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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020

Featuring zadie smith, helen macdonald, claudia rankine, samantha irby, and more.

Zadie Smith’s Intimations , Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights , Claudia Rankine’s Just Us , and Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You all feature among the Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020.

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Grove)

18 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Read Helen Macdonald on Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road  here

“A former historian of science, Macdonald is as captivated by the everyday (ants, bird’s nests) as she is by the extraordinary (glowworms, total solar eclipses), and her writing often closes the distance between the two … Always, the author pushes through the gloom to look beyond herself, beyond all people, to ‘rejoice in the complexity of things’ and to see what science has to show us: ‘that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us’ … The climate crisis shadows these essays. Macdonald is not, however, given to sounding dire, all-caps warnings … For all its elegiac sentences and gray moods, Vesper Flights  is a book of tremendous purpose. Throughout these essays, Macdonald revisits the idea that as a writer it is her responsibility to take stock of what’s happening to the natural world and to convey the value of the living things within it.”

–Jake Cline  ( The Washington Post )

2. Intimations by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

13 Rave • 7 Positive • 3 Mixed

Listen to Zadie Smith read from Intimations here

“Smith…is a spectacular essayist—even better, I’d say, than as a novelist … Smith…get[s] at something universal, the suspicion that has infiltrated our interactions even with those we want to think we know. This is the essential job of the essayist: to explore not our innocence but our complicity. I want to say this works because Smith doesn’t take herself too seriously, but that’s not accurate. More to the point, she is willing to expose the tangle of feelings the pandemic has provoked. And this may seem a small thing, but it’s essential: I never doubt her voice on the page … Her offhandedness, at first, feels out of step with a moment in which we are desperate to feel that whatever something we are trying to do matters. But it also describes that moment perfectly … Here we see the kind of devastating self-exposure that the essay, as a form, requires—the realization of how limited we are even in the best of times, and how bereft in the worst.”

–David L. Ulin  ( The Los Angeles Times )

3. Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed

Read an excerpt from Just Us here

“ Just Us  is about intimacy. Rankine is making an appeal for real closeness. She’s advocating for candor as the pathway to achieving universal humanity and authentic love … Rankine is vulnerable, too. In ‘lemonade,’ an essay about how race and racism affect her interracial marriage, Rankine models the openness she hopes to inspire. ‘lemonade’ is hard to handle. It’s naked and confessional, deeply moving and, ultimately, inspirational … Just Us , as a book, is inventive … Claudia Rankine may be the most human human I’ve ever encountered. Her inner machinations and relentless questioning would exhaust most people. Her labor should be less necessary, of course.”

–Michael Kleber-Diggs  ( The Star Tribune )

4. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World)

7 Rave • 10 Positive • 2 Mixed

Listen to an interview with Cathy Park Hong here

“Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured … I read Minor Feelings  in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch … The question of lovability, and desirability, is freighted for Asian men and Asian women in very different ways—and Minor Feelings  serves as a case study in how a feminist point of view can both deepen an inquiry and widen its resonances to something like universality … Hong reframes the quandary of negotiating dominance and submission—of desiring dominance, of hating the terms of that dominance, of submitting in the hopes of achieving some facsimile of dominance anyway—as a capitalist dilemma … Hong is writing in agonized pursuit of a liberation that doesn’t look white—a new sound, a new affect, a new consciousness—and the result feels like what she was waiting for. Her book is a reminder that we can be, and maybe have to be, what others are waiting for, too.”

–Jia Tolentino  ( The New Yorker )

5. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Milkweed Editions)

11 Rave • 3 Positive

Read an excerpt from World of Wonders here

“In beautifully illustrated essays, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes of exotic flora and fauna and her family, and why they are all of one piece … In days of old, books about nature were often as treasured for their illustrations as they were for their words. World of Wonders,  American poet and teacher Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s prose ode to her muses in the natural world, is a throwback that way. Its words are beautiful, but its cover and interior illustrations by Fumi Mini Nakamura may well be what first moves you to pick it up in a bookstore or online … The book’s magic lies in Nezhukumatathil’s ability to blend personal and natural history, to compress into each brief essay the relationship between a biographical passage from her own family and the life trajectory of a particular plant or animal … Her kaleidoscopic observations pay off in these thoughtful, nuanced, surprise-filled essays.”

