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The Best American Essays 2021
A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz
“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.
The Best American Essays 2021 includes
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others
“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.
The Best American Essays 2021 includes
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 12, 2021
181 people are currently reading
572 people want to read
About the author
Robert Atwan
254 books26 followersRobert Atwan has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.
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January 15, 2022
I try to read this anthology cover to cover every year. I have worked some with series editor Bob Atwan, a great guy who’s been supportive of me and many others, but I’ve never been afraid to criticize annual volumes that seem to me to get the idea of the essay wrong. I missed last year, which is ironic, because – in a bucket-list success – my essay “My Mother is a Cat” was included as part of the collection’s long-list.
That’s all by way of bolstering my credentials for declaring this the best edition I can recall, equal to the outstanding 2006 volume guest edited by the amazing Lauren Slater.
I use this collection each year as the textbook for my creative nonfiction writing class. A new set of essays infuses a freshness to each class, so it never feels as if I’m repeating the full experience. As a result, I look for collections that give me 7-9 essays I feel comfortable assigning.
I look for more, though. First, are these a pleasure to read or are they a slog? (I confess to skimming my share of past contributions.) Second, does the guest editor lean toward the personal essay or to the analytical/social commentary topical essay? For me, there’s a right answer: this collection ought to celebrate the way the essay allows the mind to discover itself. Its drama should consist of thinkers answering the old Montaigne question: what do I already know that I have not admitted to myself. We can find the topical elsewhere; this ought to be the Olympics of the personal essay.
The last one I read carefully, 2019’s guest edited by Rebecca Solnit, went in the “wrong” direction as far as I’m concerned. The essays were all impressive, I acknowledge, but they were exploring the world more than the self. They were professional, I thought, not personal.
I got concerned when I read Kathryn Schultz’s introduction here. She talks about the challenges of 2020 with the pandemic and the killings that led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and then the MAGA backlash to that. She talks, that is, about the year in the abstract, about her hopes to select essays that would give a time-capsule sense of the year to someone looking back a generation from now.
As Schultz has made her selections from Atwan’s long list, though, she has gone for work that grows out of specific, generally stunning individual explorations. Each of these has a strong voice; each shows a particular mind coming to some realization. In every edition I can remember, there have been at least 3-4 essays I’ve given up on midway – essays that trouble me because they seem convinced of their conclusions and want to persuade me rather than confront the grain of uncertainty still to be resolved.
Not here, though. There are a couple that might be a bit too long for my taste (Hilton Als’s and Greg Jackson’s, for instance, but both are powerful and worth the words) and Amy Leach’s is awfully weird, but it works when I think of it as a prose poem. There are a couple that veer into the more-topical-than-personal – I think of Fintan O’Toole’s and Jessica Lustig’s – but those also feature interesting minds that peer through their topics. Even acknowledging all that, there isn’t a lemon in the bunch. I can imagine considering each of these finalists as essays I’d have put into the anthology I’d have guest edited. It’s a beautiful job of curation.
There are a number of excellent ones here, but the clear standout for me is Molly McCully Brown’s “The Broken Country.” I’d never heard of Brown before this, but she’s definitely on my radar now. (In fact, I ordered her collection for the library the moment I finished reading this one.)
Brown has cerebral palsy. She is, gorgeously in her prose, more than her condition, a woman living a full life even if much of it comes in a wheelchair. Here, from that vantage, she tackles the question of her sexual self, of what it means to desire and be desired from a position that many accept at face as undesirable.
The best essays are fearless. They push through the barriers we’ve put up to keep us from thinking about them – my father called the process “circumventing the self-censor,” and I urge my students to think of it as entering the into the dark of the cave’s mouth – and they take us ever farther from the comforts of our habitual thought.
Brown does that here in a voice, and with a clarity of desire, that makes us have to follow her. It’s a worth-the-price-of-admission piece in a collection that has a lot of other good things to offer.
The other standout for me is Tony Hoagland’s. I do know Hoagland’s work, of course, since he’s one of our leading essayists and a one-time guest editor of an annual Best American Essays anthology himself. “Bent Arrows” is Hoagland’s last essay, written while he was in hospice and confronting his imminent death. It’s short, and – while I am probably imagining it – I hear a slight gasp in the sentences, as if he has had to cut them short as his lungs grow ever less efficient.
These are the thoughts of a man dying with his faculties intact, with a sense that he won’t surrender to pieties or abstractions even at the close of his life. It’s brief and beautiful, which may be his ultimate claim about life itself.
Ruchir Joshi’s “Clarity” is another heartbreakingly brave essay about a father reflecting on the suicide of his son. As a father myself, it’s tough fully to follow his grief, but I am stunned by some of his reflections. In one passage, he pushes against the idea that his son took the life of the five-year old or nine-year-old child he’d parented. That child, Joshi, reflects, was always going to be gone. It’s the nature of parenting that our children cease to be the children they were, even if they are fortunate enough to grow into the adults we hope they will become.
Agnes Callard makes a similar point in “Acceptance Parenting,” and I suppose I am conflating some of their insights, a virtue that comes from reading so many good pieces in quick succession.
