| Title | : | There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0593448790 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780593448793 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | Expected publication March 26, 2024 |
While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our culture’s 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 weren’t. 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. “Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father’s jumpshot,” Abdurraqib writes. “The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.”
There’s Always This Year is a classic Abdurraqib triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. It’s about basketball in the way They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us is about music and A Little Devil in America is about history—no matter the subject, Abdurraqib’s 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.
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension Reviews
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"Praise be to the underdogs and those who worship in the church of slim chances."
No one is doing it like Hanif Abdurraqib. At this point, I truly think he could write the phone book and I'd still read it cover to cover (and probably cry). You don't have to love basketball to love this book. This is a story of community, loss, connection, hope. You feel everything Hanif is feeling in these pages. The writing is lyrical, moving, and there are moments that stopped me in my tracks. I'm struggling to eloquently write a review that does this book justice. Just go read it for yourself, ok?
Thank you to Hanif for sharing his talent, to Netgally for the ARC, and most of all to ME for already pre-ordering this book months ago as soon as it was announced, despite being drunk at a Dave and Busters when said pre-order link went live. I can't wait to have this on my shelf. -
SIX STARS. and to think I thought the reviews were lying. I heard, and read, “I don’t care about basketball but I loved this!” so much, and I was skeptical. I knew I would like this because it’s Hanif, but I thought I’d have to force interest a little bit – push through a layer of basketball-jargon I didn’t care about to get to the meat of it. I was so wrong, and I’m so happy. This book is completely and entirely deserving of its overwhelming early praise, the vast-majority five star reviews, the raving from friends… I mean just look at me!!! I am *not* the target audience for a book about 90s/00s basketball in Columbus, Ohio, but I am still saying with my whole chest that this is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
This book is divided into five sections: a pregame and four quarters. Each quarter starts with the clock at 12:00, and slowly counts its way down to the buzzer. By 11:30, you know what Hanif is talking about. By 10:00, you know what Hanif is really talking about. And by 2:00, you get what he was really, really talking about all along. And then by 0:00, you finally get it. Anyone who’s read Hanif knows what I’m talking about. Hanif writes in layers so closely, poetically, precisely intertwined that it looks like a single image until he starts slowly peeling them away, revealing metaphor after connection after insight. Which is why, for example, in the third quarter, Hanif speaks about Lebron leaving the Cavs for the Heat in 2010, while also talking about heartbreak, longing, begging, and desperation, and all the different ways these feelings have manifested in Hanif’s own life, in his friends’ lives, in his city, in great music.
Out of the three books of his I’ve read, this was easily my favourite, and that’s saying lots because I loved the other two. But out of them all, this is the most autobiographical. Through the book, you watch Hanif grow up from a boy at his kitchen table, staring at the beads of sweat on his dad’s bald head, to a high schooler chasing Kenny Gregory’s car down the street with his friends, to a young adult incarcerated watching the Cavs on the prison TV, to a grown man homesick, watching Lebron’s return to Cleveland from a city he doesn’t want to be in, crying because he wants to be home.
I could not speak more highly of this book. No one writes like Hanif. Read this, even if you’re like me and absolutely not cool enough to love this as much as you did. -
There is no writer living, in my opinion, that can write about heartbreak, community, loss. grief, and hope like Hanif Abdurraqib. This may seem like a book about basketball; and it is, in a way. It's helpful to go in knowing about Lebron James' "decision" to leave Cleveland and his triumphant return, bringing a championship to a long-struggling city, but it's not essential. There's Always This Year is more about a place than anything--and you don't have to live in Cleveland or Columbus to recognize the emotions Abdurraqib so effusively expresses regarding his home.
If you've ever loved a place, or left a place, you'll understand. He so effortlessly puts to page what might otherwise seem impossible to articulate. -
One of my favorite qualities about Hanif’s writing is his ability to draw the extraordinary out of the ordinary and often times overlooked. His writing is this invitation where he says, beloved, let me pull back the curtain and show you all the beauty and life that lies here.
Like the nobility of the dude who shows up to the park with a bald, worn out basketball.
Or the way the hood honors homecomings; people pouring out to praise your return simply because it is a return.
