The Best American Essays 2024
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- $189.00
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- $189.00
Descripción editorial
A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Wesley Morris and series editor Kim Dana Kupperman.
“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this compelling volume of literary nonfiction use their own vulnerability to guide readers on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of unforgettable true stories presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.
The Best American Essays 2024 includes TEJU COLE • MICHAEL W. CLUNE • YIYUN LI • JAMES McAULEY • RÉMY NGAMIJE • JENNIFER SENIOR • SALLIE TISDALE • JERALD WALKER • JENISHA WATTS and others
What happens when today’s most insightful writers dare to tell the unvarnished truth?
Personal History: Follow Jenisha Watts from a Kentucky crack house to Maya Angelou’s living room in a breathtaking story of resilience and the power of words.The Nature of Memory: Question everything you believe about the past as Sallie Tisdale masterfully interrogates whether any memory can truly be trusted.Family Secrets: Uncover the devastating cost of hiding a relative away in Jennifer Senior’s powerful investigation into her institutionalized aunt.Art and Cultural Criticism: See the world anew through the eyes of Teju Cole as he stands before a Vermeer and asks what a work of art is truly trying to show us.Memoir as Confession: Laugh, cringe, and explore the boundaries of storytelling as Jerald Walker recounts, with thrilling ambiguity, the seven weeks he swears he was a pimp.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wrenching family stories headline this affecting installment, edited by New York Times Magazine staff writer Morris and series editor Kupperman (I Just Lately Started Buying Wings), in the annual anthology series. Jenisha Watts discusses her challenging upbringing as the daughter of a crack addict in "Jenisha from Kentucky," recounting how her mother, in exchange for free drugs, would keep her and her siblings occupied with coloring books while allowing her dealers' customers to get high in her apartment. In "If Not Now, Later," Yiyun Lee, a novelist accustomed to contemplating plotlines for her characters, recalls deciding to stop thinking about what her son might have grown up to do had he not died by suicide at age 16. In the volume's strongest entry, "The Ones We Sent Away," Jennifer Senior traces the abysmal treatment endured by people with mental disabilities throughout American history while telling the heartrending story of her aunt, who was born with a pronounced intellectual disability, institutionalized before she was two years old, and rarely thereafter discussed by her family. Other high points include James McAuley's nuanced meditation on how the ubiquity of Holocaust memorialization masks a growing numbness to the genocide's horror, and Richard Prins's formally ambitious message to his daughter that begins each sentence with the word "because" ("Because these lopped-off arms of mine will keep bearing your weight after the rest of me flies home"). Moving personal reflections and a uniformly strong crop of contributors make this a standout entry in the long-running series.