There are a bunch of others worth noting, though. Elizabeth Alexander’s and Dawn Lundy Martin’s both speak eloquently about what it’s like to be an African-American woman trying to make sense of the particular challenges that African-American children face in this new generation. Wesley Morris takes on a similar question from a sideways perspective, beginning with light-hearted meditations on what it felt like to grow a new mustache and then gradually realizing that it made him feel as if he were testing his place in the line of mustached African-American man – Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall among them – and that it called on him to think of himself in a larger historical context.
Beth Nguyen’s is a powerful look at what it means to be related to someone – in this case her mother, who’d been left behind when the rest of the family fled Viet Nam in 1975 – and yet to realize you are part of different families. That’s a question I’ve been pondering in my own current work recovering the deep history and descendants of my grandmother’s Romanian Jewish family.
Similarly, perhaps, and so elegant, is Claire Messud’s “Two Women,” her dual tributes to her graceful, Anglican, professionally frustrated mother and her ebullient, loudly Catholic, personal mess of an aunt. Messud talks of owing her sense of self to both of them, and her often formal prose – punctuated by raw confessions – seems to reflect that very balance.
As I say, good work all around. It’s hard to imagine that next year’s collection will be able to match this one.
That’s all by way of bolstering my credentials for declaring this the best edition I can recall, equal to the outstanding 2006 volume guest edited by the amazing Lauren Slater.
I use this collection each year as the textbook for my creative nonfiction writing class. A new set of essays infuses a freshness to each class, so it never feels as if I’m repeating the full experience. As a result, I look for collections that give me 7-9 essays I feel comfortable assigning.
I look for more, though. First, are these a pleasure to read or are they a slog? (I confess to skimming my share of past contributions.) Second, does the guest editor lean toward the personal essay or to the analytical/social commentary topical essay? For me, there’s a right answer: this collection ought to celebrate the way the essay allows the mind to discover itself. Its drama should consist of thinkers answering the old Montaigne question: what do I already know that I have not admitted to myself. We can find the topical elsewhere; this ought to be the Olympics of the personal essay.
The last one I read carefully, 2019’s guest edited by Rebecca Solnit, went in the “wrong” direction as far as I’m concerned. The essays were all impressive, I acknowledge, but they were exploring the world more than the self. They were professional, I thought, not personal.
I got concerned when I read Kathryn Schultz’s introduction here. She talks about the challenges of 2020 with the pandemic and the killings that led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and then the MAGA backlash to that. She talks, that is, about the year in the abstract, about her hopes to select essays that would give a time-capsule sense of the year to someone looking back a generation from now.
As Schultz has made her selections from Atwan’s long list, though, she has gone for work that grows out of specific, generally stunning individual explorations. Each of these has a strong voice; each shows a particular mind coming to some realization. In every edition I can remember, there have been at least 3-4 essays I’ve given up on midway – essays that trouble me because they seem convinced of their conclusions and want to persuade me rather than confront the grain of uncertainty still to be resolved.
Not here, though. There are a couple that might be a bit too long for my taste (Hilton Als’s and Greg Jackson’s, for instance, but both are powerful and worth the words) and Amy Leach’s is awfully weird, but it works when I think of it as a prose poem. There are a couple that veer into the more-topical-than-personal – I think of Fintan O’Toole’s and Jessica Lustig’s – but those also feature interesting minds that peer through their topics. Even acknowledging all that, there isn’t a lemon in the bunch. I can imagine considering each of these finalists as essays I’d have put into the anthology I’d have guest edited. It’s a beautiful job of curation.
There are a number of excellent ones here, but the clear standout for me is Molly McCully Brown’s “The Broken Country.” I’d never heard of Brown before this, but she’s definitely on my radar now. (In fact, I ordered her collection for the library the moment I finished reading this one.)
Brown has cerebral palsy. She is, gorgeously in her prose, more than her condition, a woman living a full life even if much of it comes in a wheelchair. Here, from that vantage, she tackles the question of her sexual self, of what it means to desire and be desired from a position that many accept at face as undesirable.
The best essays are fearless. They push through the barriers we’ve put up to keep us from thinking about them – my father called the process “circumventing the self-censor,” and I urge my students to think of it as entering the into the dark of the cave’s mouth – and they take us ever farther from the comforts of our habitual thought.
Brown does that here in a voice, and with a clarity of desire, that makes us have to follow her. It’s a worth-the-price-of-admission piece in a collection that has a lot of other good things to offer.
The other standout for me is Tony Hoagland’s. I do know Hoagland’s work, of course, since he’s one of our leading essayists and a one-time guest editor of an annual Best American Essays anthology himself. “Bent Arrows” is Hoagland’s last essay, written while he was in hospice and confronting his imminent death. It’s short, and – while I am probably imagining it – I hear a slight gasp in the sentences, as if he has had to cut them short as his lungs grow ever less efficient.
These are the thoughts of a man dying with his faculties intact, with a sense that he won’t surrender to pieties or abstractions even at the close of his life. It’s brief and beautiful, which may be his ultimate claim about life itself.
Ruchir Joshi’s “Clarity” is another heartbreakingly brave essay about a father reflecting on the suicide of his son. As a father myself, it’s tough fully to follow his grief, but I am stunned by some of his reflections. In one passage, he pushes against the idea that his son took the life of the five-year old or nine-year-old child he’d parented. That child, Joshi, reflects, was always going to be gone. It’s the nature of parenting that our children cease to be the children they were, even if they are fortunate enough to grow into the adults we hope they will become.
Agnes Callard makes a similar point in “Acceptance Parenting,” and I suppose I am conflating some of their insights, a virtue that comes from reading so many good pieces in quick succession.
