I don't know how Hanif Abdurraquib keeps getting better, I only know he does. This book feels the most personal, the most vulnerable, the most political and the most profound he has written. The dedication "to anyone who never wanted to make it out of the places that love them" foreshadows much of what this book is about. Ostensibly this book is about basketball, and the game has a leading role but it also serves as a metaphor. Even as a game it is more about what pulls us together, what cements a family, community, a city. And family, community, and city (Columbus and Cleveland) are the other stars of this story. But this is also about many things much less grand and more intimate, about love and loss, grief, grace, psychological and economic insecurity, and living as a Black man in a world where your life and the lives of others who look like you mean nothing and your right to be a child means less. And also the flipside of the experience of blackness, of being part of a community imbued with coded connectivity and quiet resistance. Early in the book talking about playing the dozens, "Jaylin Rose used to study his opponents, do real-time research on the motherfuckers, in the no internet 1990's no less, just so he would have some shit to say to make sure a [n word deleted] was shook. And listen, ain't that a kind of love, to say 'you are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you?"

I beseech you to listen to the audio. Like most poets, Abdurraqib reads his work as it is meant to be experienced. I plan to read it in print next because I want to linger over the language which is, at every moment, never less than magnificent. ( )

I am drawn to this memoir (which I almost never read) after watching an interview of the author on Pablo Torre Finds Out (video/podcast). He was just the most compelling and interesting writer/poet/critic I have listened to. The book lives up to its promise. Structured like a NBA basketball game in 12 minute quarters gives us a glimpse at the author's life in Columbus OH and whose time on earth parallels Lebron James, an Akron native. How does one progress thru life and do they really want out of their current situation or find it "home". Very good.

KIRKUS:

The acclaimed poet and cultural critic uses his lifelong relationship with basketball to muse on the ways in which we grow attached to our hometowns, even when they fail us.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America and Go Ahead in the Rain, was in awe of the talents of such local basketball players as the legendary LeBron James (“a 14-year-old, skinny and seemingly poured into an oversized basketball uniform that always suggested it was one quick move away from evicting him”) and Kenny Gregory, who went on to play college basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks. Abdurraqib’s complex love of the sport and its players mirrors the complexity of his love for his home state, where he’s spent time unhoused as well as incarcerated, and where his mother passed away when he was only a child. “It bears mentioning that I come from a place people leave,” he writes. Yet, despite witnessing the deaths of friends and watching the media deem his home a “war zone,” the author feels unable to leave. “Understand this: some of our dreams were never your dreams, and will never be,” he writes. “When we were young, so many people I loved just wanted to live forever, where we were. And so yes, if you are scared, stay scared. Stay far enough away from where our kinfolk rest so that a city won’t get any ideas.” Structured as four quarters, delineated by time markers echoing a countdown clock, the narrative includes timeouts and intermissions that incorporate poetry. Lyrically stunning and profoundly moving, the confessional text wanders through a variety of topics without ever losing its vulnerability, insight, or focus. Abdurraqib’s use of second person is sometimes cloying, but overall, this is a formally inventive, gorgeously personal triumph.

An innovative memoir encompassing sports, mortality, belonging, and home.

BOOKPAGE.COM:

MacArthur fellow and National Book Award finalist Hanif Abdurraqib is a prolific poet and author, writing across genres of poetry, essay and cultural criticism to great acclaim. Abdurraqib turns his sensitive lens towards basketball in his newest work, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. With carefully constructed and imaginative prose, he immerses us in the basketball culture of his native East Columbus, Ohio, telling stories of hoop dreams, both deferred and fully realized.

Abdurriqib pays tribute to myriad figures, both ballers and civilians, who were part of the richly portrayed social web of East Columbus and the larger Black Ohio that it is situated in. We learn about East Columbus players who dominated courts in high school and college, leaving indelible marks on their community even though they didn’t thrive on the biggest stages. We also get to intimately witness the ascension and cultural impact of LeBron James, a hooper from nearby Akron who became one of basketball’s most recognizable, successful and yet polarizing figures.

Abdurraqib’s examination of basketball culture is, in and of itself, captivating. However, the book transcends the particulars of the sport to become a powerful meditation on place and community. The author paints a complex but loving portrait of East Columbus as its members navigate moments of love, grief, hope, fellowship and conflict. He generously and seamlessly weaves in his own story, offering it up as a conduit for the reader’s self-reflection.

Abdurraqib’s writing on basketball is among the best of our time, and it centers the sport’s relevance in local communities, a grossly underexplored element. At the same time, There’s Always This Year offers beautiful reflections on personal and communal journeys that have the power to transform anyone willing to step on the court.