private performances and types of performances. How has your definition of achievement evolved, particularly in terms of how it is embedded in the black community?

ABDURRAQIB

As someone who performed in a variety of ways – a high school athlete, a drama club member, a poet reading things on stage – I wanted to step back and wonder what I thought was the fullest and richest take on the black performance to be and through these interpretations how I could celebrate it. For example, when I think of the game of spades as a kind of performance, I get closer to wanting to celebrate it or to name the joy that comes from witnessing and being immersed in the game. I love it when someone breaks new house rules that are just their shit and I always think, oh yeah, I know what’s going on. And that is also the performance within the performance. Even if I don’t know what the hell is going on, I’ll still pretend. And I’d prefer to fake it until I manage to be outside of the experience – even if the outside is still loving, even if it’s people I love and who love me, I still want to be in it fold . Because in this fold I know that there is an affection that cannot be duplicated.

INTERVIEWER

So do you write inside or outside? Is there an imaginary audience, and if so, how do you get them into those more esoteric moments without compromising intimacy?

ABDURRAQIB

I think a lot about what will serve the people who not only know what I’m trying to do but also don’t need an explanation. It’s really solemn to get on the side and know that you are in conversation with someone who trusts you, who understands that you don’t need to be guided through something you lived and who isn’t trying to waste your time to waste. Well, there are some things that I don’t mind for historical reasons, but I won’t explain the rules of spades or any particular dance move if I can paint a picture of a time or person. The description of Don Cornelius – in voice, stature, elegance – does the reader a better job than explaining what Soul train is. It serves people who understand where I want to take them and who, instead of looking for explanations, may be looking for an image that will enliven their memory of something or someone. And as a writer, I think my voice can be a lot more playful when I feel like I’m in a conversation with people who know what I’m talking about. I can write as if I were in the room and we laugh across the table. And I wanted to repeat that – the feeling of being in a room with my people and going back and forth over something unimportant that means the world to us at this moment.

INTERVIEWER

Can communities, even if they are of affection and love, sometimes be alienating?

ABDURRAQIB

alienation is a harsh word, but I don’t mind being outside of a community that my presence would hinder me. Sometimes – at least for me – it’s best to move, get out of the way. And to be honest, there are some groups and communities that I am unable or unwilling to be part of because the community has always felt like a very deliberate project to me and still feels like worry and hold your people tight

There is a sense of self that I strive for, perhaps to understand what to offer to whom and when to offer it. Other than that, sometimes it’s best to stay outside of something. There is a notion of achievement as an obstacle to keeping away those who may not understand and are not required to understand every type of interaction, and I think the approach to the book was similar. I could only write about the parts of the performance and the testimony of the performance as I saw it. I never wanted to be an expert, but I wanted to present myself as someone who had thought a lot about performance and survival over different generations.

INTERVIEWER

For all the eras and generations the book spans, so much of it feels rooted in your own youth. You give a lot of grace to this time, to this stumbling process, to find out what you liked and how you were, especially when both could have been flawed.

ABDURRAQIB

I’m really excited about the opportunity to go back and say, well, I was wrong, but I was wrong due to a number of circumstances. Sometimes I didn’t even say I did the best with the tools I had at the time, but said the tools I had at the time were flawed and I didn’t do the best with them, but now I’m interested in mentally reformatting something from the past without depriving myself of what it meant to me when I first met it. For example, I don’t feel about Michael Jackson the way I did when he died. But in the book I write about his death and his funeral because that moment drove my thinking about death and funerals. I am never committed to anything that I once believed in. Instead, I feel more committed to finding new information and making adjustments based on that information. But there is no way I feel obliged to like. Well, I believed it or felt it once so I have to carry it with me for the rest of my life or I have to feel bad about it. I think there is a more interesting investigation in between –Why I believed something. And if I measure that against what I now believe, what can be exhumed from it? Which is more worthwhile than just waving a finger at my past self.

INTERVIEWER

What about the use of performance and representation in media and culture?

ABDURRAQIB

My big thought is always that whatever representation is or could be, if it does not serve the eventual liberation and ability of blacks to determine their own ways, I don’t know if it is really useful. The politics of representation – I mean, especially literally in politics – has so often hampered progress. I’ve seen it stifle progress for people who work locally, for people who have been organizing in their communities for decades, for generations of people who raised blacks in their communities. I hope that people will continue not to be satisfied with the look of the representation and keep coming back to work. Because there will always be more work to be done.

I am someone who has organized my church and continues to do so, and I think one thing that has helped me is being in touch with people who are already here and asking them all the time what the people here need and how I can be of use to empower and liberate these people. I am proud of this book and I love this book, but when I write a book it doesn’t do anything material in terms of liberation across the board or the people I care about, especially here in Columbus, but also nationally and globally . I’m not trying to belittle my job – I’m very proud of it – but I try to separate the work that I do as a person who creates things from the work that I aspire to that will hopefully outlive anything I produce on the side.