–Pamela Miller  ( The Star Tribune )

6. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (Vintage)

10 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Watch an interview with Samantha Irby here

“Haphazard and aimless as she claims to be, Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You  is purposefully hilarious, real, and full of medicine for living with our culture’s contradictory messages. From relationship advice she wasn’t asked for to surrendering her cell phone as dinner etiquette, Irby is wholly unpretentious as she opines about the unspoken expectations of adulting. Her essays poke holes and luxuriate in the weirdness of modern society … If anyone whose life is being made into a television show could continue to keep it real for her blog reading fans, it’s Irby. She proves we can still trust her authenticity not just through her questionable taste in music and descriptions of incredibly bloody periods, but through her willingness to demystify what happens in any privileged room she finds herself in … Irby defines professional lingo and describes the mundane details of exclusive industries in anecdotes that are not only entertaining but powerfully demystifying. Irby’s closeness to financial and physical precariousness combined with her willingness to enter situations she feels unprepared for make us loyal to her—she again proves herself to be a trustworthy and admirable narrator who readers will hold fast to through anything at all.”

–Molly Thornton  ( Lambda Literary )

7. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing (W. W. Norton & Company)

5 Rave • 10 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Yes, you’re in for a treat … There are few voices that we can reliably read widely these days, but I would read Laing writing about proverbial paint drying (the collection is in fact quite paint-heavy), just as soon as I would read her write about the Grenfell Tower fire, The Fire This Time , or a refugee’s experience in England, The Abandoned Person’s Tale , all of which are included in Funny Weather … Laing’s knowledge of her subjects is encyclopaedic, her awe is infectious, and her critical eye is reminiscent of the critic and author James Wood … She is to the art world what David Attenborough is to nature: a worthy guide with both a macro and micro vision, fluent in her chosen tongue and always full of empathy and awe.”

–Mia Colleran  ( The Irish Times )

8. Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

6 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan

“A] searing look at the struggle for all Americans to achieve liberty and equality. Lalami eloquently tacks between her experiences as an immigrant to this country and the history of U.S. attempts to exclude different categories of people from the full benefits of citizenship … Lalami offers a fresh perspective on the double consciousness of the immigrant … Conditional citizenship is still conferred on people of color, women, immigrants, religious minorities, even those living in poverty, and Lalami’s insight in showing the subtle and overt ways discrimination operates in so many facets of life is one of this book’s major strengths.”

–Rachel Newcomb  ( The Washington Post )

9. This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah (University of Georgia Press)

7 Rave • 2 Positive 

Watch an interview with Sejal Shah here

“Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an ‘exotic’ name, when the only country you’ve ever lived in is America … The essays in this slim volume are engaging and thought-provoking … The essays are well-crafted with varying forms that should inspire and enlighten other essayists … A particularly delightful chapter is the last, called ‘Voice Texting with My Mother,’ which is, in fact, written in texts … Shah’s thoughts on heritage and belonging are important and interesting.”

–Martha Anne Toll  ( NPR )

10. Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (Riverhead)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed

Read Eula Biss on the anticapitalist origins of Monopoly here

“… enthralling … Her allusive blend of autobiography and criticism may remind some of The Argonauts  by Maggie Nelson, a friend whose name pops up in the text alongside those of other artists and intellectuals who have influenced her work. And yet, line for line, her epigrammatic style perhaps most recalls that of Emily Dickinson in its radical compression of images and ideas into a few chiseled lines … Biss wears her erudition lightly … she’s really funny, with a barbed but understated wit … Keenly aware of her privilege as a white, well-educated woman who has benefited from a wide network of family and friends, Biss has written a book that is, in effect, the opposite of capitalism in its willingness to acknowledge that everything she’s accomplished rests on the labor of others.”

