Weekend Pick for May 31, 2024
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Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
For the picks from 2023 click here
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Our guest contributor for this issue of Weekend Picks is Roy Edward Jackson, an assistant professor of education at Goshen College where he teaches an array of courses including literacy development and academic voice.
 Roy Edward Jackson | I am deeply invested in the personal essay as a reader, teacher and writer. One of the most powerful voices to emerge in the genre in the last decade is Hanif Abdurraqib. A writer, a poet, and a cultural critic, his collection of essays They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, is a testament to the blending of lyricism, personal expression of experiences and music criticism. However, it should be noted that the music criticism is not a musical analysis, rather the intersection of music as culture. Abdurraqib’s essays in this collection explore themes of race, identity and belonging in American society. |
What makes the essays so powerful is that early on one can unite with Abdurraqib’s love of all genres of music. And he doesn’t just love music, he LOVES music and music experiences. The essays are not reviews of artists, albums or concerts; they are deeply personal explorations of experiencing music. From an examination of the mesmerizing Prince at the 2007 Super Bowl Halftime show to his attendance in the Columbus OH punk scene, Abdurraqib doesn’t just detail his experiences, he allows readers to experience it as he did. When writing about seeing Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey he states, “I believe in the magic of seeing a musician perform in the palace they once called home. Home. That is what these essays feel like when reading them. He sees music as a healer of both the person and society. When writing about Fleetwood Mac’s tour de force album Rumors Abdurraqib equates the complicated interpersonal backstory of the band and that album to his post-college friend circle where the machinery of love and trust has many parts and therefore many flaws.
The messiness of a blockbuster band of the 70s who weathered their personal demons and interpersonal conflicts to stay together to make their masterpiece album is indeed something akin to the 90s early 20s couple. A couple who stay living together post-breakup as it’s often the only fiscal option. While the adult in me gravitates to his deeply meditative essays on artists so diverse as Carly Rae Jepsen to Chance the Rapper to Fall Out Boy to Schoolboy Q, it’s too easy to say this is a collection of how music is the backdrop to the experiences of our lives. The essays are also a much-needed insight into the experiences of what his life is like in a complicated America. His essay, My First Police Stop details how the joy of first-time car ownership as a teenager where one must enter through the passenger door of an older used car in order to not trigger the faulty alarm system on the driver’s side can become something else in America for young, Black citizens. These systemic injustices permeate many of the essays in the collection.
While the collection is not necessarily a book marketed to be shelved in the YA section of libraries, Abdurraqib's writing is lyrical, insightful, and deeply affecting, offering readers a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which music and experiences can serve as both a source of solace and a catalyst for social change. All of these are qualities that YA readers not only relate to but crave. And while this collection was not in the YA section of my public library, I perused many high school catalogs and indeed school librarians are purchasing, shelving and sharing this poignant and important voice. I’ve used his essays in my high school creative writing, and college freshman composition, courses. I’ve yet to encounter a student, or adult, who didn’t find the writing significant.
While the collection is not necessarily a book marketed to be shelved in the YA section of libraries, Abdurraqib's writing is lyrical, insightful, and deeply affecting, offering readers a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which music and experiences can serve as both a source of solace and a catalyst for social change. All of these are qualities that YA readers not only relate to but crave. And while this collection was not in the YA section of my public library, I perused many high school catalogs and indeed school librarians are purchasing, shelving and sharing this poignant and important voice. I’ve used his essays in my high school creative writing, and college freshman composition, courses. I’ve yet to encounter a student, or adult, who didn’t find the writing significant.
 |  Hanif Abdurraqib |
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