Yes this is a book for people who love basketball, but it’s also a book for people who love people and the places that make them; people who admire the richness of the human, and more specifically black, experience—particularly when marginalization has sought to strip it of value.
Thanks to Randomhouse and NetGalley for the ARC. Excited to buy a copy for everyone in my life. -
Hanif Abdurraqib simply doesn't miss. Ever. When you first see this book the initial reaction if you're like me is "Wow, that cover is literally gorgeous," but the following feeling is "Oh! This is a book about basketball!" which I would argue the book should not be pigeon holed as because while yes, it is a book about basketball it is also a book about loving a place and never wanting to leave but having to leave anyways. It's a book about love, and grief, and of course, as all of his books are, some of it is about Hanif himself.
I think that the way he writes his books are intimate in that he pulls from his own life experience and the way he parallels his home and his life to LeBron James's is deeply interesting. The thing to note is I could not have pick LeBron James out in a line up. I am not a basketball fan and yet this book had me on the verge of tears.
Basically, this book is everything I could have asked for. I adore his non fiction and I'm so thankful to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eARC of this book in exchange for a review. There’s Always This Year is out March 26, 2024 -
ARC for review. To be published March 26, 2024.
This review originally published in the Charleston (WV) Gazette Mail, Saturday/Sunday, January 27-28, 2024.
Basketball and the realities of life in the city - first as an economically displace youth, then as a man - combine to paint vivid pictures in this wonderful book by Hanif Abdurraqib, author of the National Book Award finalist “A Little Devil in America.”
The author grew up in Columbus, Ohio, during the same period LeBron James was playing high school ball just up the road in Akron and then, later, during his two periods with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Abdurraqib and his friends went to see him play many times, so LeBron’s career is a theme throughout, especially the idea that when LeBron returned to Cleveland with the idea of winning a championship for the city (which, of course, he did) he brought the entire city together. The author cited a Nike commercial that brought him, exiled to Connecticut at the time, to tears.
He also highlights many excellent high school players in his own home city, a fact he loves “for how it opens the gates to dreaming and offers an everywhere.” And very few of them are LeBrons; most of them don’t make it to the NBA, but “of all the reasons I love the hood the greatest reason is for how we honor our homecomings,” no matter whether it’s someone coming home from college or prison.
Abdurraqib lauds the pickup games to be found in any city, and decries the time when Columbus took its rims down, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He recalls “…my pal who used to pull a heavy gold cross from his neck and pay the block kids some coin to hold on to it tight while he lit up the eastside courts now wears a robe with a gold cross…my pal tells me there is no real difference between resurrection and revival ‘cept that the latter can sometime require a human intervention.”
He defines sports trash talk, on any level, as a kind of love, writing, “you are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you.”
Pickup games are but one important rite of passage in the city. There are also sections on the importance of black men’s hair (and the decision to go bald) and cars (and their sound systems.)
It comes as no surprise that Abdurraqib is a poet, because the language here is magical, lyrical, and has a rhythm - much like the back-and-forth sway of teams going up and down the court, taking their turns with the ball, singing the songs of young black men.
He recalls the first time he was in jail, when his first cellmate, years older than him, told him, “‘Don’t worry, man, whatever they do to you, they gonna do to all of us.’ At first, I thought what he was saying was ‘We all got your back,’ but the more I thought about it, I think he was actually saying, ‘No one in here suffers alone,’ which is close to the same thing but also decidedly not.” And throughout, this is what Abdurraqib seems to be saying about the city. No one suffers alone.
During that first jail stay, he has nothing other than a spare pair of socks that a friendly guard gave him, and he guarded them with all he had…and at night pretended that rolled up pair was a basketball.
The year LeBron returned to Cleveland was also the year of the murder of Tamir Rice. The author notes that the police officers seemed unafraid and that “a city is a container for heartbreak,” stating “my heart, and perhaps yours, hums at the frequency of a lie and ever-present breaking.”
However, Abdurraqib tried living away from Columbus and was constantly dissatisfied, and always looking for reasons to go home. The city was him and he was his city, “and there were no games like those games. To be an audience to that impossible miracle. This many good players in a radius of a mile or less.” Home. -
Wow. A full review of this ARC to come. But for now, wow.
