Adam Bradley: Literature and the long game
The literary critic, educator, and author talks about finding belonging through words—and helping others do the same.
Adam Bradley is a literary critic, author, and professor known for his work at the intersection of literature, music, and Black culture. He is the founding director of the Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture (the RAP Lab) and a professor of English at UCLA.
Adam’s work blends deep literary analysis with cultural commentary. His mission: to reveal how the artistry of language—whether in a novel, a poem, or a rap verse—shapes identity and speaks to power. Learn more about him on his website.
Ritika: You shaped the direction of my life as my professor. I was so lucky to have you as my senior college thesis advisor.
It’s amazing how you’ve influenced so many students through your work and mentorship.
Where did your own journey begin?
Adam (AFB): I can trace it back to a moment of failure. In first grade, my teacher told my mom, "Adam's the sweetest boy in class, but he’s just not that bright."
I struggled with reading. A lot.
My mother pulled me out of school, moved us in with my grandparents in Utah, and my grandmother—who was a high school English teacher—quit her job and said, "I can teach this boy to read."
Within weeks, I was reading. Then writing.
She sent me into her garden with paper and a pencil and told me to describe what I saw, felt, heard, smelled.
I was six years old, writing poetry, learning that words could change the way people see you—and the way you see yourself.
Ritika: There was a turning point for you in college.
You became connected with Ralph Ellison’s literary estate.
How did that happen?
AFB: When I was a college sophomore, I took a class at Lewis & Clark with a professor named John Callahan.
He happened to be Ellison’s literary executor. When Ellison passed away in 1994, Callahan hired me as a research assistant. I was 19.
That summer, I helped him edit Ellison’s unpublished work.
To be entrusted with those pages—some never seen before by anyone except Ellison and his wife—was transformative.
It shaped everything.
It gave me the courage to apply to graduate school, to pursue literature professionally, and to honor the kind of rigorous, honest storytelling Ellison believed in.
Ritika: What was it about Invisible Man, Ellison’s book, that impacted you so deeply?
AFB: It’s a novel that is unapologetically Black and yet insists on its universality. It starts with "I am an invisible man" and ends with "on the lower frequencies, I speak for you."
Ellison had the audacity to say: my story, my pain, my lens on the world—it’s not just mine.
It’s yours too.
That blend of particularity and universality—that’s what literature can do. It helps us connect the dots between our individual identities and a shared human story.
Ritika: You also became one of the first scholars to study hip hop as poetry.
How did that thread develop?
AFB: During my time as a PhD student at Harvard, I was studying Chaucer and Shakespeare by day, and listening to Tupac, Biggie, Wu-Tang, and Lauryn Hill by night.
One morning I walked into my generals exam with "Triumph" by Wu-Tang Clan blasting through my headphones.
I realized the same rigor we apply to canonical poetry could—and should—be applied to rap lyrics. When I started teaching at Claremont McKenna, I took the leap.
I wrote Book of Rhymes, and later co-edited The Anthology of Rap. I wanted to bridge communities: the poetic and the street, the classroom and the cipher.
Ritika: What was the reaction to the anthology? Did you face resistance?
AFB: Absolutely.
I submitted my first proposal to top university presses. Harvard returned it with a three-line rejection.
Said it wasn’t "academic enough."
Then a young agent reached out.
Within two months, I had a book deal with Basic Books. When the anthology came out, it landed alongside Jay-Z’s Decoded and the early days of Rap Genius.
Suddenly, we were having real conversations about lyrical craft.
I like to think we helped spark a cultural shift—where rap lyrics are treated with the respect they’ve always deserved.
Ritika: You’ve talked about how literature connects the personal with the collective. How do you see that playing out in your teaching today?
AFB: Every year, I meet students who remind me of why I do this. Students who want to send books to incarcerated people. Students who want to use their rage as fuel for change. Students who care deeply about justice and identity but don’t always have the words for it yet.
My job is to help them find the words.
And to remind them that their stories—like Ellison’s, like Baldwin’s, like the best of hip hop—can speak on the lower frequencies for all of us.
Ritika: You’ve spent decades on projects that don’t fit into our fast-paced world. What keeps you going?
AFB: Some of these projects span decades. I spent years working on the authorized biography of a major rapper, and after 200+ interviews and a 200,000-word manuscript, the estate shelved the book.
It hurt. But the long game is the only game I know. That’s why I’m working on an expanded edition of Invisible Man for today’s readers and updating The Anthology of Rap to include the last decade of music.
Legacy takes time.
AFB: What advice would you give to young people navigating today’s identity politics, media fatigue, and cultural divisions?
Stay human. Don’t mistake noise for substance. Cultivate your interior life. Read more. Write more. Spend time in real conversation. Be willing to live in tension—not everything needs to be resolved in a tweet.
And remember that the struggle toward justice and clarity isn’t new. You’re part of a lineage. Honor it. Continue it.
Ritika: Where can people follow your work?
AFB: I keep a low profile. You can find my books in libraries and bookstores. That’s where I’d like the conversation to start.
Portrait illustration by Kat Cao