I had the pleasure of being the +1 at The Black Archives Bijlmer Book Club, where we read Travis Alabanza’s None of the Above. Meredith and Wally were excellent hosts, and I loved meeting new people with similar interests.

I had strong feelings about Alabanza’s insistence that this work “feels like theory”, in response to it being marketed as a memoir. Calling Get Out a comedy diminishes the value of Black storytelling in horror narratives. But calling it a documentary is just as ineffective. “Feels like theory” very much sits in that spectrum, for me.

I enjoyed the lively conversation my strong feelings sparked about respectability and Black works, and was surprised the lyrical essay appears to be such an unknown genre when I offered it.

A Black non-binary person with a black shirt and jeans and a white headwrap sits in a chair in between two bookcases while holding a book titled “None of the Above” Three Black people, smile at the camera while pointing at an events poster displayed in the window of The Black Archives Bijlmer Seven people stand in front of a colorful street art wall while holding a book titled “None of the Above”

The first and last photos were taken by Wouter Pocornie.