–Ann Levin  ( Associated Press )

The Book Marks System: RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Best Reviewed Books of 2020: Essay Collections

Featuring zadie smith, helen macdonald, claudia rankine, samantha irby, and more.

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2020—the longest year that has ever been—is almost at an end, and that means it’s time for us to break out the calculators and tabulate the best reviewed books of past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2020, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir & Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Graphic Literature; Poetry; Mystery & Crime; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

1. Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Grove)

18 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Read Helen Macdonald on Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road here

“A former historian of science, Macdonald is as captivated by the everyday (ants, bird’s nests) as she is by the extraordinary (glowworms, total solar eclipses), and her writing often closes the distance between the two … Always, the author pushes through the gloom to look beyond herself, beyond all people, to ‘rejoice in the complexity of things’ and to see what science has to show us: ‘that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us’ … The climate crisis shadows these essays. Macdonald is not, however, given to sounding dire, all-caps warnings … For all its elegiac sentences and gray moods, Vesper Flights is a book of tremendous purpose. Throughout these essays, Macdonald revisits the idea that as a writer it is her responsibility to take stock of what’s happening to the natural world and to convey the value of the living things within it.”

–Jake Cline ( The Washington Post )

2. Intimations by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

13 Rave • 7 Positive • 3 Mixed

Listen to Zadie Smith read from Intimations here

“Smith…is a spectacular essayist—even better, I’d say, than as a novelist … Smith…get[s] at something universal, the suspicion that has infiltrated our interactions even with those we want to think we know. This is the essential job of the essayist: to explore not our innocence but our complicity. I want to say this works because Smith doesn’t take herself too seriously, but that’s not accurate. More to the point, she is willing to expose the tangle of feelings the pandemic has provoked. And this may seem a small thing, but it’s essential: I never doubt her voice on the page … Her offhandedness, at first, feels out of step with a moment in which we are desperate to feel that whatever something we are trying to do matters. But it also describes that moment perfectly … Here we see the kind of devastating self-exposure that the essay, as a form, requires—the realization of how limited we are even in the best of times, and how bereft in the worst.”

–David L. Ulin ( The Los Angeles Times )

3. Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed

Read an excerpt from Just Us here

“ Just Us is about intimacy. Rankine is making an appeal for real closeness. She’s advocating for candor as the pathway to achieving universal humanity and authentic love … Rankine is vulnerable, too. In ‘lemonade,’ an essay about how race and racism affect her interracial marriage, Rankine models the openness she hopes to inspire. ‘lemonade’ is hard to handle. It’s naked and confessional, deeply moving and, ultimately, inspirational … Just Us , as a book, is inventive … Claudia Rankine may be the most human human I’ve ever encountered. Her inner machinations and relentless questioning would exhaust most people. Her labor should be less necessary, of course.”

–Michael Kleber-Diggs ( The Star Tribune )

4. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World)

7 Rave • 10 Positive • 2 Mixed

Listen to an interview with Cathy Park Hong here

“Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured … I read Minor Feelings in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch … The question of lovability, and desirability, is freighted for Asian men and Asian women in very different ways—and Minor Feelings serves as a case study in how a feminist point of view can both deepen an inquiry and widen its resonances to something like universality … Hong reframes the quandary of negotiating dominance and submission—of desiring dominance, of hating the terms of that dominance, of submitting in the hopes of achieving some facsimile of dominance anyway—as a capitalist dilemma … Hong is writing in agonized pursuit of a liberation that doesn’t look white—a new sound, a new affect, a new consciousness—and the result feels like what she was waiting for. Her book is a reminder that we can be, and maybe have to be, what others are waiting for, too.”

