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“Essays are restless literature, trying to find out how things fit together, how we can think about two things at once, how the personal and the public can inform each other, how two overtly dissimilar things share a secret kinship,” contends Rebecca Solnit in her introduction. From lost languages and extinct species to life-affirming cosmologies and literary myths that offer cold comfort, the personal and the public collide in The Best American Essays 2019. This searching, necessary collection grapples with what has preoccupied us in the past year—sexual politics, race, violence, invasive technologies—and yet, in reading for the book, Solnit also found “how discovery can be a deep pleasure.”
The Best American Essays 2019 includes Michelle Alexander, Jabari Asim, Alexander Chee, Masha Gessen, Jean Guerrero, Elizabeth Kolbert, Terese Marie Mailhot, Jia Tolentino, and others.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
April 16, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781328467119
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781328467119
- File size: 4473 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 1, 2019
Appropriately assembled for a difficult year closing a contentious decade, the selections here focus almost exclusively on issues pulled straight from the headlines: climate change, racism, gun violence, political resistance and its backlashes, the #metoo and Incel movements, mental health challenges. A strong representation of work by women, LGBTQ and indigenous writers, and authors of color offers a multiplicity of voices. And while editors Solnit (Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises [and Essays]) and Atwan (Convergences: Method, Message, Medium) take the series title's mandate to heart, featuring authors of primarily U.S. and Canadian origin, excellent contributions from Rabih Alameddine and Masha Gessen bring non-North American-born viewpoints to the mix. The entries offer an often dark picture of current concerns, yet as pointed as the topics are, the best pieces shine at demonstrating what the essay form itself can do--connect and strengthen multiple ideas, move from the general to the particular and back again. As J. Drew Lanham writes in his standout piece contrasting species extinction with the history of slavery, "[T]he whole of all of us becomes compromised in the loss of some of us." VERDICT A worthwhile series installment that should not only interest contemporary readers but also hold a place in the historical record.--Lisa Peet, Library Journal
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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