On the surface, Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, is, yes, about basketball. But, as with most of Abdurraqib’s writing, it’s also about so much more. In this sprawling offering, the best-selling author and poet explores his childhood growing up in Columbus, Ohio in beautiful, tender detail. Abdurraqib traverses the Golden Era of 1990s basketball and the rise of fellow Ohio native LeBron James (a focal character in the book), while also remembering personal, formative moments of beauty and struggle growing up in the Midwest. But it’s never nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake; here, Abdurraqib delicately shows what it means to remember and revisit your childhood—the places, the people, and the feelings that made you who you are—and love it whole-heartedly, despite its cracks.
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