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There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Basketball, belonging, and the meaning of making it

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Paperback New English

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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    National Book Critics Circle Award winner

    Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

  • Bestseller

    New York Times bestseller

    New York Times bestseller

  • Editorial selection

    One of the ten best books of the year — Vulture, Chicago Public Library, BookPage

    One of the ten best books of the year

AlbakiReads Editorial

Basketball, belonging, and the meaning of making it

Hanif Abdurraqib connects his lifelong relationship with basketball to growing up in 1990s Columbus, Ohio, during an era that produced celebrated players as well as many whose paths to success looked different. The game becomes a way to examine who is recognized as deserving achievement, how excellence collides with expectation, and what people ask of their role models. Personal storytelling—including reflections on his father—sits alongside a wider consideration of home and culture. Basketball anchors the book, but its questions reach beyond sport to the uneven ways people imagine and measure “making it.”

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in basketball as a lens on culture and personal history.
  • Readers drawn to nonfiction about Black life, home, and ideas of success.
  • Readers who enjoy personal storytelling connected to sports and social questions.

Themes

Basketball and cultureBlack identity and communitySuccess and recognitionExpectations and role modelsHome and family

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "powerful" (The Guardian) reflection on basketball, life, and home--from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

"Mesmerizing . . . not only the most original sports book I've ever read but one of the most moving books I've ever read, period."--Steve James, director of Hoop Dreams

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture, Chicago Public Library, BookPage

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, The New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, Electric Lit

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jump shot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time."

There's Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus--whether it's basketball, or music, or performance--Hanif Abdurraqib's exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION
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