No Sense in Wishing: Essays

by Lawrence Burney

Overview

“Among the most profound and dazzling debuts I've ever read.” —Kiese Laymon, award-winning author of Heavy: An American Memoir

An essay collection from culture critic Lawrence Burney that is a personal and analytical look at his home city of Baltimore, music from throughout the global Black diaspora, and the traditions that raised him.

There are moments throughout our lives when we discover an artist, an album, a film, or a cultural artifact that leaves a lasting impression, helping inform how we understand the world, and ourselves, moving forward. In No Sense in Wishing, Lawrence Burney explores these profound interactions with incisive and energizing prose, offering us a personal and critical perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.

In a time when music is spearheading Black Americans’ connection with Africans on The Continent, Burney takes trips to cover the bubbling creative scenes in Lagos and Johannesburg that inspire teary-eyed reflections of self and belonging. Seeing his mother perform as the opening act at a Gil Scott-Heron show as a child inspires an essay about parent-child relationships and how personal taste is often inherited. And a Maryland crab feast with family facilitates an assessment of how the Black people in his home state have historically improvised paths for their liberation.

Taking us on a journey from the streets of Baltimore to the concert halls of Lagos, No Sense in Wishing is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Burney’s search for self. With its gutsy and uncompromising criticism alongside intimate personal storytelling, it’s like an album that hits all the right notes, from a promising writer on the rise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668051856
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lawrence Burney is a writer, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore’s music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York magazine, GQ, and Pitchfork. He has also worked at The Fader, VICE, and The Baltimore Banner. No Sense in Wishing is his first book. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.

Editorial Reviews

A powerful collection of essays. . . . [Burney] succeeds at crafting a work that’s as much a poignant reflection on his life as an ethnomusical study.” —Rolling Stone

“Illuminating . . . [Burney’s] rhythm, and what reads like natural talent on the page, is built from a decades-long grind up through the ranks . . . This humility, this honesty, this forthcoming voice with narrative style loaded with tension and questions and possibility: This man can write.” —The Stranger

“For the last few years, I thought I was in need of a new cultural critic to cleave to—until I read Lawrence Burney’s work and realized I wasn’t in search of a critic at all. Instead, I was looking for more of a cultural ambassador. Someone wrestling, not with what they hate but with what they love, and trying to display these touchpoints of adoration, no matter how complicated they may be, for the world to see. That's what No Sense In Wishing is. A series of billboards. Better yet, a collection of love letters with Burney at the helm, not just as pen and hand, but also as the heart unabashedly beating this new rhythm. This is truly a gift.” —Jason Reynolds, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Look Both Ways

“No Sense In Wishing is a stunning, richly intimate tapestry of affections that, most importantly, does incredible work to pay close attention to the people, things, and places that might otherwise be looked over. Through this, and within these pages, dignity is afforded to an interior world—and how grateful readers should be for that.” —Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times bestselling author of There’s Always This Year and A Little Devil in America

“No Sense In Wishing is among the most profound and dazzling debuts I’ve ever read. Lawrence Burney writes at once like a rusty-knuckled Southern gardener and a skilled Northern conjurer of the nth degree. The work here is provocative, yet firmly rooted in the exciting fringes of traditions yet to be named. No Sense in Wishing might actually do more for understanding how Baltimore, Maryland is, and what is actually happening in that beautifully black Northern Southern city. I'm absolutely shook at how good the book-making here is.” —Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy: An American Memoir

“Fluent, sometimes nerdy, and often funny observations about the power of art to add meaning to one’s life.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Cutting and clarifying in equal measure, Burney’s essays combine sharp cultural analysis with lucid selfexamination, resulting in a lively collection that slots comfortably alongside the work of writers like Hanif Abdurraqib. Readers will be rapt.” —Publisher’s Weekly

“A frank and joyous celebration of Black art as well as a musical coming-of-age story.” —Booklist

“No Sense in Wishing is a sharp, reflective mix of cultural criticism, history, and memoir—a vivid look at a life shaped by hip-hop. Lawrence traces how a handful of artists reshaped his world, capturing the precise way a song’s groove can shake your soul and stay with you for a lifetime. His stories move like the rhythm of a great beat.” —Clover Hope, Journalist and author of The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop

From the Publisher

★ 2025-06-13
A spry application of pop-culture criticism to “path-altering episodes” in the author’s life.

Working out of Baltimore, Burney begins this set of essays with a thoughtful piece on activist-in-song Gil Scott-Heron, who earned a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins. By Burney’s account, Scott-Heron resented the fact that although he was still very much alive, by the turn of the 21st century he had been “conveniently relegated to the past tense,” even though he still had much to say. Exploring Scott-Heron’s life leads Burney to his own family, his mother a former singer and his grandfather a guitarist who once opened for Scott-Heron. That in turn leads Burney, in a winding narrative that never loses focus, to his experiments with bohemianism among “people who performatively smoked cigarettes, obnoxiously ate vegetarian crepes, and went to see seventy-year-old movies at the art-house theater.” Burney’s essays explore his falling away from organized religion, working with “no interest in excelling” in a stultifying desk job at the Social Security Administration (where, he confesses, he passed his time watching episodes ofThe Wire on his phone), and visiting South Africa, whose Black population “are the only ones on this landmass who constantly interact with white people at every level of society,” giving them a point in common with American Blacks. While celebrating Black culture and icons (including the pre-deranged Kanye West), Burney dismisses Black supremacist claims such as the notion, advanced in a documentary film, that Japanese ninja culture originated in Africa, a bit of cultural appropriation about which he remarks, sagely, “It’s a hard pill to swallow that we’ve been fucked over, but the answer to that dilemma isn’t to go around and do it to other people.”

Fluent, sometimes nerdy, and often funny observations about the power of art to add meaning to one’s life.

Kirkus Reviews

Burney’s essays combine sharp cultural analysis with lucid self-examination, resulting in a lively collection.”

Publishers Weekly

Among the most profound and dazzling debuts I’ve ever read.”

award-winning author of Heavy Kiese Laymon