–Jia Tolentino ( The New Yorker )

5. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Milkweed Editions)

11 Rave • 3 Positive

Read an excerpt from World of Wonders here

“In beautifully illustrated essays, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes of exotic flora and fauna and her family, and why they are all of one piece … In days of old, books about nature were often as treasured for their illustrations as they were for their words. World of Wonders, American poet and teacher Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s prose ode to her muses in the natural world, is a throwback that way. Its words are beautiful, but its cover and interior illustrations by Fumi Mini Nakamura may well be what first moves you to pick it up in a bookstore or online … The book’s magic lies in Nezhukumatathil’s ability to blend personal and natural history, to compress into each brief essay the relationship between a biographical passage from her own family and the life trajectory of a particular plant or animal … Her kaleidoscopic observations pay off in these thoughtful, nuanced, surprise-filled essays.”

–Pamela Miller ( The Star Tribune )

6. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (Vintage)

10 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Watch an interview with Samantha Irby here

“Haphazard and aimless as she claims to be, Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You is purposefully hilarious, real, and full of medicine for living with our culture’s contradictory messages. From relationship advice she wasn’t asked for to surrendering her cell phone as dinner etiquette, Irby is wholly unpretentious as she opines about the unspoken expectations of adulting. Her essays poke holes and luxuriate in the weirdness of modern society … If anyone whose life is being made into a television show could continue to keep it real for her blog reading fans, it’s Irby. She proves we can still trust her authenticity not just through her questionable taste in music and descriptions of incredibly bloody periods, but through her willingness to demystify what happens in any privileged room she finds herself in … Irby defines professional lingo and describes the mundane details of exclusive industries in anecdotes that are not only entertaining but powerfully demystifying. Irby’s closeness to financial and physical precariousness combined with her willingness to enter situations she feels unprepared for make us loyal to her—she again proves herself to be a trustworthy and admirable narrator who readers will hold fast to through anything at all.”

–Molly Thornton ( Lambda Literary )

7. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing (W. W. Norton & Company)

5 Rave • 10 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Yes, you’re in for a treat … There are few voices that we can reliably read widely these days, but I would read Laing writing about proverbial paint drying (the collection is in fact quite paint-heavy), just as soon as I would read her write about the Grenfell Tower fire, The Fire This Time , or a refugee’s experience in England, The Abandoned Person’s Tale , all of which are included in Funny Weather … Laing’s knowledge of her subjects is encyclopaedic, her awe is infectious, and her critical eye is reminiscent of the critic and author James Wood … She is to the art world what David Attenborough is to nature: a worthy guide with both a macro and micro vision, fluent in her chosen tongue and always full of empathy and awe.”

–Mia Colleran ( The Irish Times )

8. Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

6 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan

“A] searing look at the struggle for all Americans to achieve liberty and equality. Lalami eloquently tacks between her experiences as an immigrant to this country and the history of U.S. attempts to exclude different categories of people from the full benefits of citizenship … Lalami offers a fresh perspective on the double consciousness of the immigrant … Conditional citizenship is still conferred on people of color, women, immigrants, religious minorities, even those living in poverty, and Lalami’s insight in showing the subtle and overt ways discrimination operates in so many facets of life is one of this book’s major strengths.”

–Rachel Newcomb ( The Washington Post )

9. This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah (University of Georgia Press)

7 Rave • 2 Positive 

Watch an interview with Sejal Shah here

“Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an ‘exotic’ name, when the only country you’ve ever lived in is America … The essays in this slim volume are engaging and thought-provoking … The essays are well-crafted with varying forms that should inspire and enlighten other essayists … A particularly delightful chapter is the last, called ‘Voice Texting with My Mother,’ which is, in fact, written in texts … Shah’s thoughts on heritage and belonging are important and interesting.”

