A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, talent and allegiance, and of course, LeBron Jamesâfrom the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America
While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our cultureâs most insightful critics, he is most of all, at heart, an Ohioan. Growing up in Columbus in the 1990s, Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron were forged, and countless others werenât. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with memoir. âHere is where I would like to tell you about the form on my fatherâs jumpshot,â Abdurraqib writes. âThe truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.â
Thereâs Always This Year is a classic Abdurraqib triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. Itâs about basketball in the way They Canât Kill Us Until They Kill Us is about music and A Little Devil in America is about historyâno matter the subject, Abdurraqibâs exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.