ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Every week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Hanif Abdurraqib is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant. His latest book is "There's Always This Year: On Basketball And Ascension." It was on President Obama's summer reading list, and it's been longlisted for the National Book Award. But Abdurraqib tells Wild Card host Rachel Martin he just wants to be known as a good neighbor in his town of Columbus, Ohio. He spent periods of his youth incarcerated and living on the streets there. Here's Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Pick one, two or three.
HANIF ABDURRAQIB: Three.
MARTIN: Three. Oh, this is, like, a gimme for you. What have you learned to appreciate about your hometown over time?
ABDURRAQIB: Oh, gosh (laughter).
MARTIN: You're like, where do I begin?
ABDURRAQIB: Yeah. You know, one story I like telling - not because I like reminding people that I've got a MacArthur, but because it's funny - is that, the day it was announced, I had dinner plans with a friend. And these plans were, you know, like, set in stone for a while. And the day that that gets announced is a hectic day. It's, like - it's a wild day. Like, you have to do a million different things. And I pulled up, like, you know, 15 minutes late to dinner. And she put her hand on my shoulder and said, I'm very proud of you. You may be a genius, but you really messed up my dinner plans.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ABDURRAQIB: And I love that story not because - because it's so reflective of this thing in Columbus, where people are proud of me and we are proud to live amongst each other, but no one's impressed.
MARTIN: Was there any part of you - I mean, I'm talking to you, and you're in New York right now. You know, New York is where the writers go. And LA is where the writers go. I mean, people can go anywhere now. But there are other places you could have lived and thrived and written. What was important to you about staying there?
ABDURRAQIB: I don't really know how well I know myself anywhere else. And I would - at this point, I don't want to find out. There's something about being unhoused in a place that you love, where I remember just walking the streets at night and feeling like the city belonged to me and only me because you're at your most invisible then.
MARTIN: But being invisible made you feel ownership over the city in a different way?
ABDURRAQIB: I think so. At night, you know - like, I remember walking the street and being aware that I had nowhere to sleep, but also being aware that that meant I had everywhere to sleep, you know? That gives you some kind of false sense of ownership, but you also see a city for what it is. So Columbus, for example, is now trying to market itself as, like, a tech city or food city - all these things that don't actually serve the population that is living and breathing and actively there. But to be among that population meant that I got to see the city's most honest face behind all of its false masks...
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQIB: ...And to say, you know what? I actually think I still love it. I still love the city as its most honest self because I know what that most honest self is, and I can cut to the heart of it. I don't want to have to learn that about any other place.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQIB: And I don't have the time or energy, I think, to learn how to love a place at its most honest, which I require. I require that.
MARTIN: Oh, yeah.
ABDURRAQIB: And I...
MARTIN: I mean, that's the purest love - right?
ABDURRAQIB: It's the purest love. Yeah.
MARTIN: It's like seeing a person, a place for everything that it is and still choosing to love it.
ABDURRAQIB: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHANCE THE RAPPER SONG, "CHILD OF GOD")
SHAPIRO: Hanif Abdurraqib's latest book is "There's Always This Year." To hear the full version of that conversation, follow the Wild Card podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHANCE THE RAPPER SONG, "CHILD OF GOD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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