Name: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Rating: 4.564814814814815 (54 reviews)
ISBN: 9781911545224

Hanif Aburraqib

A stunning collection of essays using music as a vantage point through which to examine and interrogate the world we live in, culturally and politically.

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Syrina

And, ultimately, the problem becomes when those men don't age beyond the ado- lescent heartbroken temper tantrums that we all have before we learn better and start to know better. It's not a measure of being morally superior to this band on stage, or not failing in my own politics around sadness, gender, and anger. But it's the difference between trying to chip away at the emotional debt one has accrued versus piling on top of it. 

 Even now, I'm not as invested in things getting better as I am in things getting honest. 

the forever-era of little brothers raiding anything that their older siblings want to keep from them

Like many of the black men who helped raise me, Ice Cube is complicated, sometimes problematic, and still often endearing. I fight internally with this, the same way I fight internally with the black spaces we all glorify: the misogyny of the barbershop,the respectability politics of the cookout.

and those fortunate enough to escape the flood became a flood themselves, and pushed the edges of another city to its breaking point

It is easy to be black and non-confrontational if nothing is on fire, and so it has never been easy to be black and non-confrontational.

Lindsay

I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.

“This, too, is a response to grief,” he tells us. “Covering yourself in the spoils of your survival.”

a blessing is a brief breath to take in that doesn’t taste of whatever is holding you under;

The soundtrack to grief isn’t always as dark as the grief itself. Sometimes what we need is something to make the grief seem small, even when you know it’s a lie.

I, like so many of you, am now looking to get my joy back, after it ran away to a more deserving land than this one. And maybe this is what it’s like to live in these times: the happiness is fleeting, and so we search for more while the world burns around us.

We’ve run out of ways to weaponize sadness, and so it becomes an actual weapon.

I considered how often there is shame attached to loving anyone publicly. The shame, of course, comes on a sliding scale, depending on who you are and who you love.

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Willis-Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays--Willis-Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

Essays

this essay collection is a gift to the world. the world today is not too different from the world of 2016, and if it is, it is because it is far, far, worse; abdurraqib's careful cynicism and measured optimism feels like the wisdom we need to continue living and doing more, with more intention, responsibility, and hope, while the world goes up in flames. this essay collection sits less like cultural criticism (though it is) and more like a manifesto, a declaration, a writer speaking through the journey of finding, and perhaps, having found, the I in the we. abdurraqib's insistence on love and sincerity is remarkable and so, so beautiful—brief notes on staying, on future, and surviving on small joys made me weep. a masterclass on the sharp pivot, the associative leap in the essay, and living the poetics we declare. a true joy to read, and an honour to be a poet in the world at the same time as abdurraqib

biddy

phenomenal! Abdurraqib's writing is so empathetic and so CLEAN. (bonus is that I had my mom read his essay on Bruce Springsteen and she enjoyed it) 

Annie Millman

phenomenal! Abdurraqib's writing is so empathetic and so CLEAN. (bonus is that I had my mom read his essay on Bruce Springsteen and she enjoyed it) 
 

Patrick Book

Having never read his work before, I am overwhelmed by it. As pop culture analysis, Abdurraqib has an impeccable way of weaving the joy and unbelievable darkness and sadness of his nation together and finding threads of powerful insightful intertwined with them. His writing is beautiful and heartbreaking and vivid, and his shifts in style and structure make the essay collection format work incredibly well. His perspective on race and class and how “outsiders” are forced to live and are treated in American life is particularly eye-opening. 

I am astounded by this book.

Ryan Mateyk

Singular and vulnerable. You go into an essay supposedly about Carly Rae Jepsen or Fall Out Boy or Migos and you come out with a ne perspective on growing up or grief or race. 

elizabeth

kayla 

Natalie

A collection of short essays, a small thread from the last leading into the next, all of it weaving a sensitive exploration on the many forms of violence that pervade the US today. Empathetic and brilliant

tori

Beautiful writing. Experiencing via audiobook was 10/10. This will be a book I come back to over and over again.

One of the best social critiques I have ever read. It’s phenomenal in the most heart wrenching, soul-searching, ruin everything you know and love in the best of ways, ways. Though my age, regional familiarity, and musical tastes differ substantially from the author-creating a lot of cultural dissonance that even a Spotify playlist of songs couldn’t mediate-, I see this as a flaw of mine rather than the writer’s. I feel like so much was packed into this one piece that I know I could read it 5x and uncover different brilliance each time. 

Angel Martinez

I thought this book was going to simply chronicle the music the author and I both love and the experiences that are associated with them but it just delves so much deeper and turns into this profound exploration of race and human relationships and struggle and hope. I don't think I've read anything more beautiful I'm going to lose my mind

ben wolfson

usually not one for essays, but beautiful prose. a music writer that can make everything so personal and distill moments regarding a single song.

Clara Jo

Wow. This book read like a crescendo. Breathtaking, refreshingly honest, and poignant unlike anything I’ve read. And the way Hanif Abdurraqib writes about music is absolutely mesmerizing.

Jennifer Dieter

There are some people who were born to be writers, and Hanif Abdurraqib is one of them. I never thought a book of mostly essays about albums and musical artists - several of whom I have not listened to - could be so moving and powerful. Many of the essays were crafted in 2016, and it’s a testament to how little but yet how much has changed in these four years. While I wish I had listened to my friends who praised this collection earlier, I think I picked it up at exactly the right time.

Cola

This book was one of the best things I've read in the past decade.

juneau

Willow Sando-McCall

Katie Ray O'Reilly

Hanif Abdurraqib

*2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" —TODAY Show *Best Books of 2018 —Rolling Stone "A Best Book of 2017" —NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily *American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads' *Midwest Indie Bestseller In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times. "Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him." —Greil Marcus, Village Voice

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

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