“Every day I think about where I came from and I am still proud to be who I am…” – Zinedine Zidane, excerpt/quoted in ‘Citizen’ by Claudia Rankine
IT’S NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND! I love All-Star Weekend, even when it sucks. All-Star Saturday is super fun, even when they do goofy things like have three dudes do the dunk contest all at once (or whatever that was in 2014). Hall of Fame NBA writers David Aldridge and Michael Wilbon call All-Star Weekend “Black Thanksgiving,” which I don’t feel qualified to comment on, but I will say there are a bunch of joyous Black people on the Turner Sports Network during All-Star Weekend, and that’s a beautiful thing. Let’s make like The Line Break podcast and do some quick literature, then celebrate joy at ASW.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Reading Eve L. Ewing last week propelled me to seek out more lyric essays. Luckily, my friendly neighborhood radical bookstore had Citizen in stock, which I’ve been meaning to get to forever. That made me pull Don’t Let Me Be Lonely off the shelves, and motivated me to revisit A Small Place, and then I wanted some fiction so I grabbed At The Bottom Of The River. Talk about a lineup of all bangers.
Both writers are incredible at packing a ton of detail in a short amount of space, masters of putting the exact right words in the exact right order. There’s such a feeling of command over language reading both of them, their thoughts so well-organized yet surprising. I talk about Rankine on next week’s The Line Break episode, so briefly on Kincaid: what magical stories. She is so good with a sentence, so great with details. If these stories were paintings, you’d be standing in front of them for hours finding new and significant details with every brushstroke. My favorites are “Girl” (the best coming-of-age story I’ve ever read), “In The Night” (an atmospheric, postcolonial story of haunting and longing), “What I Have Been Doing Lately” (a very cool story that circles back on itself in interesting ways) and “Holidays” (a tapestry of holidays). But they’re all good. Get this book. Get all of these books.
LINKS!
I was on my honeymoon during the 2016 All-Star break. I remember exactly where I was when I saw that the dunk contest was happening. It was a great time: a cruise ship in the Caribbean, having after-dinner drinks I pre-paid for in a lounge bar with either a jazz quartet or classical guitarist playing with the love of my life. Paradise. I probably went snorkeling the next day. I don’t even care that I’m missing the dunk contest, I thought to myself. The dunk contest that year:
This Kendrick Lamar ASW performance is so good. I love the original tracks, but y’all know I’m a guitarist. So I go nuts for the nu metal remix of “m.A.A.d. city:”
I have been enjoying J.E. Skeets’ YouTube shorts on ASW moments (I miss the ‘87 ASG talk though, shoutout to Leigh Ellis), and thought this one about Darrell Armstrong especially wild:
The 1996 All-Star Game was a very formative thing for me. The starters for the East were MJ, Penny, Scottie, Grant Hill, and Shaq. Might as well have been the pantheon of gods to eight-year-old Chris. Absolutely perfectly 90s jerseys. And MJ won MVP.
I wish they’d bring back the Shooting Stars Challenge. It’s so goofy. The premise is an NBA star, a WNBA star, and a legend from the same team cluster (i.e. Chicago Bulls/Sky, Atlanta Hawks/Dream) all shoot from different parts of the floor. It’s the kind of stupid game you’d make up to pass the time after a pickup run and your legs are jelly but you want to keep shooting. For some reason, Chris Bosh’s team won this like every year he played, which makes it even funnier. Chris Bosh is a wonderful, funny human to me. I miss him playing AND the Shooting Stars Challenge.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris