I'm a big believer in the fact that research unveils excitements that are kind of just waiting for me to play with them. When you sit down and you've got that 25 hundred words in front of you, what influences your decision making process is like one day a personal day, and then another day you're deeper in the research. How do you split up the tasks necessary to put together one of these essays? Oh, i don't ever think about it as the splitting up of a task. And e sometimes that involves a detour into the personal, but only if there's space, onlyif there's space to allow for it. I want to find that for myself
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. His new book is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.
“I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almost a constant pleading of: Don’t leave yet. Stay here with me for just a little bit longer.”
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