There are a bunch of others worth noting, though. Elizabeth Alexander’s and Dawn Lundy Martin’s both speak eloquently about what it’s like to be an African-American woman trying to make sense of the particular challenges that African-American children face in this new generation. Wesley Morris takes on a similar question from a sideways perspective, beginning with light-hearted meditations on what it felt like to grow a new mustache and then gradually realizing that it made him feel as if he were testing his place in the line of mustached African-American man – Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall among them – and that it called on him to think of himself in a larger historical context.
Beth Nguyen’s is a powerful look at what it means to be related to someone – in this case her mother, who’d been left behind when the rest of the family fled Viet Nam in 1975 – and yet to realize you are part of different families. That’s a question I’ve been pondering in my own current work recovering the deep history and descendants of my grandmother’s Romanian Jewish family.
Similarly, perhaps, and so elegant, is Claire Messud’s “Two Women,” her dual tributes to her graceful, Anglican, professionally frustrated mother and her ebullient, loudly Catholic, personal mess of an aunt. Messud talks of owing her sense of self to both of them, and her often formal prose – punctuated by raw confessions – seems to reflect that very balance.
As I say, good work all around. It’s hard to imagine that next year’s collection will be able to match this one.
December 1, 2021
The guest editor, Kathyrn Schulz, is a staff writer at the New Yorker (which should really automatically disqualify her from being the judge), so this collection, dissappointingly, over-relies on New York publications. Out of 20 essays selected, 6 are New York publishing world centered: 2 from New Yorker, 3 from the New York Times Magazine (not a place I typically find innovative and inspiring essays), 1 from the New York Review of Books. Then there's 1 from Harper's and 1 from Vanity Fair.
Overall, aside from a few good pieces (Beth Nguyen's "Apparent" from The Paris Review; "What Money Can't Buy" by Dawn Lundy Martin from Ploughshares; "Clarity" by Ruchir Joshi from Granta), the rest seem boring, underdeveloped (2-3 pages), and not innovative (i.e., so many pieces are just flat exposition). Subject matter is too dominated by political headlines and "current events"; overall, the selection feels too "journalismy" in my humble opinion (and I don't mean the kind of journalism I love: literary journalism or long-form narrative nonfiction that tells stories, but articles). Articles are fine, and I read many as I subscribe to several newspapers and magazines, but I don't turn to BAE for articles. I crave moving, beautifully written, formally innovative, lyrical, compelling, storied creative nonfiction. This year's anothology does not deliver.
Overall, aside from a few good pieces (Beth Nguyen's "Apparent" from The Paris Review; "What Money Can't Buy" by Dawn Lundy Martin from Ploughshares; "Clarity" by Ruchir Joshi from Granta), the rest seem boring, underdeveloped (2-3 pages), and not innovative (i.e., so many pieces are just flat exposition). Subject matter is too dominated by political headlines and "current events"; overall, the selection feels too "journalismy" in my humble opinion (and I don't mean the kind of journalism I love: literary journalism or long-form narrative nonfiction that tells stories, but articles). Articles are fine, and I read many as I subscribe to several newspapers and magazines, but I don't turn to BAE for articles. I crave moving, beautifully written, formally innovative, lyrical, compelling, storied creative nonfiction. This year's anothology does not deliver.
May 10, 2022
very sad and very depressing!
Read
April 10, 2023I think it's too late for COVID essays to be new and fresh and too early for them to be interesting as cultural artifacts so I didn't really enjoy about half of these regardless of the actual quality of the essay.
Stand Outs
My Mustache - Wesley Morris
Two Women - Claire Messud
Least Favorites
Vicious Cycles - Greg Jackson
Love in a Time of Terror - Barry Lopez
Stand Outs
My Mustache - Wesley Morris
Two Women - Claire Messud
Least Favorites
Vicious Cycles - Greg Jackson
Love in a Time of Terror - Barry Lopez
August 18, 2025
Of this anthology's 20 essays, there are 6 I'd return to (1 checkmark indicates good essays, 2 checkmarks indicate great, 3 fantastic):
1 Checkmark
Hilton Als's "Homecoming"
Molly McCully Brown's "The Broken Country"
Barry Lopez's "Love in a Time of Terror"
Claire Messud's "Two Women"
Dariel Suarez's "In Orbit"
2 Checkmarks
Beth Nguyen's "Apparent"
Many of these essays are of the early Covid era or about other specific events and unfortunately haven't aged well.
As usual, I'll note the ratio of women/nonbinary essayists to men essayists: 11/20. As is often the case, a woman editor--here Kathryn Schulz--has chosen a better gender representation of writers than men editors do.
1 Checkmark
Hilton Als's "Homecoming"
Molly McCully Brown's "The Broken Country"
Barry Lopez's "Love in a Time of Terror"
Claire Messud's "Two Women"
Dariel Suarez's "In Orbit"
2 Checkmarks
Beth Nguyen's "Apparent"
Many of these essays are of the early Covid era or about other specific events and unfortunately haven't aged well.
As usual, I'll note the ratio of women/nonbinary essayists to men essayists: 11/20. As is often the case, a woman editor--here Kathryn Schulz--has chosen a better gender representation of writers than men editors do.
October 6, 2023
I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say I “enjoyed” these essays but I sure did appreciate them.
March 29, 2022
As usual there are some stellar works here. Maybe I am tapped out on Covid content, as I wish there had been a little less about it. Still, it makes perfect sense that the pandemic would weigh so heavily. Well worth reading and teaching from.
December 29, 2021
Best American Essays 2021 guest edited by Kathryn Schulz and series editor Robert Atwan was a healthy antidote to the dark and difficult Best American Short Stories 2021. While BAE 2021 covers many of the same areas of surrus as BASS 2021, it offers more hope and some solutions. BAE 2021 suggests that all is not lost.
By far the most stunning essay in the collection is Jesmyn Ward’s “Witness and Respair” in which she tells the story of her partner’s death from Covid and how grief was multiplied by the murders of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. She describes what it was like to grow up in a country that believed her to be less than because she is of African descent. Ward is able to find hope in a surprising place, which ends the book on a note very familiar to 2020 and 2021: despair abated by what is still righteous and good in our fellow humans.
There were other essays that shared Covid experiences and several which very movingly discussed race. An essay by Tony Hoagland, whose death cheated the world of one of the greatest satirists of our time, described how others offered all of their miracle advice as he was dying. I urge you to do yourself a favor and read his poetry.
There were some clunkers in this volume, as there always are. The majority of content focuses on personal experience as subject matter, so if you are looking for content that purports to focus on research and objectivity, this might not be for you.
I read BASS and BAE every year, and being especially partial to fiction, I tend to read BASS first. This year I am especially glad that I saved BAE for after, as it lightened the mark on my soul.
By far the most stunning essay in the collection is Jesmyn Ward’s “Witness and Respair” in which she tells the story of her partner’s death from Covid and how grief was multiplied by the murders of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. She describes what it was like to grow up in a country that believed her to be less than because she is of African descent. Ward is able to find hope in a surprising place, which ends the book on a note very familiar to 2020 and 2021: despair abated by what is still righteous and good in our fellow humans.
There were other essays that shared Covid experiences and several which very movingly discussed race. An essay by Tony Hoagland, whose death cheated the world of one of the greatest satirists of our time, described how others offered all of their miracle advice as he was dying. I urge you to do yourself a favor and read his poetry.
There were some clunkers in this volume, as there always are. The majority of content focuses on personal experience as subject matter, so if you are looking for content that purports to focus on research and objectivity, this might not be for you.
I read BASS and BAE every year, and being especially partial to fiction, I tend to read BASS first. This year I am especially glad that I saved BAE for after, as it lightened the mark on my soul.
January 30, 2022
Not a great year but Hilton Als’s and Jesmyn Ward’s were amazing
March 19, 2022
It was OK. I'm sure everything in this volume is very well written but either the topics weren't interesting to me OR they were interesting, or at least, they will be when some time has passed. It's too soon for me to be reading about Covid-19 and pandemics (and endemics)...we're still in several!
July 31, 2022
Not a standout. My favorites were by Amy Leach and Barry Lopez
February 4, 2024
Some of these essays really resonated with me, such as “The Broken Country” by Brown and “Witness and Repsair” by Ward, while with others, I just couldn’t connect. An interesting read though!
September 4, 2024
So turns out these essays were collected from the year before, so I unfortunately read about covid which I didn't need to do. Some of these were good, some of them were eh, as it goes. 2 stars because I wouldn't recommend.
February 20, 2023
I finished this a few months ago. This was a solid collection compared some more recent years.' There weren't many amazing essays. They were just...generally very good and engaging. The one that sticks with me is "The Kitchen is Closed" by Gabrielle Hamilton. It was published in the New York times and was written by a chef/owner of a restaurant in New York City that closed as a result of Covid-19. Hamilton writes about owning a small business, changes in New York over the last few decades, and how the closure of her small French bistro in Manhattan coincided with changes to the restaurant market more generally. I don't consume a lot of food writing (no pun intended) but this essay really made me feel some kinda way. The change in big East Coast cities from being kind of bohemian to being more crowded, more rich and more expensive is something I've experienced with mixed feelings. Also, she hits on something about the restaurant scene that is on the nose. Her own restaurant was a not really a "scene" nor did it have any novel offerings. It was a cozy, delicious restaurant where you went for a nice meal with people with whom you wanted to spend quality time. I can think of places like that that have closed. There was another essay called "Love in a Time of Terror" by Barry Lopez that had a quote that I loved. The quote is "[]Abandonning metaphor entirely only paves the way for the rigidity of fundamentalism." I don't even remember what the essay was about. I think he was describing the value of considering life's big questions from a perspective removed from modernity since he was living in the Australian outback with indigenous people at the time.
February 13, 2022
So many of these essays were extraordinary...Loved almost every one. Several about personal experiences during the covid shutdown, and caring for a very sick husband who contracted covid but was told to stay at home, since he didn't have breathing issues. Also Tony Hoagland's gorgeous meditations on his final months. I'm a fan of his poetry and this moved me to a kind of blissful sorrow. "Blissful," because the telling felt so true, and so singular.
Elizabeth Alexander's essay, "The Trayvon Generation" is crushing. Alexander wants to protect her two sons, "I want my children--all of them--to thrive, to be fully alive. How do we measure what that means?
What does it mean for our children to be "black, alive and looking back at you"? as June Jordan puts it in her poem, "Who Lookin at Me?" How to access the sources of strength that transcend this racism and racist violence.
