Hanif Abdurraqib’s Ode to A Tribe Called Quest Nominated for National Book Award in Nonfiction
Hanif Abdurraqib’s Ode to A Tribe Called Quest Nominated for National Book Award in Nonfiction
Source: Dreamscape Media

Hanif Abdurraqib’s Ode to A Tribe Called Quest Nominated for National Book Award in Nonfiction

Source: Dreamscape Media

Go Ahead In The Rain is the first book centered on hip-hop to be nominated in the nonfiction category.

The National Book Foundation has unveiled the longlisted titles for this year's awards in five categories.

Atop the list of nominees for nonfiction works is Hanif Abdurraqib's best-selling Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest. According to The NBF, it is the first nonfiction work centered on hip-hop to be nominated in the category.

Released in mid-February, Abdurraqib's third book is comprised hip-hop history lessons, critical essays and literal love letters to the group, depicting an obsessive, at times heartbreaking, infatuation with Q-Tip and the late Phife Dawg in particular. Go Ahead In The Rain follows Abdurraqib's first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and his debut collection of poetry, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, both of which remain critical darlings along with his latest work.

Abdurraqib shares a spot on the list with 9 other authors, which will be narrowed down to five finalists on October 8th. Winners for each category (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature) will be announced on November 20th.

See the full list of nominees below and hold tight for the shortlist to be announced. You can pick up a copy of Hanif Abdurraqib' Go Ahead in The Rain via Indiebound today.

National Book Awards Nonfiction Nominees:

Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Iliana Regan, Burn the Place: A Memoir

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary

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