–Martha Anne Toll ( NPR )

10. Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (Riverhead)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed

Read Eula Biss on the anticapitalist origins of Monopoly here

“… enthralling … Her allusive blend of autobiography and criticism may remind some of The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a friend whose name pops up in the text alongside those of other artists and intellectuals who have influenced her work. And yet, line for line, her epigrammatic style perhaps most recalls that of Emily Dickinson in its radical compression of images and ideas into a few chiseled lines … Biss wears her erudition lightly … she’s really funny, with a barbed but understated wit … Keenly aware of her privilege as a white, well-educated woman who has benefited from a wide network of family and friends, Biss has written a book that is, in effect, the opposite of capitalism in its willingness to acknowledge that everything she’s accomplished rests on the labor of others.”

–Ann Levin ( Associated Press )

Our System: RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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Longreads : The best longform stories on the web

Longreads Best of 2020: Essays

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All through December, we’re featuring Longreads’ Best of 2020. This year, our editors picked and featured hundreds of beautifully written and poignant essays published on the web. Because of the wide range of writing across many topics and themes, it was a challenge to sift through them all over the past several weeks to compile a definitive Best of Essays list. As I shortlisted stories, I realized there could be many different versions of this list, but, in the end, these eight reads really spoke to me.

If you like these, you can  sign up to receive our weekly email every Friday .

Mississippi: A Poem, in Days (Kiese Makeba Laymon, Vanity Fair )

Kiese Makeba Laymon was on a book tour when the pandemic hit in the U.S. In this stunner of a piece that unfolds over 14 days, the author writes on fear, racism, death, and home amid a moment of awakening. We follow along on the journey, from event to event in Ohio and West Virginia, with Laymon’s observations and thoughts interspersed with daily COVID-19 death counts and the latest words or orders from Donald Trump and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves. It’s a powerful meditation, one that will stop you in your tracks.

We are awakened, I want to believe. 75 miles from the armed confederate statue in Oxford, Emmett Till’s childish body was destroyed. 70 miles from that armed confederate statue, Fannie Lou Hamer was nearly beaten to death. 160 miles from that armed confederate statue, Medgar Evers was murdered as he enters his home. 80 miles from that armed confederate statue, Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis. It took way too much Black death to get here. I am wandering around the spiritual consequences of materially progressing at the expense of Black death. I want to be courageous. I wonder, though, when courage becomes contagious—when courage is credentialized, subsidized, and incentivized—if it is still courage at all. Today, as I prepare to push send, and I lather my hands in sanitizer, it feels a bit too much like cowardice. Maybe I’ll wait to send tomorrow. Maybe I won’t send at all. The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors, a group of white men, unanimously vote to keep the armed confederate monument in the middle of Oxford, the town where I live, teach, and write. Humiliation, agony, and death, are what I feel. It could all be so much worse, is what the worst of white folks want us to recite.

Molly (Blake Butler, The Volta )

December’s special issue of The Volta is dedicated to the late poet Molly Brodak, and Brodak’s husband, Blake Butler, writes an incredibly moving essay to remember and honor her. In “Molly,” he weaves an intimate portrait of his late wife — and the details, textures, and expanse of their relationship –with so much love and care. Grab a tissue before sitting down to read it.

Making her laugh made me feel alive, like I’d really accomplished something. She wanted to laugh, I think, despite a widening parcel in her telling her that laughter in a world like ours was for fools. When I think the sound of it now, it reminds me of a bird trapped in a ballroom, looking for anywhere to land.

But there was always something still there underneath that, shredding its pasture—parts of her so dark and displaced I cannot find them anywhere touching the rest of how she was. The story, like all stories, holds no true shape. And that’s exactly what it wants—the pain—it wants more blank to feed the pain with, to fill the space up. It wants us all.

Then, in her poem, “Horse and Cart,” one of the last she ever wrote: “I can’t even imagine a horse / anymore. / That we sat on their spines / and yanked their mouths around.” The gears of her mind, as she grew tired, wore down even these good times, seeking further ways to break them up, send her away.

