No Sense in Wishing: Essays

Music journalist Burney delivers a stimulating debut collection that explores race, identity, and art’s role in both. “In this life, we endure an infinite series of experiences that change us at the molecular level,” Burney writes in the introduction. “This book is an exercise in mining the memory for those path-altering episodes.” Moving from Burney’s native Baltimore to the concert halls of Lagos, the essays cover his responses to the work of formative artists and musicians in his life, including Lupe Fiasco and Maryland painter Tom Miller. He approaches his subjects with the intensity of a fan and the discipline of a critic, capturing the rush of his first encounter with Fiasco’s “Kick, Push” and examining how it—and music like it—helped him reinforce the “façade of a hard exterior” he kept up around his Baltimore peers. Elsewhere, he meditates on visiting Africa on assignments for Vice and The Fader and takes stock of Maryland’s Black history. Cutting and clarifying in equal measure, Burney’s essays combine sharp cultural analysis with lucid self-examination, resulting in a lively collection that slots comfortably alongside the work of writers like Hanif Abdurraqib. Readers will be rapt. Agent: William LoTurco, LoTurco Literary. (July)