Molly McCullen Brown's essay about her feeling that because of her cerebral palsy, she will never be seen as sexual or desirable.
"Love in a Time of Terror" is a heartbreaking description of failure to love, and the way that failure is bring the collapse of this planet closer and closer.
Claire Messud's essay about her mother as she loses her memory and ability to recognize Clair. "Isn't it wonderful," she whispered...I was aware that she probably didn't know she lived with us, now perhaps, who I was, that I was her daughter. "I just love being here," she said. "And I just wish I could spend all my time with you."
Tony Hoagland's extraordinary and luminous essay about his experience of approaching death, Greg Jackson's scathing and illuminating essay on our need for the newnd Max Reid's terrifying essay, "Going Postal." So much extraordinary writing in one place.
One of the strangest and funniest is Agnes Callard's essay "Acceptance Parenting" takes on the sea change in what it means to parent, or the "parenting game," as Callard calls it. She recalls one scene in the British miniseries Years and Years in which a daughter nervously comes out as trans to her parents, who having snooped on her Google searches, react with a prepared effusion of support. "Oh, honey, it's all right, I swear. We're completely fine either way...I know we might be a bit slow and a bit old and this is going to be confusing to us and we'll make a mess of it sometimes, but we love you. We absolutely love you And we always will...And if it turns out we've got a lovely son instead of a lovely daughter, then we'll be happy. "
Jessmyn Ward's heartbreaking essay ends the collection. It is, I think, my favorite of the essays collected here. It left me sobbing. We are so connected an so fragile and certainty is always lacking. Get this book. It is so worth reading. It reminded me that it is not only gorgeous fiction and poetry that sustains me...but the thoughts and meditations of others when the writer understands that what happens and what we think can open worlds beyond the first thought, the inciting event or memory.
She is momentarily confused and corrects them, "No, I'm not transsexual, I'm 'transhuman!'" She explains that she aspires to first modify her body in various ways to integrate herself into the internet and eventually to dispense with her body altogether by uploading herself into the cloud. "I don't want to be flesh."
p.170
Elizabeth Alexander's essay, "The Trayvon Generation" is crushing. Alexander wants to protect her two sons, "I want my children--all of them--to thrive, to be fully alive. How do we measure what that means?
What does it mean for our children to be "black, alive and looking back at you"? as June Jordan puts it in her poem, "Who Lookin at Me?" How to access the sources of strength that transcend this racism and racist violence.
Molly McCullen Brown's essay about her feeling that because of her cerebral palsy, she will never be seen as sexual or desirable.
"Love in a Time of Terror" is a heartbreaking description of failure to love, and the way that failure is bring the collapse of this planet closer and closer.
Claire Messud's essay about her mother as she loses her memory and ability to recognize Clair. "Isn't it wonderful," she whispered...I was aware that she probably didn't know she lived with us, now perhaps, who I was, that I was her daughter. "I just love being here," she said. "And I just wish I could spend all my time with you."
Tony Hoagland's extraordinary and luminous essay about his experience of approaching death, Greg Jackson's scathing and illuminating essay on our need for the newnd Max Reid's terrifying essay, "Going Postal." So much extraordinary writing in one place.
One of the strangest and funniest is Agnes Callard's essay "Acceptance Parenting" takes on the sea change in what it means to parent, or the "parenting game," as Callard calls it. She recalls one scene in the British miniseries Years and Years in which a daughter nervously comes out as trans to her parents, who having snooped on her Google searches, react with a prepared effusion of support. "Oh, honey, it's all right, I swear. We're completely fine either way...I know we might be a bit slow and a bit old and this is going to be confusing to us and we'll make a mess of it sometimes, but we love you. We absolutely love you And we always will...And if it turns out we've got a lovely son instead of a lovely daughter, then we'll be happy. "
Jessmyn Ward's heartbreaking essay ends the collection. It is, I think, my favorite of the essays collected here. It left me sobbing. We are so connected an so fragile and certainty is always lacking. Get this book. It is so worth reading. It reminded me that it is not only gorgeous fiction and poetry that sustains me...but the thoughts and meditations of others when the writer understands that what happens and what we think can open worlds beyond the first thought, the inciting event or memory.
She is momentarily confused and corrects them, "No, I'm not transsexual, I'm 'transhuman!'" She explains that she aspires to first modify her body in various ways to integrate herself into the internet and eventually to dispense with her body altogether by uploading herself into the cloud. "I don't want to be flesh."
p.170
March 20, 2022
Maybe it's a 4.5 rounded down. Maybe 3.5 rounded up. I cried over a couple of these essays, had to skim passages in others. I nearly gave up entirely early on, reading other books until after completing the Science and Nature Writing collection in this series I came back to the essays.
There are a few Covid essays, because nothing in the past two years is distinct from that world disaster, and no one was more touching than Jesamyn Ward right at the end; but Wesley Morris reviewed lifetimes in one essay through his brilliant exploration of personal and public identity in "My Mustache" that started out as small and individual and became enormous and national in about six lines.
Barry Lopez caught me and just beat my heart to mush. [discloser: I am not sentimental about Lopez because he recently died in Oregon but because I held a grudge—an unfair grudge, as I now see it—against the author for years. He told a room of English teachers to stop trying to teach all their students but to focus on the "bankable" kids. I stopped him afterwards, pulled him away from his handlers, and told him he was wrong to suggest that because no one could be certain who would go on to make a difference in the world and we were wrong to assume we could know. He said he'd remember what I said. I felt my warning become part of his story.]
