There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, novelist, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, whose work frequently interrogates the intersections of Black identity, music, memory, and place. His upbringing in a predominantly poor, Black neighborhood during the 1980s and 1990s—coupled with his experiences as a devout Muslim, a survivor of grief, and a lifelong lover of basketball—deeply informs his memoir, There’s Always This Year. Abdurraqib describes his identity not as an abstract backdrop to the book but as the foundation upon which its architecture rests.

Throughout the memoir, Abdurraqib reflects on the racialized scrutiny that Black children face, particularly Black boys who are denied the innocence afforded to their white counterparts. His memories of growing up under the specter of police violence, poverty, and systemic neglect function not merely as personal anecdotes but as windows into the broader social realities shaping Black life in America. These experiences enable him to write with both vulnerability and political clarity, drawing connections between the murder of Henry Green, Tamir Rice, his own incarceration, and the legacy of LeBron James.

His deep connection to Ohio—its communities, basketball courts, and cultural icons—offers a localized lens through which national issues are explored.