Hanif Abdurraqib’s Book Bundle
Welcome to our Book Bundle series! Authors we love choose three of their favorite titles, we bundle them up nicely, and your to-be-read pile flourishes. This round of recommended reading comes from Columbus, Ohio native Hanif Abdurraqib, an acclaimed poet, essayist, and journalist whose work includes poetry collection The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. His forthcoming book about A Tribe Called Quest, Go Ahead in the Rain, is due out in February 2019. See what Hanif has to say about these three books he loves!
Meet Me In The Bathroom
by Lizzy Goodman
Dey Street Books | May 2017 | $19.99
I stay excited for this book because I grew up reading books like Please Kill Me, which is an oral history of 70s and 80s punk. And here, we have a monument to the generation of music of an era I lived through! It is magnificent, marvelous, and richly detailed.
Blood Dazzler
by Patricia Smith
Coffee House Press | September 2008 | $16.00
It feels as if so much of the National Conversation about poems and poetry in this particular moment revolves around persona, and who has access to what voices (and the responsibilities that come with the accessing of those voices). But Blood Dazzler is a book where the embodied voice is a hurricane—Katrina, to be exact—and the palpable fear and anxiety of the people in its wake. The best persona work can be used as a vehicle for empathy without lessening the humanity of anyone it steps into. This book is going to be a massive historical document forever and ever.
The Education of Margot Sanchez
by Lilliam Rivera
Simon & Schuster | February 2017 | $19.99
The intersections in this book are rich! Community! Youth! A desire to fit in against all odds! Colorism! Family! I always told myself that I didn’t read YA books because I didn’t think I could find anything in them for me, and this book really exposed me for that lie.
Take Hanif’s advice on what to read next and ★ ORDER ONLINE ★ to get these three books shipped directly to you! You’ll receive these three books and a card with Hanif’s comments on each title, and even save money on the list price. Makes a great gift!
Hanif Abdurraqib
A visiting writer in the MFA program at Butler University, HANIF ABDURRAQIB is an acclaimed poet and cultural critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, MTV News, and other outlets. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, he is the author of the highly praised poetry collection The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which was included in the Chicago Tribune’s 25 Must-Read Books list for fall 2017 and received recognition from reviewers coast-to-coast, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly. He is currently…