The Best American Essays 2017

August 28, 2017
The personal is political in this long-running series’ latest installment, in which guest editor Jamison (The Empathy Exams) argues that the intimate voice of the personal essay allows for more nuanced public discourse. This is evident in former marine Jason Arment’s dispatch from Iraq, “Two Shallow Graves” which vividly depicts war as a series of banalities punctuated by horror, and in essays that variously touch on the opioid epidemic, rape culture, and broken-windows civic policies that result in police brutality. In “Cost of Living,” an essay teeming with subtle irony, Emily Maloney shares her experience shouldering her own massive medical debt while working in a hospital’s billing department. In “Sparrow Needy,” a piece redolent with metaphor and longing, Kenneth A. McClane mourns a brother lost to alcoholism against the backdrop of 1950s Harlem. June Thunderstorm’s “Revenge of the Mouthbreathers” is a delightfully shrill polemic about anti-smoking ordinances as a tool of oppression against the working class. In one of the lighter pieces, Megan O’Gieblyn extols the virtues of the Midwest, with its unflappable citizenry, unpretentious food (conveyed by a rapturous description of a “wedge salad”), and idyllic landscapes (“the great oblivion of corn”). Jamison has done an exceptional job curating this volume, selecting essayists who are diverse in ideas and experiences, and essays that are challenging, passionate, sobering, and clever.

Starred review from October 15, 2017

Jamison, author of the award-winning essay collection The Empathy Exams, demonstrates both her mastery of the form and her merit as an editor of this year's "Best American" essays. At first, the anthology's greatness seems the result of chance. After all, 2016 was an exceptional year in America. What happened that wasn't compelling to write about? But Jamison reveals her curatorial talents with her keen eye for specificity and "telling details." Each essay raises important political questions--about war, race, gender, and disparity--yet the universal is revealed subtly and powerfully through the personal. Still, Jamison understands that the best personal essays are compelling not only because of their subject matter but because of the writer's willingness to take risks, to think provisionally, to tolerate ambiguity, to be contradictory or even wrong. VERDICT In the face of such a polarized political climate, these essays model much-needed tolerance and humility. In their haunting vulnerability, they also offer hope. So this year's selections are timely, yes, but they are also timeless.--Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY

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