There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

LONNIE CARMON, COLUMBUS, OHIO (1901–1955)

JOHN GLENN, CAMBRIDGE, OHIO (1921–2016)

JOHN BROWN, HUDSON AND FRANKLIN MILLS, OHIO (1800–1859)

SERINAH ABDURRAQIB, COLUMBUS, OHIO (FOREVER–FOREVER)

Virginia Hamilton, Dayton, Ohio (1934–2002)

The People Could Fly

Toni Morrison, Lorain, Ohio (1931–2019)

Wouldn’t you rather be a widow than a divorcée?

I knew this walking through downtown Cleveland, passing a bit of coin to the unhoused man underneath a building’s awning who nodded toward Quicken Loans Arena and mumbled Ain’t this some shit? and I didn’t know what the “this” was, but I still nodded, and said Yeah, you right because whatever it was, I knew he was right.

I roll with children of the ’90s, who watched the team now known as the Cleveland Guardians have the kind of success that brought them to the edge of a title, but never directly to it.

SCOTT MESCUDI, CLEVELAND, OHIO (1984– )

Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon

GUION BLUFORD, WESTLAKE, OHIO (1942– )

Tamir Rice did more than just die in a park in Cleveland. I promised myself that if a black person died here, in these pages, I would remind myself—and perhaps remind you—that they lived a life where they did more than just die, more than just march themselves into headlines and endless discourse.

LEBRON JAMES, AKRON, OHIO (1984– )

HANIF ABDURRAQIB, COLUMBUS, OHIO (1983– )

LeBron’s Hummer, 61–63 sound systems in, 59–60, 75 window tinting, 60 Catherine of Aragon, 140 celebration, 239–43, 247 Challenger (space shuttle), 275

what a wonderful collection of topics 😁