I Cry for the Mountains: A Legacy Lost (Dave Daley, Chico Enterprise-Record )

California experienced another unprecedented wildfire season this year; a number of fire complexes burned throughout the state, including the massive North Complex Fire that started in August and burned in Northern California’s Plumas and Butte counties. Rancher Dave Daley offers a devastating account of the destruction of his family’s cattle range in Plumas National Forest, and a passionate plea to legislators and regulators to ultimately listen to the land and the locals when it comes to forest management. Daley originally posted this account on Facebook; his followers recommended that the Chico Enterprise-Record  reprint it for a wider audience.

I cry for the forest, the trees and streams, and the horrible deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The suffering was unimaginable. When you find groups of cows and their baby calves tumbled in a ravine trying to escape, burned almost beyond recognition or a fawn and small calf side by side as if hoping to protect one another, you try not to wretch. You only pray death was swift. Worse, in searing memory, cows with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off still alive who had to be euthanized. A doe lying in the ashes with three fawns, not all hers I bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with a limp, because you really cannot imagine any more death today.

For those of you on the right blaming the left and California, these are National Forest lands that are “managed” by the feds. They have failed miserably over the past 50 years. Smokey the Bear was the cruelest joke ever played on the western landscape, a decades long campaign to prevent forest fires has resulted in mega-fires of a scope we’ve never seen. Thanks, Smokey.

I get frustrated with experts and consultants who drive by and “know just what to do.” For 35 years I have attended conferences, given presentations and listened. What I have learned is solutions are local and specific. What happens in one watershed in Plumas or Butte County may be entirely different in the Lassen National Forest just next door. But experts of all kinds are glad to tell you how to do it. “Let’s prescribe graze, use virtual fences, change your timing, change your genetics.” Prescribe graze the forest and canyons? Yea. Right. They don’t know what they don’t know but they will take the honorarium anyway and have a great dinner on your dime. The locals and land rarely benefit.

How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda (Jiayang Fa n , The New Yorker )

Jiayang Fan pens a masterful piece of personal history, on her mother and their relationship, identity, family, propaganda and social media, and chronic illness (her mother has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS) . Fan recounts her struggle to help her mother get hospital care during New York’s COVID-19 crisis, all while going viral and facing threats on social media, calling her a criminal and a traitor to China. She tells a complicated and very personal story, one of loyalty and love, with strength and eloquence.

My mother has always knelt at the altar of  mianzi , an aspiration of which A.L.S. makes a spectacular mockery. You may think it’s embarrassing to slur your speech and limp, but wait until you are being spoon-fed and pushed around in a wheelchair—all of which will seem trivial once you can no longer wash or wipe yourself. The progress of the disease is a forced march toward the vanishing point of  mianzi . When my mother was first given her diagnosis, she became obsessed with the idea of why—why her, why now, and, above all, why an illness that would subject her to the kind of public humiliation she feared more than death itself. When she could still operate her first-generation iPad, my mother gave me a contact list of everyone she was still in touch with in China, and told me that, except for her siblings, no one must know of her affliction. Such self-imposed isolation seemed like madness to me, but she preferred to cut friends out of her life rather than admit to the indignity of her compromised state. Her body’s insurrection, my mother believes, is her punishment for her prideful strivings in America.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had read that a virus is neither dead nor alive, and replicates only in the shelter of a host organism. I began to think of “Jiayang Fan” as viral not in a social-media sense but in a biological one; the calamitous state of the world and certain random mutations in the story had made it unexpectedly contagious. My original posts had served their purpose; now they were serving the purposes of others. I had unwittingly bred a potent piece of propaganda.

The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End (Christopher Solomon, GQ )

Don’t you ever put me in one of those places,  she said. Don’t put  me  in one of those places,  my father replied.

Christopher Solomon’s parents made a pledge to one another. But what did that actually look like over time, especially when his father became sick? What does unconditional love and devotion look like in our own lives? Solomon writes an honest and heartbreaking essay on love, aging, and marriage — in sickness and in health.

