SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Hanif Abdurraquib is one of the most interesting writers working today. His latest book, "There's Always This Year," made the cut for one of NPR's favorite books in 2024. He writes about sports and death and love and family, which just so happened to be the kinds of topics they like to explore on NPR's show Wild Card. So here is Hanif Abdurraquib speaking with Wild Card host, Rachel Martin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Three cards in my hand. Pick one, two or three.
HANIF ABDURRAQUIB: Two.
MARTIN: Two - where would you go to feel safe as a kid?
ABDURRAQUIB: You know, I'm the youngest of four, and being the youngest of four, you know, I spent a lot of time alone. But the good news is this was during the era - this is in the '90s. It was a really robust era of college radio and radio in general. And so where I went to feel safe was kind of inside of the world afforded to me by headphones. I would put headphones on, and I would record songs off of the radio onto cassette tapes. I would be making mixtapes in real time off of the radio, which required a lot of precision. It required a lot of attentiveness. And, you know, you didn't hit stop on the tape when you're recording 'cause that would be, like, a hard stop. And you would hear the...
MARTIN: Oh, right. You have to have the pause to press.
ABDURRAQUIB: ...You hit the pause button. Yep
MARTIN: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I remember.
ABDURRAQUIB: And to wait by a radio all day and hear the DJ announce a song that is your song - that feels miraculous. I miss that feeling. I wish I could bottle that feeling, feeling like something is being delivered just for you. That's special.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "SEBRING")
MARTIN: OK, we got three more cards.
ABDURRAQUIB: OK.
MARTIN: Three more cards - pick one, two or three.
ABDURRAQUIB: Three.
MARTIN: Three - oh, it's, like, a gimme for you. What have you learned to appreciate about your hometown over time?
ABDURRAQUIB: Oh, gosh.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Like, where do I begin?
ABDURRAQUIB: 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 that the MacArthur...
MARTIN: The MacArthur Genius awards, by the way, for those who don't know.
ABDURRAQUIB: Yeah, MacArthur Grant - 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, I would be - it's a wild day. Like, you have to do a million different things.
And so I was running behind. And this dinner was - you know, this friend had a plan after. I had a plan after. We were going to a concert, all this stuff. And so I was running behind, and I texted her, and I was, like, you know, I'm running late, but I'll pull up. 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).
ABDURRAQUIB: 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, you know? And I would - I don't want, you know...
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQUIB: ...I have lived in this place my whole life. There are people here who knew me when I was a kid. There are people here who knew me when I was getting arrested. There are people here who knew me when I was sleeping on the streets. So, you know, there's a thing about Columbus that I love because people don't look at my life and career with a shrug. There's certainly a lot of affection. But the greater question that is always asked of me and the question I have to rise to is, what kind of community member do you want to be?
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQUIB: What kind of neighbor do you want to be?
MARTIN: Was there any part of you - I mean, I'm talking to you when you're in New York right now. You know, New York is where the writers go. And LA is where the writers go.
ABDURRAQUIB: Yeah.
MARTIN: 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?
ABDURRAQUIB: 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 good way?
ABDURRAQUIB: 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. You see through the kind of lies that a city might dress itself up in in order to make itself marketable. 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 and to be among a version of that population - in my case, where I was extremely at a margin - meant that I got to see the city's most honest face behind all of its false masks.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQUIB: And to me, that I got to see that and 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "FOUR CLUSTER")
MARTIN: Last question.
ABDURRAQUIB: All right.
MARTIN: Last set of cards - one, two or three.
ABDURRAQUIB: Let's do two. I started out with two. Let's do two again.
MARTIN: What's your best defense against despair?
ABDURRAQUIB: So many of my friends now have kids, you know? I don't have kids, but I don't remember at what point I realized that kids liked me.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ABDURRAQUIB: Kids really like me, you know, and I don't - and I think that I've always been, like, kids are fine. Like, kids are cool. But, you know, the past, like, five years, all my friends having kids and all of them kind of, like, gravitating towards me - now, I'm, like, kids are the greatest.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ABDURRAQUIB: You know, I feel like I'm a - I jokingly call myself, like, a freelance uncle, where I get to, you know - and it's - it has changed me. It's, like, rewired me.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ABDURRAQUIB: Despair is inevitable for me. I think that despair hovers, and I don't find ways to stop its hovering. And I am actually fine with that because I think that keeps me in tune with the realities of the world that need addressing. And it keeps me in tune with what I need to fight back against, and it keeps me in tune with a real rage that propels me towards love, you know?
But also I want to be the kind of uncle-type figure who gets called when a date doesn't go well, or when someone's parents don't understand them and they want to talk to me, or when someone's putting on a prom outfit and they don't like the way they look in it, or when someone's, you know - needs a little money to go on a date.
I want to live long enough to be that because I feel like all of my friends who I love have carried new people into the world who are waiting for me to love them and they are hopefully waiting to love me. And that means that I get to echo the love I already had for one person into a whole other generation of people. And that is enough to make me say, I just think I want to stick around if I can help it. I want to stick around.
MARTIN: Hanif Abdurraquib - writer, poet, author. Thank you so much.
ABDURRAQUIB: Thank you, Rachel. We'll talk again soon hopefully.
DETROW: And you can find a longer version of that conversation on NPR's Wild Card podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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