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this recent release from essayist and poet, hanif abdurraqib, begs the question, "how well do we know the game?" as There's Always This Year delivers four quarters of inquiry. this text uses the structure of a 4 quarter contest to maneuver between prose and poetry. the work is a compelling example of creative writing where abdurraqib's form is an adaptive storytelling decision alongside a familiar athletic conceit.
reading the first half of this book was lovely. i enjoyed each story and recollection of Ohio history. the tales of aviators and local, hometown basketball phenoms were compelling and complimented abdurraqib's compelling reflection on childhood, adolescence, and the consequences of ascension. after the third quarter, i am yearning for a triumphant ending (as many are in print and in life). yet, the fourth quarter stings. i am reminded of death (meaning murder), the return of a King, and the role of fascism in constructing the terms of order. after three quarters of compelling storytelling, the fourth slows. we, a captivated audience, are left to contend with how we expected a story, beginning as this one does (with an explanation of the violent stipulations of the game), to end.
fans of hanif abdurraqib (and midwestern Black history) will enjoy the creative choices made concerning form that assist in the work feeling like a lesson in intimate craftsmanship and attention to Black geographies.
long-form review of this title will be coming in print and online. -
I will read Hanif Abdurraqib write about anything – essays, poetry, music criticism, Instagram captions (probably my favorite author social media follow). I’m also a basketball and sports fan, so I was very excited to read this one. And it IS about basketball—the Fab Five, the neighborhood legends (lots of Colombus OH native Kenny Gregory love, for us Jayhawks fans), the underdogs, and most notably about Lebron. It is even structured like a basketball game, divided into four quarters with a clock counting down each.
But this is a book about SO much more, written with such vulnerability and empathy and piercing insight and care. It is about place and community—leaving, staying, homecoming. It is about heroes and villains, or enemies and loves. (The book’s fantastic opening line: “"You will surely forgive me if I begin this brief time we have together by talking about our enemies"). It is about memory and family and friendship. It is about incarceration and police violence and protests. It is about joy and heartbreak and loss and hope.
And oh, the writing. At turns beautiful and lyrical and sharp and cutting and candid and personal. Like the opening line, he occasionally addresses the reader and invites us into the conversation, invites us to reflect, like we are more than just spectators in this book, this life. I feel like this review is me just throwing a bunch of adjectives and nouns all together, so I may come back to this after I’ve had some more time to sit with it. And reread it, because I already want to. But do read this book, whether you like basketball or not. -
Review of ARC will follow.
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Haven’t read it yet, can feel it in my guts though
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A beautiful portrait of place and how it sticks with you. Abdurraqib writes so beautifully about loving Columbus Ohio while also grappling with the structures (police and government) that are there dampening the beauty and community that he grew up with and loves. As someone who doesn’t follow basketball very closely I found the sections about basketball to be gripping. This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Very very happy to have gotten to read this ARC and I recommend picking up a copy on the pub date March 26.
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More thorough review to come. For now, I want to say that Hanif has made poetry out of basketball and the culture surrounding it. Given that I don't care too much about the sport, I am shocked by how grateful I am for this. I spent 2011-2016 in Ohio, and I see so much of Columbus and the people I love reflected in this book.
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"There’s Always This Year," takes readers on a lyrical and emotionally charged journey through the heart and soul of an Ohioan deeply intertwined with the world of basketball. Set against the backdrop of 1990s Columbus, Abdurraqib eloquently captures the golden era of basketball, a time when legends like LeBron James were forged on the hardwood, while countless others remained in the shadows. Abdurraqib's deep connection to the game becomes a lens through which he examines the complex dynamics of success, the concept of role models, and the expectations that surround those who strive for greatness.
His memoir expertly weaves together personal reflection, historical context, and the cultural significance of basketball, much like his previous works did for music and history. He delves into the myth of LeBron James, an Ohioan who became a global icon, and how the city of Cleveland grappled with the grief and transformation when he left the Cavaliers. Through his words, Abdurraqib prompts readers to reconsider the definitions of underdogs and champions, showing how these labels shape our life journeys in unexpected ways.
