They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Hanif Abdurraqib's first essay collection uses music as a way into everything else. He writes about going to a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, about Chance the Rapper, Nina Simone, Allen Iverson, and the small joys of a summer crush or a Carly Rae Jepsen show. Underneath the music writing is a steady reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, with friends lost too young, and with finding reasons to keep dancing anyway. The pieces read like a poet talking, warm and exact at once. Questlove named it among his favorite books.
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What you might want to know about They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A poet's essay collection moves between music, race, grief, and joy, from Springsteen and Nina Simone to Carly Rae Jepsen and the Black Lives Matter era.
No. Music is the entry point, but Hanif Abdurraqib uses it to write about race, friendship, loss, and joy in America.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us was written by Hanif Abdurraqib, published in 2017 by Two Dollar Radio.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us is 220 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.