Best American Essays 2017

"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."
--Publishers Weekly

"The essay is political--and politically useful, by which I mean humanizing and provocative--because of its commitment to nuance, its explorations of contingency, its spirit of unrest, its glee at overturned assumptions; because of the double helix of awe and distrust--faith and doubt--that structures its DNA," writes guest editor Leslie Jamison in her introduction. From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the genetic makeup of the eclectic and electric selections in The Best American Essays 2017 "thrill toward complexity."

The Best American Essays 2017 includes
RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH, LAWRENCE JACKSON,
RACHEL KUSHNER, ALAN LIGHTMAN, BERNARD FARAI MATAMBO,
WESLEY MORRIS, HEATHER SELLERS, ANDREA STUART
and others

"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. (Oct.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"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."
--Publishers Weekly

"The essay is political--and politically useful, by which I mean humanizing and provocative--because of its commitment to nuance, its explorations of contingency, its spirit of unrest, its glee at overturned assumptions; because of the double helix of awe and distrust--faith and doubt--that structures its DNA," writes guest editor Leslie Jamison in her introduction. From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the genetic makeup of the eclectic and electric selections in The Best American Essays 2017 "thrill toward complexity."

The Best American Essays 2017 includes
RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH, LAWRENCE JACKSON,
RACHEL KUSHNER, ALAN LIGHTMAN, BERNARD FARAI MATAMBO,
WESLEY MORRIS, HEATHER SELLERS, ANDREA STUART
and others

The best-selling essayist Leslie Jamison picks the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites.