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Hanif shines as an essayist in his collection of short works that highlight the fine line between pop culture and social infrastructure. Representing Columbus Ohio rippling magnitudes through the power of clever comparisons, humanizing pop stars, and proclaiming the cultural prophets of modern day. Like a disciple of the peoples culture, Abdurraqib documents the pivotal moments where art and culture were being crucified by an ignorant society. With feats like a MacArthur fellowship award, to seamlessly blending personal narrative into cultural commentary, like in such publications as The New Yorker, Hanif Abdurraqib is a cultural oracle of our generation.

Notable Works

"They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us"

"The Crown Ain't Worth Much"

"A Little Devil In America"

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Hanif Abdurraqib is a Ohio native and graduate of Beechcroft High School in Columbus. His experience as an acclaimed poet, essayist, and cultural critiques are special for their balance of personal insight and analysis of society and how it copes with worldly pressures and stereotypes. Hanif's list of achievements continue to accrue, including impressive awards like the Gordon Burn Prize, the 2020 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the 2022 Andrew Carnagie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Also nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and a PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award.

This interview speaks the Hanifs critique of artist producing art from home, not needing to export themselves to a bustling organism like a city, foreign to the ecosystem then were born into, like home, and directly ensure its survival and success of where you belong or belonged to.

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Hanif Abdurraqib – “There’s Always This Year” | The Daily Show

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or Aka the Genius Grant, Hanif was awarded this prestigious honor in 2021 for his “Forging a distinctive style of cultural and artistic criticism through the lens of popular music and autobiography.”

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The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, we work to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.

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In this essay, Hanif reflects on attending a Bruce Springsteen concert where he explores themes like race, nostalgia, and belonging in America. Springsteen's music is often a celebration of the working class, Abdurraqib questions what it means to be a Black man in a largely white crowd. Springsteen often sings about hope and pain but Abdurraqib wonders whose pain is being validated in an america where white privilege or white plight is always prioritized over minorities. Interestingly, nostalgia plays a part in the exclusion that Hanif feels, like an experience he can't be a part of, making him feel left out even in a crowd of people. Although Hanif appreciates Springsteen, his must unpack the contradictions of art that excludes those it doesn't think of excluding in the first place. Prophetically Hanif writes, "What it must feel like to imagine that no one in America will be killed while a man sings a song about the promise of living."

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This is a performance by Hanif Abdurraquib from 2016. This piece speaks volumes to to the contingent existence of a child brought into the world out of personal fulfillment, hellish circumstance, and not out of love. The love a person creates for the small piece of the world that provides the essence of 'somethingness' for those who needed to be "good for something."

"You do not have to apologize for the things you have thrown yourself into when the sun goes down"

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In this deeply moving essay, Hanif is raw and honest. He explores the complexities of living with despair and how emotional turmoil fractures your world. He reflects on his personal experience with suicidal ideation, revealing he used to feel that way but now feels a renewed, still painful, commitment to life. A support group that provides radical intimacy in a space where the truth has no reason to hide. A powerful experience that helped Hanif cope with these existential thoughts, like celebrating life's simplicity; like the love from a dog. I loved how he rejects false optimism, he offers a defense for despair, its use as fuel for compassion, motivation, community,honesty and even joy. Where nurturing empathy in a world where survival itself can be a radical act of defiance and love.

"I guess you all get me tonight, because i'm not dead."

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The feeling is most commonly framed as an end point, a level of despondency that cannot be overcome. But it doesn’t have to be so.

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Some themes of the semester that were useful for identifying certain writing tactics like Hanifs use of Vignettes and metaphors.

Honestly this project was so so broad that the objectives of this class I am not sure what has to do with what. I think this was useful for finding and organizing information but given more time I think this could have been helpful to have specific class objectives to meet instead of how broad the guidelines were.

I think my improvement is fair, I have tried to expand on what I know and I enjoy challenging myself. I really think if the rules were not so broad, then it would have been more successful as a semester closer because I find myself wondering how relevant this project was to the course itself. I think the responsibility of relaying someones story is a privilege and one should always try to do so delicately and intentionally. Honestly, modality was fun and nice but an entirely extra feat. I think this project would be great for the middle of class but it felt rushed and at first it was read two works by an author or artist but then its also only two chapters or articles so consistency and giving less open ended options because I think its probably easier to listen to an album than it is to read two books or something. I think the final should have been held via zoom because it was so informal and I looked everywhere for the final mandatory date and could not find it, so to take off work for an entire day to show up at 10 and leave by 10:45 was just a lot.