“99 Problems Finding the 1 is a tour de force . . . a kaleidoscopic descent into love’s endless labyrinths and one of the smartest portraits of loving while Black put to page.”
—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of This Is How You Lose Her
“99 Problems Finding the 1 is no standard lament of the lovelorn. It’s a trenchantly wise and wisecracking how-to-manual for maintenance of the human heart in the face of bleak indifference and ruthlessly organized hatreds. It’s also a deeply felt, wonder-full affirmation of the unlikely head rush of being alive—as well as a dispassionate inventory of the ever-wider race-addled, socioeconomic conspiracy to render that awareness unthinkable. It may be an ambivalent, unresolved chronicle of G’Ra Asim’s own quest for abiding love, but it’s an amazingly generous and indispensable work of what he calls ‘thinkful wishing’—and thus an act of writerly love that legions of readers should joyfully requite.”
—Chris Lehmann, DC bureau chief of The Nation and contributing editor at The Baffler
“There is more pleasure, hope, humanity, and intertextual intelligence in a single G’Ra Asim sentence than in most books. With the open-hearted vision of Laymon, the kinetic connection-forging of Crenshaw, and the playful post-punk earnestness he’s known for in his songs, Asim casts us as companions on a quest for love—not just with a romantic partner but with the world. Deep, audacious, provocative, and fun, 99 Problems Finding the 1 is a feat of the modern essay form.”
—Eleanor Henderson, author of Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage
“G’Ra Asim turns his wide-ranging poetic sensibility toward the search for true love in the twenty-first century. At the same time, he holds up and honors his own models for love’s possibilities in the lives of his twentieth-century grandparents and parents. This book both astutely signifies on contemporary culture and also dreams of a future with enough room for the tried and true. Since Asim’s first love is probably language, the book is a joy to read, riffing and spinning off the pleasures of the word, reveling in the philosophical questions he finds in everyday interactions, from the wilds of the dating world to the halls of academe.
Asim frames his quest for love against the historical, political, and social backdrops that shape our lives, always keeping track of the way ‘the behavior of the state at the macro level shapes the choreography of desire at the micro level.’ Summing up the difficulties of one particular relationship, Asim writes, ‘The entire imbroglio was somehow personal and structural at the same time.’ This line also neatly addresses why 99 Problems is so much more than a memoir. Asim’s deft and nuanced depiction of this combination of the personal and the structural is what makes this book so readable and so smart.”
—Wendy W. Walters, author of Archives of the Black Atlantic: Reading Between Literature and History
“99 Problems Finding the 1 is the best book about love I’ve read in years. It’s the 1, you might say, because, like a great relationship, it takes itself both very seriously and with a mischievous, what-are-we-doing-here wink. That combination is irresistible. But to call G’Ra Asim’s latest a book about looking for love is to shortchange it. It’s a book about race, gender, politics, time, friendship, family, blind spots, projection, punk, basketball, French absurdist theater—and why playing it too cool is its own kind of heartbreak. It’s a call to live ethically, earnestly, and joyfully. It’s a triumph.”
—Benoit Denizet-Lewis, New York Times Magazine contributing writer and author of You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation
“99 Problems Finding the 1 is a sublime illumination of what it means to be young, gifted, Black, and exasperatingly single. For Asim, finding a soulmate is the ultimate riddle, and in his quest to solve it he masterfully draws clues from an artistic, intellectual, and cultural landscape so vast that references to Jay-Z, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ntozake Shange feel as essential as those to Carl Sagan, Simone de Beauvoir, and Kierkegaard—to say nothing of OKCupid and Tinder. A virtuoso performance by a writer at the top of his game. Asim has written a timely manifesto on romantic love that will define a generation. Easily among the best books I’ve read in years.”
—Jerald Walker, author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
“On its surface, G’Ra Asim’s 99 Problems Finding the 1 is about Asim’s complicated quest for a lifelong romantic partnership, but under the surface, this is a book about race and gender, about music and psychology and pop culture. Shaquille O’Neal pops in, so does W. E. B. Du Bois. Reading this book is like sitting down with one of your coolest and smartest friends as they unspool tales of love and loss, as they interrogate attitudes toward Blackness and gender roles, as they make you laugh out loud.”
—Daniel A. Hoyt, author of Shit List and This Book Is Not for You
“In this social media present, where we find ourselves increasingly subject to the ephemeral whims and weaponized polarity of The Discourse™, 99 Problems Finding the 1 serves up a nutritional nuance our internet-heavy idea diets so desperately lack. It’s no wonder that Asim’s punk-rock sensibilities render so colorfully on the page; these essay-notes clang with abandon against the brick walls of identity spaces that seem Black-and-white, making room instead for inquisitive expansion, seemingly oxymoronic human truths, and complex (non)conclusions that press insistently—beautifully—against the decisive finality our minds have been trained to crave and accept as ‘reality.’ Unafraid to eschew norms and walk funky, and armed with a whip-smart arsenal of vernacular language (I dare any reader not to laugh aloud at the original portmanteau swirlboss), Asim presents a vision of love—grounded, humorous, and, perhaps most importantly, aspirational—one need not be a romantic to fall for.”
—Ariana Benson, author of Black Pastoral, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize
