Summary of Hanif Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 It is safe to say that I was the only Muslim kid in my neighborhood who got to watch MTV after my parents cut the cable. I was not practicing dance moves, but I was learning the different directions my limbs could flail in.
#2 The dance marathon was a phenomenon that began in the 1920s. It was largely in farm towns, but as carnivals and fairs began growing along the American landscape, Americans became more obsessed with the impossible. They attempted flagpole sitting and long, horrific cross-country footraces.
#3 The dance marathon became a nationwide craze in the 1930s. It was a way for people to escape their circumstances and have a purpose for their lives. The competitions were held in barns or large gathering halls, and the dancers were given cash prizes and food.
#4 The most extreme marathons would have dancers who would swing between energetic movements and half-rhythmic walking. People would choose their partners not always by affection or romantic interest, but simply by the person they most trusted to keep them alive during the marathon’s most unforgiving moments.

Sujets

• Histoire
• General officer
• General
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544659
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Hanif Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

It is safe to say that I was the only Muslim kid in my neighborhood who got to watch MTV after my parents cut the cable. I was not practicing dance moves, but I was learning the different directions my limbs could flail in.

#2

The dance marathon was a phenomenon that began in the 1920s. It was largely in farm towns, but as carnivals and fairs began growing along the American landscape, Americans became more obsessed with the impossible. They attempted flagpole sitting and long, horrific cross-country footraces.

#3

The dance marathon became a nationwide craze in the 1930s. It was a way for people to escape their circumstances and have a purpose for their lives. The competitions were held in barns or large gathering halls, and the dancers were given cash prizes and food.

#4

The most extreme marathons would have dancers who would swing between energetic movements and half-rhythmic walking. People would choose their partners not always by affection or romantic interest, but simply by the person they most trusted to keep them alive during the marathon’s most unforgiving moments.

#5

The school auditorium would allow the students to roll up the bleachers, bring in speakers, and create a dance floor during lunch hour. The school was old, and the auditorium was a cavern. There were few lights, and by the time bodies were packed into the place, what little light there was got swallowed.

#6

I remember watching Soul Train as a child, and I would always watch the reruns on Sundays. The show featured clips from its most golden era, from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, when the weekly musical guests came from the greatest eras of Black soul, funk, and RB.

#7

Don Cornelius, the creator of Soul Train, was a poet speaker who used melody and syntax in his introductions and interviews. At the start of each episode, he would introduce himself as the camera zoomed in on him smiling easy.

#8

The Soul Train Line was a feature of the show that allowed two dancers to peel off from the end of the line and dance their way to the opposite end, until the line naturally dwindles. The participants in the line don’t have a long stretch of time to make their way down, and they have to do it smoothly.

#9

The Soul Train Line was an essential part of the Soul Train viewing experience. It allowed each person to shine, and it became a tradition for stars to have their first big on-camera moments twisting and twirling within the wall of clapping hands.

#10

I wish that people could leave the world in the way they gave to the world, and I wish that Don Cornelius, a Black man, could be clapping his hands in heaven. I wish that all of you, my dearest dancing ancestors, could be shinning your shoulders in sync to War’s Ballero.

#11

In both the dance marathon and the Soul Train Line, I am in love with the performance of partnership, and the boundaries that performance is pushed to. In the dance marathons, when people would gather their landlord’s daughter or an ex-co-worker’s son, they were attaching themselves to someone who could potentially be their only ally for a run of months.

#12

I am in love with the idea of partnering as a means of survival, or a brief thrill, or a chance to conquer a moment. I wish to figure out how my body can best sing with yours for a moment in a room where the walls sweat.

#13

I was a boy holding a dead bird in my open palms. I don’t know why I picked up the bird, but I felt like it deserved better. I dug a small hole, placed a small flower over the mound of dirt, and left.

#14

The act of the funeral as revelry or celebration was foreign to me as a child, because I didn’t attend many funerals. The most prominent funerals I attended were Muslim funerals, which were simple and brief.

#15

The Black funeral is a way to celebrate what a person’s life meant, and to do it as if they’re still here. It is a tradition that has been present since being forced into America, knowing that there were stories and history and lives to be honored beyond this place.

#16

When Michael Jackson died, in the early summer of 2009, it was the kind of celebrity death that my particular generation has become especially used to in the past two or three years. Death simply opening its mouth to a wide yawn and drinking in a life that certainly had more to give.

#17

The bar called off every other purpose it served for one evening and told the city to come dance in the name of the King of Pop, workweek schedule be damned. In the basement of Hampton’s on King, there wasn’t enough space for the bodies to do anything except dance.

#18

Aretha’s homegoing ceremony was a performance on par with her life. It took eight hours and a band of preachers and their many-armed gospels and singers to shake the church walls down, but in the end, Aretha was finally home.

#19

The drawn-out funeral, or the pictures on the wall, or the remembrances yelled into a night sky are all a part of that carrying. It is all fighting for the same message: holding on to the memory of someone with two hands and saying, I refuse to let you sink.

#20

I have buried no one for a whole year, and this is worthy of celebration.