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Shop nowA Fortune For Your Disaster
Poems
Narrator
Hanif Abdurraqib
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Length
1 hour 36 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Poetry in audio form is such a bonus, and Hanif gifts us with small stories and background information as he reads. Perfect for poetry lovers and perfect for people ready to discover.”
— Carrie • Skylark Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“Pain. Peace. Power. A startlingly cohesive deep dive into grief and heartbreak and possibility that will sit with you through the hardest days and act at once as a mirror and window. This is one to sit with again and again, and revel in its interconnectedness. Beautifully narrated by the author.”
— Britt • Second Star to the Right
Bookseller recommendation
“Hanif Abdurraquib’s powerful collection of poems explores the unending heartbreak of being black in America and how to find strength and self-actualization. Landscaped by graves, mirrors, and music these poems take the personal grief of being barked at by dogs and frames and re-frames those aggression into explorations on how our nation’s history and ceaseless failures cannot stamp our indelible humanity. The series of poems titled “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This” are defiant manifestos that will be talked about for years to come.”
— Luis • Avid Bookshop
In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a best book of 2017 by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, and Pitchfork, among others.
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