A Little Devil In America by Hanib Abdurraqib

This is an inspirational, loving, and wildly wide ranging collection of essays that celebrate a wide range of black performance. He is uncontroversial in his coverage of Michael Jackson, reverential in his praise of Aretha Franklin, but the book really shines best when he is reflecting on his own life as it relates to black performance, and when he is rescuing previously under appreciated black artists. His recue of these performers from the obscurity of posterity. He does this lovingly in a tribute to Merry Clayton, the singer who provided the famous backing vocals to the Rolling Stones’s 1969 hit “Gimme Shelter”. He also does this for William Henry Lane, in an essay on the history and legacy of blackface. Lane, who was born a free black man in the early 19th century, went by the stage name Master Juba and made his skin darker to perform. It is a relatively short book that can change the way you think about black talent and how to appreciate it.