There are a few Covid essays, because nothing in the past two years is distinct from that world disaster, and no one was more touching than Jesamyn Ward right at the end; but Wesley Morris reviewed lifetimes in one essay through his brilliant exploration of personal and public identity in "My Mustache" that started out as small and individual and became enormous and national in about six lines.
Barry Lopez caught me and just beat my heart to mush. [discloser: I am not sentimental about Lopez because he recently died in Oregon but because I held a grudge—an unfair grudge, as I now see it—against the author for years. He told a room of English teachers to stop trying to teach all their students but to focus on the "bankable" kids. I stopped him afterwards, pulled him away from his handlers, and told him he was wrong to suggest that because no one could be certain who would go on to make a difference in the world and we were wrong to assume we could know. He said he'd remember what I said. I felt my warning become part of his story.]
February 14, 2025
4.5/5
Many of the essays in this book felt like a hug and a warm cup of tea - they weren’t all nurturing and chicken-soup-for-the-(blank)-soul per se, but they all carried a sense of great tenderness and forethought. Though each writer had a unique voice, the personal essays featured in this collection all reached parts of me that felt at once familiar and unexplored, and left me feeling heard but also newly enlightened.
Given that this is book is comprised of essays that came out in 2021, the selection of essays that were considered were all published in the previous year, 2020. The editor, Kathryn Schulz, writes one of the best introductions to a book I have ever read - her summary of the absolutely insane year that was 2020 was pocket-sized delectable. A lovely start to a thought-provoking book, and an especially crazy (?) read given that my reading of it happened half a decade after the start of the phenomenon that shifted our lives forever. The essays she curated for this collection were thoughtfully selected, eclectic, and exhibited great emotional and thematic range.
All in all, a fantastic read that even made me want to start writing more in the personal essay format myself.
Many of the essays in this book felt like a hug and a warm cup of tea - they weren’t all nurturing and chicken-soup-for-the-(blank)-soul per se, but they all carried a sense of great tenderness and forethought. Though each writer had a unique voice, the personal essays featured in this collection all reached parts of me that felt at once familiar and unexplored, and left me feeling heard but also newly enlightened.
Given that this is book is comprised of essays that came out in 2021, the selection of essays that were considered were all published in the previous year, 2020. The editor, Kathryn Schulz, writes one of the best introductions to a book I have ever read - her summary of the absolutely insane year that was 2020 was pocket-sized delectable. A lovely start to a thought-provoking book, and an especially crazy (?) read given that my reading of it happened half a decade after the start of the phenomenon that shifted our lives forever. The essays she curated for this collection were thoughtfully selected, eclectic, and exhibited great emotional and thematic range.
All in all, a fantastic read that even made me want to start writing more in the personal essay format myself.
January 31, 2022
This collection of essays reflects a year of American lives embattled by situations outside of our control as individuals. For this reason, I find it interesting enough to read and recommend. Some of these essays are better than others which could be said of any anthology, I guess. Some don’t read as literary essays in my opinion, as much as an opinion article in a news outlet. But some stand out to me as essays I’d teach: Jesmyn Ward, Hilton Als, Beth Nguyen, Claire Messud, Wesley Morris, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Barry Lopez. Greg Jackson’s essay is interesting if you’re questioning (as I do) a media saturated culture that seems to get so much wrong despite 24 hour news. But is it a literary essay? Does it live too much in the abstract? Maybe. As a book steeped in 2020, it’s worth keeping as a snapshot on an intense news worthy year. But for that same reason, some essays may not hold up over time as some pieces of art do—I found this to be the case in particular for Fintan O’Toole’s exploration of
Biden as chief mourner. I find it interesting to read as someone who has lived through a Trump presidency and a Biden one but will it be as interesting in 20 years? Maybe. Maybe not.
Biden as chief mourner. I find it interesting to read as someone who has lived through a Trump presidency and a Biden one but will it be as interesting in 20 years? Maybe. Maybe not.
August 4, 2023
Essays written during the pandemic era have certain solemnity to them that is uneasy and striking. I particularly enjoyed 'Vicious Cycles' by Greg Jackson, originally published in the Harper's Magazine, and 'Going Postal' by Max Read simply because they spoke about different things apart from the virus' doom and gloom. Further, they examined the psychology behind posting on social media - going so far as to posit it is either to keep loneliness at bay or the Freudian death drive. Another essay I enjoyed was Dariel Suarez's 'In Orbit' and Dawn Lundy Martin's 'What Money Can't Buy' - both stories spoke about generational trauma a wee bit in a very nuanced way without forceful characterization of their caretakers who were perhaps a product of their times. 'Acceptance Parenting' by Agnes Callard was a great examination into the dilemma parents face, especially when research into parenting produces too much information, often times conflicting with one another. Lastly, Gabrielle Hamilton's 'The Kitchen is Closed' was a refreshing read, in stark contrast with Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confessions' that I read many weeks back.