INTERVIEWER

In one of the sections on Whitney Houston you write, “No matter how much our people love us, they cannot protect us.” So what can we do? What can love do

ABDURRAQIB

Well, I try to be very thoughtful about the limits of love and the limits of excitement and the limits of my own curiosity. And the limits of what I consider freedom. In a way, it’s because I’m admittedly too cynical, even though I don’t consider myself pessimistic. I often come across understanding the limits to what extent a love for a person and a person’s love for himself can carry them. I think love can take us very far, but we all come up against our individual limits – limits that have been increased especially in the last eleven or twelve months. I believe that late last summer those limits went beyond what many people believed possible because we were operating in a country that by nature is not meant to reciprocate the love that is poured into it. And even if love is not poured out, even if that love is withheld, the country can punish at a level that is inconsistent with the restraint, which is much more severe than the restraint – at the community level, but also at a very individual level .

So much of my investment in the solemn nature of the book, or in hoping that most of the book will be solemn, has been to come to terms with the limits of my affection and write with an understanding that – this feels very cynical about it say – I don’t want to take for granted the joyful curiosity I have because it’s not promised, not guaranteed. I’ve seen the world and the country drag away only the people I love and continue to drag away the people I love, and in my brain and heart I’m always celebrating what is mine Volk has done and can do it, but I worry that one day I will run out of language for this excitement. I’m not anywhere near it now, but I worry that due to the exhaustion of having to witness, testify and participate in a struggle entwined with a story that existed before I was born and likely will exist after me gone … I just don’t want to take the partying for granted when I can still conjure it up. And I don’t want to take for granted those little moments of pleasure that go beyond anger or sorrow or sadness as long as I can still articulate and illuminate them with some kind of beauty. And that is exactly what the persecution of this book was about. And again the understanding opened up to me that it won’t save anyone or change the materials of the machines that many people I love are still trapped in, for more joy and a far-reaching understanding of celebration and the nuances of small movements.

INTERVIEWER

They say you feel cynical, but the book does such a good job of being solemn and making you feel so generous and thoughtful. Where do you find this celebration?

ABDURRAQIB

There is almost a cautious optimism. I don’t just call myself a pessimist because I grew up with so many people who found optimism when none could be found. It was important for me to write about Ellen Armstrong and her famous trick of showing a coin behind the ear of an eager onlooker. It was especially important to me that she did this trick for blacks and poor blacks who didn’t have a lot of money, and made them feel like they were walking around and holding more than they ever knew they’d done.

I grew up with people who I watched things materialize out of nowhere when it felt bad, and almost certainly they were. And I’m not talking about the kind of empty but true feeling, at least you have your health. I mean in a very specific and material way. Just as the lights go out because the electricity bill can’t be paid, but it means we can break out the candles and hear a good story from someone, it means that through storytelling we can come together and bond with an ancestor. That feels to me like optimism or optimism that comes from a bad situation. I see it in some of my actual behaviors now. And to be clear, I’m not an optimist – I’m just not a pessimist. I’m somewhere in between. I live alone and go into the winter pandemic months with less enthusiasm than the warmer months, but I still find little joys that don’t separate me from the treacherous nature of the moment lived, from which I lose one breathing exercise to the next. I need that drive, but I never want to be so optimistic that I am detached from the reality of a situation

INTERVIEWER

How do you balance optimism with cynicism – especially now, after last year?

ABDURRAQIB

The book has gone through many changes. There was one draft that I thought was too focused on the whites, and there was one draft that was just full of sadness – and I’ve already written a book that contains a lot of sadness. Obviously the book was ready by the time the riots started last year, but by the end of last summer I was on the street with people and at the end of a night – and this was a night when the cops beat people’s asses like all summer – someone took out a radio and just put it on the street and started playing music. And almost like clockwork, like a wave effect, a few people started dancing, a few more people started dancing and a circle was formed. And then it became a whole thing. And that was at the end of the night, right? This happened after people had to flush people’s eyes from tear gas and after people had to put coats on those who were trying to protect their faces. And after that, after the grief and the weight of being outside, there was still the energy, the energy to feel something that made us celebrate. Even if the casual viewer, who may not know the subtleties of the black celebration, may have looked at us like this: What is there to celebrate? It felt tragic, of course, but it felt kind of like home. Because without speaking, someone brought out music, and that was the keyword. People just started dancing and formed a circle to protect the dancing people. This is a perfect example of what doesn’t need to be spoken or explained. And through this, by withholding explanation, there is a joy that I think is only for us.

Langa Chinyoka is a writer and lives in New York City.