Dreadful Sorry: Essays on an American Nostalgia

by Jennifer Niesslein

Candid essays on personal and cultural American nostalgia, focusing on the author's working-class, Rust Belt family history.  What does it mean to be nostalgic for the American past? The feeling has been co-opted by the far right (“Make America Great Again,” after all, is a plea for the past), and associated with violent periods of our country’s history when white supremacy was even more dominant than today.  Can a liberal white woman still be sentimental about her childhood, her European immigrant family history, her working-class upbringing?  In  Dreadful Sorry , Jennifer Niesslein explores her “nostalgia problem” with grace and curiosity. The essays recount her thoughts upon rewatching  Little Women  with her sisters and mother, her hand-to-mouth childhood, the effect being “not the right kind of white” had on her Polish immigrant ancestors in the U.S, and her family’s own racism. Niesslein weaves together personal and structural questions of class, whiteness, history, and family with humor and charisma.  A book for anyone who wants to think about their relationship to their childhood, family history, and place. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays

166 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

About the author

I'm the founder and editor of Full Grown People, a web magazine of essays about adulthood—the other awkward age.

I'm also the author of Practically Perfect in Every Way and the co-founder of Brain, Child magazine.

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable quick read of someone processing nostalgia - the positive of looking back kindly on yourself and who you have been, yet fighting against rose colored views of how your own history is more complex when you understand your history is not simply your own life but of the society in which it took place.

[Jenna Goldsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's fun to discover a book, not because it's on the NYT bestseller list or the writer is famous or it's in every shelf at every bookstore right now, but because one of your favorite presses published it and you want to support them and you trust their publications. That's how I came to this book. I enjoyed learning about this writer in these brief essays on her life and her ideas about nostalgia. It got me thinking about nostalgia in a different way. My favorite essay in the book was New Galilee (I also think it was the strongest essay).

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this would be about nostalgia for the pop culture of one's youth -- playing video games, remembering TV shows, reading comics, climbing trees out in the yard. Instead, it's really about family and regrets and how it all shapes people.

In effect, this is Belt Publishing's Hillbilly Elegy. Except much better.

Jennifer Niesslein's nine essays touch on race and class and white supremacy and how it shaped her life growing up. I only read two of the essays, not because they were bad, but because the book wasn't what I thought it was. I thought it would be more like Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties, which was in my stack underneat Dreadful Sorry, just a lighthearted rip through youthful memories. Instead, Niesslein muses on her 1980s youth in Western Pennsylvania, focusing on her grandmother and other women in the family that might not have had it as easy as she did. She is very aware of the state of things in America today and writes through that prism.

A good book, just not what I was looking for.

[Lisa Ellison · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Dreadful Sorry, Jennifer Niesslein writes with all of her usual wit and candor while tackling some of the biggest issues we face around whiteness, race, feminisms, identity, and empathy. At times, her critical eye looks out on society and what the hell we’re doing, but she quickly turns inward, toward her own flaws and blindspots. And because she does this, I find myself devouring her pages and turning inward, toward my own nostalgia and what it really means and whether it’s helpful at all.

And who doesn’t like an essay about going to a psychic only to find out that the dead who visit happens to be someone you don’t like.

This is a timely read packed with powerful, carefully explored topics essential for our times.

[Kathleen Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take your time with this. At 159 pages, you think it will be a fast read, but I found myself lingering over each essay -- taking in Niesslein's observations, reliving my own treasured memories, thinking about how events in my childhood influence how I live my life today. This is a book to savor and re-read. I think it would also generate interesting discussions for a book club.

[Jennifer Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It didn't last, of course—no childhood does, even (or especially) an idyllic one." From "New Galilee," my favorite in this quietly absorbing collection of essays.

[Alex Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very quick read but still substantial. The authors take on the idea of nostalgia was very unique and unexpected. She tied together her childhood in different cities to her adult life currently, while reflecting on the changes in herself and in the country. The relationships she explored in these essays was interesting too; the length of the essays was perfect - just enough to get you interested and leave you thinking. This was an interesting exploration of American nostalgia specific to one persons lived experience yet made relatable through her writing.

[andrea]

i found myself wishing for a deeper, more radical interrogation and solutions to the issues presented in the essays, but it was still a good read and very well written. i especially appreciated the parts about the author’s polish family and the interesting things they got up to, and the discussions about their working class struggles juxtaposed with their white privilege albeit not the “right kind of white.”

[SBReading · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in only three sittings. The author has a fantastic voice. I enjoyed the slice of life, the reflections on what it means to be nostalgic, what it means to be a feminist, what it means to be respectful, and I appreciated the racial, socioeconomic, and political takeaways even if from only an individual and somewhat (acknowledged) privileged perspective. This is a short engaging read, highly recommend.

[Chris]

Thoughtful essays on growing up, or, rather, on the remembrances of growing up. At turns Niesslein writes of her memories and then reviews them critically, attempting to expose the false comfort that nostalgia creates.
Written with humility and humor, it grounded me in my own perspectives of “the past”.

[Amanda Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I call myself “chronically nostalgic” - this collection of essays hit hard. She and I had very similar experiences. One of my favorite sentences comes rather early in the collection: “Myths, of course, always represent the imagination of the mythmaker.”

Once again, Belt Publishing doesn’t miss.

[Nigel Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it in an afternoon. Just what I needed. Fresh, personal, and lovely.

[Rachael]

I wrote about the ironies of Niesslein’s American nostalgia for the Ploughshares blog.