January 22, 2022
I thoroughly enjoyed this year's (or rather 2020's) selection of Best American Essays edited by Kathryn Schulz and Robert Atwan. Did I love every essay? No, of course not. There were essays that I found interesting, while aware that they weren't for me ("Acceptance Parenting" by Agnes Callard) and others that I ended up skimming through that used a lot of words to say very little in a very confusing manner. But for the most part, I thought this was a solid selection of essays that both acknowledged and centered two of the big topics of 2020 (the still-ongoing pandemic and racial reckoning), but made space for other topics, many related to identity and family relationships. A few standouts were Patricia Lockwoods' "Insane After Coronavirus?", Dawn Lundy Martin's "What Money Can't Buy", Claire Messud's "Two Women" and, of course, Wesley Morris' "My Mustache" which somehow manages to be even better in a 2nd reading. And Tony Hoagland's "Bent Arrows" is heartbreaking, wise, and a testament that you don't need 15 pages to make a point.
December 26, 2022
I have read the Best American Poetry for the last three years; this is my first Best American Essays collection. I will always rate these 5 stars; anthologies are either all good or all bad to me. I may not like every piece but as long as the collection is valid overall, I won't punish it for diversity.
I was not sure what to expect from this collection (i.e., cultural commentary or personal essay.) I was pleased that the essays were personal overall. Lots of different human experiences were reflected, which I appreciated. Difficult to select favorites; Martin's "What Money Can't Buy" was a stand out. There was only one essay that took me days to read because it was too long, not fresh, and self indulgent; these "best of" collections always have one or two pieces by old white dudes who are included because they always have been, not because they add any value. The ideas presented as if they were revolutionary were OLD and COMMON. Outside of that I may not have connected with each piece, but I appreciated the collection overall.
I was not sure what to expect from this collection (i.e., cultural commentary or personal essay.) I was pleased that the essays were personal overall. Lots of different human experiences were reflected, which I appreciated. Difficult to select favorites; Martin's "What Money Can't Buy" was a stand out. There was only one essay that took me days to read because it was too long, not fresh, and self indulgent; these "best of" collections always have one or two pieces by old white dudes who are included because they always have been, not because they add any value. The ideas presented as if they were revolutionary were OLD and COMMON. Outside of that I may not have connected with each piece, but I appreciated the collection overall.
March 21, 2022
3.5 stars. Most of the essays in this collection really connected with me, but there were two things really brought the grade down. One was a matter of selection: one of the essays was so terrible, in my view, that I do not understand how it could have been chosen; it went beyond "this doesn't work for me" all the way to "I do not understand how anybody thought this was a best anything." The other was, I believe an accident of the alphabet. The essays are ordered alphabetically by their authors' surnames. And, the first three essays (if I recall correctly) all dealt with such pain that I worried that this year's editor had tastes far different from mine in essays. I like reflection and I like to consider the world, but not every essay needs to confront deep pain. (My perception was also clouded when I misread the name of one of the authors, which left me unsure how the essay order had been chosen.)
Both are small things, but both did hurt my enjoyment.
Both are small things, but both did hurt my enjoyment.
August 13, 2022
I have been reading essays in this series for many years. Each one always has a great essay or two, many good essays, and some that aren’t interesting to me. The great essay in this one was Vicious Cycles by Greg Jackson, a brilliant discussion about why media news is worthless and leads to a feeling of distress. My favorite idea from this piece is until a news source says, nothing significant happened today and we are cancelling this show, it isn’t worth another minute of our time.
A trend in this series is to include many personal essays, first person stories that explore a topic from a personal point of view. Many of these were good, such as 1. A story of how a writer’s husband died of COVID, 2, a story of an experience while lost in the Australian desert, 3. a story of how a restaurant owner coped with lockdowns and COVID. For me, there were way too many of these personal essays.
A trend in this series is to include many personal essays, first person stories that explore a topic from a personal point of view. Many of these were good, such as 1. A story of how a writer’s husband died of COVID, 2, a story of an experience while lost in the Australian desert, 3. a story of how a restaurant owner coped with lockdowns and COVID. For me, there were way too many of these personal essays.
January 10, 2022
These anthologies are always hit or miss - I find that I usually do rank them a 3 on a scale of 5 because of this. While it is published in and titled with the year 2021, this is actual comprised of essays published in 2020, a year of pandemic and protest like no other we had previously experienced. I usually really enjoy how all-encompassing essays in the TBAE editions are, but these felt very much so like current events pieces, which is apt for the editor, who is a staff writer at the New Yorker. Overall, a good read.
My favorite essays, in order of how they appear in the book:
The Trayvon Generation -Elizabeth Alexander
Bent Arrows: On Anticipation of My Approaching Disappearance -Tony Hoagland
What Money Can’t Buy -Dawn Lundy Martin
Apparent -Beth Nguyen
Witness and Respair -Jesmyn Ward
My favorite essays, in order of how they appear in the book:
The Trayvon Generation -Elizabeth Alexander
Bent Arrows: On Anticipation of My Approaching Disappearance -Tony Hoagland
What Money Can’t Buy -Dawn Lundy Martin
Apparent -Beth Nguyen
Witness and Respair -Jesmyn Ward
March 1, 2022
This is an eclectic collection of essays published in major publications that somewhat vary in quality. Some of the highlights here for me were crushing "Apparent" by Beth Nguyen about meeting her estranged mother after their life so cruelly set them apart and "Witness and Respair" by Jesmyn Ward on the loss of her husband and the grief that followed. Jesmyn Ward's piece is probably the strongest of the selection.
