**As featured on Barack Obama's Summer 2022 Reading List** Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize
Winner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the Pen Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the
Art of the Essay Shortlisted for the National Book Award 'Gorgeous' - Brit Bennett 'Pure
genius' - Jacqueline Woodson 'One of the most dynamic books I have ever read' - Clint Smith
At the March on Washington Josephine Baker reflected on her life and her legacy. She had spent
decades as one of the most successful entertainers in the world but she told the crowd "I
was a devil in other countries and I was a little devil in America too". Inspired by these
words Hanif Abdurraqib has written a stirring meditation on Black performance in the modern
age in which culture history and his own lived experience collide. With sharp insight
humour and heart Abdurraqib explores a sequence of iconic and intimate performances that take
him from mid-century Paris to the moon -- and back down again to a cramped living room in
Columbus Ohio. Each one he shows has layers of resonance across Black and white cultures
the politics of American empire and his own personal history of love and grief -- whether it's
the twenty-seven seconds of 'Gimme Shelter' in which Merry Clayton sings or the magnificent
hours of Aretha Franklin's homegoing Beyoncé's Super Bowl show or a schoolyard fistfight Dave
Chapelle's skits or a game of spades among friends.