Basketball, for Abdurraqib, is more than just a sport; it's a source of solace, inspiration, and self-discovery. He skillfully draws parallels between the game and classic movies like "White Men Can't Jump" and "He Got Game" to drive home profound points about life's challenges and triumphs. One of the most impactful aspects of Abdurraqib's memoir is his account of his time spent in prison and the meaning he derived from adversity. His resilience and introspection in the face of hardship provide a testament to the power of self-discovery and personal growth.
The memoir reaches its poignant conclusion with Abdurraqib's reflection on the tragic murder of Tamir Rice, connecting this heartbreaking event to LeBron James' return to Cleveland and how it forever changed the city. This powerful juxtaposition highlights the intersection of sports, identity, and social justice, demonstrating Abdurraqib's ability to navigate complex issues with sensitivity and depth. This new release transcends the boundaries of memoir and sports literature. It serves as a clarion call, inviting readers to reimagine culture, country, and self. Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy! -
I absolutely loved Hanif Abdurraqib’s new book “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.” It was a clear five-star read for me. This book does not require you to have any basketball knowledge to enjoy it; however, a working knowledge of LeBron James’s career and his relationship with Cleveland certainly enhances the experience. I found myself nodding my head when reading many of the passages. Abdurraqib is so wise, clever, and insightful in his writing.
The author and LeBron James have the shared experience of leaving their respective Ohio neighborhoods and experiencing success (James with basketball, Abdurraqib with writing) in places that were far from the places where they were raised. Abdurraqib does not pull any punches in his descriptions of experiencing poverty, unstable housing, and life behind bars. Abdurraqib uses a high-level description of James’s career (Cleveland to Miami to Cleveland) to drive home the feelings of success and “belonging” to a city. The author includes several mini vignettes of other Ohio natives who experienced remarkable success in other disciplines besides basketball and writing.
He also uses the juxtaposition of LeBron’s success with other local high school basketball players who did not make it out of their neighborhoods for one reason or another to highlight the importance of mentorship and the intangibles for someone to really “make it.” These passages were the most impactful for me.
To me, this book is about success, belonging and how it feels to be judged by outsiders. It is also about what it is like to leave a place: how you are perceived by the people you grew up beside; how you perceive the people that stayed in that place once you’ve left; and what it’s like to leave the places you grew up in because of success. He really nails the feeling that people get when someone “makes it” who is from where you are from, particularly in sports: this feeling of pride but also this expectation of unadulterated loyalty.
There are so many sentences and passages I have highlighted, and I know that this is a book that I will absolutely purchase in hardcover.
Many thanks to Net Galley for the eARC of this book that will be released on March 26, 2024. -
(Thanks to Random House for the advanced copy!)
This is nominally a book about basketball, in the same way that basketball is nominally a game about basketball, but both things are really about life. “Ball is life,” they say, and they mean one thing but the other, opposite thing is implied just the same. There’s little in the way of barriers between the two, I’m saying: a faded YMCA court or the cracked asphalt of a school’s blacktop might as well be a mural to all our collective longings.
And speaking of barriers or the lack of them: For Hanif Abdurraqib, the membrane between reality and poetry is permeable and thin. In his voice, a basketball is only ever a sentence away from a sunset, or an airplane, or a city, or its people. The gift of his writing is that it makes poets out of us all, gently asking us to look around and realize the invisible lyricism that runs through everything. It can be a lot to talk or think or write that freely—it is a kind of vulnerability, after all—but Hanif grants us the permission to go there with him.
And basketball, as much as anything else, deserves to be talked and thought and written about with such freedom, with such care. It’s the perfect subject for a writer who’s always been able to see life from above the rim, reading the X’s and O’s of fast breaks and heartbreaks and slam dunks and slammed doors as pieces of a larger schematic, a pattern outside of the pattern.
In applying that kaleidoscopic view to a topic as populist as basketball, it’s possible that he could lose those people more interested in his thoughts on specific players than in how the game reminds him of his father. But I see it differently: the fact that he and his poet’s eye can spot a world of meaning superimposed over so much painted hardwood means that it was always there to be spotted; that you or I can experience the same three-dimensional, overflowing love of sport if only we have eyes to witness, if only we’re willing to lower the barriers that probably never existed in the first place. Talk about hoop dreams! -
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib is a memoir that intertwines moments in the author's life with references to basketball games and those who play it.
Spoilers, maybe. If you stop here, however, please read a Hanif Abdurraqib book. I'm begging.