Some of these essays were insightful and interesting, if not as personal, like "Kitchen is closed" by Gabrielle Hamilton about dealing with the pandemics as a restaurant owner and "Acceptance Parenting" by Agnes Callard about modern parenting.
Some were ok, but just not for me (Barry Lopez, who I normally admire). I also liked "In Orbit" by D. Suarez a lot, but it was so unnecessarily apologetic I felt bad for the author.
Some of these essays were insightful and interesting, if not as personal, like "Kitchen is closed" by Gabrielle Hamilton about dealing with the pandemics as a restaurant owner and "Acceptance Parenting" by Agnes Callard about modern parenting.
Some were ok, but just not for me (Barry Lopez, who I normally admire). I also liked "In Orbit" by D. Suarez a lot, but it was so unnecessarily apologetic I felt bad for the author.
May 1, 2022
what's fun about collections is that it's never so much about what's "best" as it is about the editors' preferences, which can be quite revealing. in the case of these essays, i tended to feel quite in the middle about most of them, but perhaps that has more to do with my preference of form than content. i can appreciate that the writers of these essays have something to say, and admire their bravery for putting their personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions out there for public consumption. it was just a bit of a mixed bag when it came to my personal enjoyment, although the ones that hit for me hit hard.
ratings for essays i missed in updates:
"My Mustache" -- 4
"In Orbit" -- 3
"Witness and Respair" -- 5
favorites (5 stars) were "The Trayvon Generation," "Homecoming," "The Broken Country," and "Witness and Respair."
average comes out to:
3.5/5 stars
ratings for essays i missed in updates:
"My Mustache" -- 4
"In Orbit" -- 3
"Witness and Respair" -- 5
favorites (5 stars) were "The Trayvon Generation," "Homecoming," "The Broken Country," and "Witness and Respair."
average comes out to:
3.5/5 stars
August 13, 2023
I read this collection (almost) every year and obviously I'm a bit behind. This year's collection is really essays from 2020.. and we are all well aware that 2020 was somewhat of a heavy year. That is represented here.. the 2020 election, COVID, BLM.
There are always some standouts and some that speak less to me. This is definitely a NY-heavy collection (the editor is a writer for the New Yorker).
Standouts for me- The Broken Country, The Kitchen is Closed, Bent Arrows, Clarity, What Money Can't Buy, Apparent, Witness and Repair. There will always be, in any of these anthologies, thoughts that stay with me and that I revisit. This particular year felt a little dark, but again.. 2020.
Now to get to the 2022 Best Essays before 2023 comes out in October. (I'm behind on the Short Stories too. Oh well.)
{owned, paperback}
There are always some standouts and some that speak less to me. This is definitely a NY-heavy collection (the editor is a writer for the New Yorker).
Standouts for me- The Broken Country, The Kitchen is Closed, Bent Arrows, Clarity, What Money Can't Buy, Apparent, Witness and Repair. There will always be, in any of these anthologies, thoughts that stay with me and that I revisit. This particular year felt a little dark, but again.. 2020.
Now to get to the 2022 Best Essays before 2023 comes out in October. (I'm behind on the Short Stories too. Oh well.)
{owned, paperback}
September 7, 2024
I picked up an essay collection to improve my writing skills. Although the title is *The Best Essays*, not many of them resonated with me. My favorite is Claire Messud's *Two Women*, which is sincere and humorous, offering a detailed portrayal of the two women who had the deepest influence on Claire, yet never got along with each other throughout their lives — her mother and her aunt. Another good one is *The Designed Mourner*, which humorously explains how Biden shaped himself to appear like a reincarnation of Kennedy, while also discussing why his political ideology no longer fits the times. Lastly, *The Broken Country* explores how the author deals with a body that has caused them pain. Apart from these three, I don't think the rest are worth a thorough read.
November 25, 2022
Very much of-the-moment, this collection is less uneven as it is fair-to-middling throughout.
"Bent Arrows" about the missives one receives when people learn you are dying was my favorite essay.
"Acceptance Parenting," "The Kitchen is Closed," and perhaps "Vicious Cycles" stood out to me as well, as they each taught me something new.
The remaining essays are more personal/emotional/familial, and while many are momentarily fascinating (e.g. "Love in a Time of Terror") or entertaining (e.g. "Insane After Coronavirus," "Oh Latitudo"), most I found more meandering (even formulaic) than moving. Perhaps my heart is deficient rather than the writing.
"Bent Arrows" about the missives one receives when people learn you are dying was my favorite essay.
"Acceptance Parenting," "The Kitchen is Closed," and perhaps "Vicious Cycles" stood out to me as well, as they each taught me something new.
The remaining essays are more personal/emotional/familial, and while many are momentarily fascinating (e.g. "Love in a Time of Terror") or entertaining (e.g. "Insane After Coronavirus," "Oh Latitudo"), most I found more meandering (even formulaic) than moving. Perhaps my heart is deficient rather than the writing.
September 24, 2024
The curator of this collection was raised by two well-educated professionals in the privileged suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is a journalist for The New Yorker. The extent to which she is a serious reader of literature is unclear, but in terms of curating a Best American Essays, this one is mid. Many seem like middling drafts that would benefit from another long arc of revision. Some were written far too soon after the event on question — I struggle to see how one can get appropriate literary distance on grief within eleven months. I know there were better essays out there that year so it’s sad that these got the gold star. Alas, there’s always the Pushcart!
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