Thanks.
Hanif Abdurraqib is one of my favorite writers and this book will undoubtedly be in my top books of the year (don't care if it's only January, I'm calling it now). His books have the great capacity to evoke feeling, and to me, this is something that not every writer is successful in acheiving with such complexity. When my chest physically hurts, that's when I know the writer has done their job. This book does that job. I felt that ache reading There's Always This Year. It may be the poetic writing and how beautifully the sentences flow, but it's in the way he describes love in darkness that shines the brightest - love for his city, community, and the people around him.
The writing is deft. Some of the basketball or sports references made transitioned into stories about his life and it wasn't noticable for me until I was deep in that new section and making connections between the two subjects he was writing about.
The book is formatted to reflect a basketball game, with four quarters with poetic interludes between each quarter. Each quarter is slowly winding its way to zero. To me, this highlights another theme in the book - death. Everything becomes so much more poignant as you realize that like in life and the game, time's running out.
But, I felt like this book was about love first and foremost and I loved this book.
Thank you to @randomhouse and @netgalley for the advanced copy. Could not be more greatful. I will be picking up a copy when this comes out in March to add to my physical collection. -
First, I would like to the thank NetGalley and Random House for providing me an eARC of 'There's Always This Year' for an honest review. And that honest review is that I give this book five stars. This is one of the most interesting memoirs I've read, not only because of the fact that it takes an angle on basketball that is less talked about in depth, but also because the structure of the book makes the take on basketball all the more enjoyable to read. Hanif Abdurraqib's writing is beautiful, and he is able to create a dreamlike narrative while also keeping it incredibly grounded at the same time. It is very clear that he is a poet, because the dreamlike quality comes from the beauty he is able to create with language, even when describing things that can be hard to see the beauty in. His writing also brings his own experiences and recollections into a place that makes it feel as though you are wading through his own mind with him.
Beyond just his writing, Abdurraqib's utilization of basketball to both structure the book into quarters and provide a strong throughline is fantastic. His ability to emphasize his own relationship to basketball, his community's relationship to basketball, and his city's relationship to basketball while using these relationships to discuss more specific emotions and topics fully brings you into his world. Overall, I have loved every page of this book and found so much care, love, and beauty put into it that I can wholeheartedly recommend it to basically anybody. -
I’ve adored Abdurraqib’s writing for a while, and as a newfound sports fan, this book came at the perfect time.
The way the author is able to tie his personal experiences of both growth and loss into the things he loves, whether it’s music or basketball, makes his format of memoir even more compelling. There’s Always This Year is surely Abdurraqib’s most personal book yet, chronicling his complicated relationship with where he’s from while also observing the way a city shapes someone through the lens of Lebron James.
Abdurraqib’s poetic, often stream-of-consciousness writing style demands that the reader put trust in him as he guides them on an emotional journey. It’s easy to hang on his every line and every transitional moment, just as if you’re transfixed to a high-energy basketball game. The structure of the book, counting down quarters, minutes, and seconds, ultimately shows the impact of time on not just a game but on those who enter and exit the arena doors in their communities.
Alongside gaining a wealth of basketball knowledge from one of the most honest and charismatic writers in the game, the experiences described in the book have only made me look further into what exactly makes my own city so endearing, besides just being the backdrop of my entire life.
Thanks Random House and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review :) -
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I was sent a link to review this book right before Christmas, and its pub date is my birthday. And what an amazing gift this is.
I don't know why Abdurraqib's work resonates so strongly with me. I know I'm definitely not the target audience. And yet. We are both from similar neighborhoods in Ohio, but that's it. We differ racially, in the religion we were raised in, and came up 8 years apart. But somehow the touchstones he writes on and around strike something achingly familiar. Those neighborhoods were enough to give us a similar appreciation for music and basketball at least, which made this book particularly accessible.
I laughed and cried and raged. It was even better than I have come to expect. A lot of this feels Dyson-influenced, but it is still fresh. Not one word about Bill and OJ, but that can be forgiven since Cincinnati doesn't feature much in this story anywhere.
Go put it on hold or order it and then clear a couple days at the end of March. You won't regret it. -
“To be an audience to that impossible miracle.”
From the book…
This book broke my heart, in the best of ways. I have devoured all of Abdurraqib’s books over the past few years, and somehow he just keeps getting better and better.
When I first heard that this book was about basketball, I was a little turned off, as I am not a “sports person”. Of course I should have trusted that in hands as deft and passionate as his, it would transcend a mere book about basketball. I should have had faith in the impossible miracle that I would fly through a book like this and almost start it over again as soon as I finished.
I was able to read this thanks to an ARC provided digitally from the publisher, via NetGalley. With that being said, you can be damned sure I will be buying a copy, or two, when this hits the shelves in March… I wonder if I can find a signed copy? -
"What good is a witness in a country obsessed with forgetting?"
The voice of our generation is thrown around willy-nilly and has become a joke, which is fair. But is Hanif Abdurraqib the voice of our generation? Maybe so! The format of There's Always This Year is not my favorite, but the writing is superb. Hanif speaks about so many important issues of our time in such an empathetic and nuanced way, I wish more people saw the world as he does.
"I have felt like a champion before, even having won nothing but the desire to be alive in a day I woke up not wanting to be alive in. I deserve something for that, even if it is a parade of my own making. An invention, which is all the spoils of winning are anyway. Breathtaking inventions, to be sure. But inventions, nonetheless."
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC! -
This memoir confirmed that Hanif Abdurraqib could write about literally anything and I'd devour it. Abdurraqib's writing, as always, is rich and inviting, lush with metaphors and imagery that leave you lingering slowly over the lines and tracing your eyes back and forth until the words can properly sink in. There's Always This Year is at once an ode to basketball and Black culture and at the same time a general reflection on longing, love, and the human experience.
The memoir is also a love letter to the city that he calls home, Columbus, Ohio and to the places that we often overlook and deem as spaces we want to leave or escape from and why someone might want to stay. It left me with more questions than answers (as great books often do) about topics such as friendship, relationships, loss, and community.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for a review. -
There are brief moments in this book that were lost on me simply because I do not follow or know anything about basketball. However, only Hanif Abdurraqib could have me weeping at a description of a nike commercial I have never seen. Only Hanif Abdurraqib could get me to google basketball moves because I was desperate to know their beauty through the lens of his poetic descriptions. I don't know what to call this book, and at times I admit I couldn't see where it was going and wondered if perhaps the writing had unintentionally meandered a little too far off course, but Hanif Abdurraqib will never betray a reader's trust and by the end, as promised, he stitched every golden thread back together. Thanks to netgalley for the advanced copy.
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I don’t know the first thing about basketball, but any book with Hanif Abdurraqib’s name on it is an instant read for me.
Hanif Abdurraqib manages to capture love, loss, grief, community, friendship and many other human emotions in a way that I have never read before. I simply cannot get over how incredibly moving his writing is.
There’s Always This Year was beautiful and vulnerable. You don’t have to love basketball to love this book.
*special thanks to NetGalley and and Random House Publishing Group for an eARC of this book in exchange for a review. There’s Always This Year is out March 26, 2024. -
I have mixed feelings about There's Always This Year. The writing is beautiful and Hanif Abdurraqib describes the human experience in a unique, lyrical way. And the writing is dense, slow-moving, at times hard to pay attention to or follow. I had to pick up and put this book down in order to pick it back up. Overall, this is a special memoir. Talking about his life and how important basketball was and is as a thread for it, Abdurraqib describes racism, classism, and more. I recommend There's Always This Year, but I don't think it will appeal to all readers, Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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In his most personal book yet, Hanif invites us into his neighborhood where basketball is a through line for reflections on community, systems of oppression, growing up, and what it means to really be from a city. His lyrical writing is once again a beautiful feature of the narrative, and I learned a lot about my city. As I do with all of his books, I find myself putting the book down to look up clips, songs, maps, and photos he references with the ease of a cultural polyglot. This book is immersive and revealing.
NetGalley provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. -
I loved this book. I have never read a memoir that is a love letter to a city, a sport, and Black culture. What Hanif Abdurraqib does in this book it help to the reader experience language and memoir through a new perspective of a someone who loves their city and basketball. This book is beautiful to read in that respective and also helps this readers who is not a huge fan of sports to appreciate sports in a new way. This is a must read.