In time what was imperceptible in him became noticeable, and then what was noticeable became something worse. The landscape of my father changed, the coastline eroded. There was less of him, until the old map of my father no longer fit the man before us. It has been 20 years now since he was diagnosed, and sometimes it is hard to remember a time that he was not sick. His speech became a gargle of consonants. The dementia took most of his mind. His body curled in on itself—shrinking, reducing, as if he were becoming an infant again. Despite this, for years he still played the piano, every day, and nearly as well as ever—the mysteryland of the brain permitting this freedom even as body, and mind, crumbled around him. My mother would sing along from the kitchen, as she always had. And then one day, after I arrive home, my mother sounds more concerned than usual.  He has stopped playing the piano,  she says. This seems to worry her more than anything else.

Finally, exhausted, she relents. She drives to visit a nearby nursing home. Afterward she cries in the parking lot. She cries for what she sees there. She cries at the prospect of breaking the Promise. She cries because even though almost nothing remains of her husband—even though he is the cause of her sleepless nights and her tendinitis and her bruises and her anger—in 55 years she rarely has been apart from him. She loves even the scrap of him that remains. He is half of the story they share, of the red VW Beetle and the sunstruck Italian patios and the singalongs and the three towheaded children. As long as he is here, their story, however unlikely, is not yet over. She cries because the end of him is the end of a possibility. And I think, not for the first time, how little I still know about love.

Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me (Reginald Dwayne Betts, The New York Times Magazine )

“The prosecutor’s job, unlike the defense attorney’s or judge’s, is to do justice. What does that mean when you are asked by some to dole out retribution measured in years served, but blamed by others for the damage incarceration can do?” In this nuanced reported essay about mass incarceration in the U.S., Reginald Dwayne Betts reveals “our contradictory impulses” around crime, punishment, and the justice system. And he knows these impulses well, as both a felon and a son to a woman who was raped by a Black man.

But I know that on the other end of our prison sentences was always someone weeping. During the middle of Harris’s presidential campaign, a friend referred me to a woman with a story about Senator Harris that she felt I needed to hear. Years ago, this woman’s sister had been missing for days, and the police had done little. Happenstance gave this woman an audience with then-Attorney General Harris. A coordinated multicity search followed. The sister had been murdered; her body was found in a ravine. The woman told me that “Kamala understands the politics of victimization as well as anyone who has been in the system, which is that this kind of case — a 50-year-old Black woman gone missing or found dead — ordinarily does not get any resources put toward it.” They caught the man who murdered her sister, and he was sentenced to 131 years. I think about the man who assaulted my mother, a serial rapist, because his case makes me struggle with questions of violence and vengeance and justice. And I stop thinking about it. I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

Safe at Home in Los Angeles (Lynell George, High Country News )

Lynell George’s beautiful read exemplifies what I love about writing on place and home. A native of Los Angeles, George builds and shapes a complex L.A. in her piece: a “city of contradictions,” an elusive, ever-shifting place “built on either impermanence or illusion.” It’s a sensory and richly textured portrait of a vast place, looking at Los Angeles through a sort of kaleidoscope lens of gentrification, nature, and the pandemic lockdown.

Los Angeles has long been a contested domain — both as territory (from the Indigenous Tongva onward) and as emblem. Boosters, speculators and swindlers have had their way not just with the land but with the very image of Los Angeles. The city grew, like an opportunistic vine. It couldn’t just  be . It had to be bigger than life, better than perfect. Even within my lifetime, popular culture has conjured a vision of Los Angeles that is sleight-of-hand, a trick of light, brutally at odds with the lived experience. Los Angeles, by its sprawling nature, absolutely resists oversimplification. This, despite its frustrations, irritants and absurdities, is precisely why I remain here.

Those stories of place, the Los Angeles of my childhood and adolescence and young adulthood — the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s — couldn’t be told until we began to tell them. Until we steadied and raised our voices. Until we made our way through gatekeepers, and most significantly until we were of age and of mind to turn our attention to a shifting definition of the West (or  El Norte ), one that included stories of migration and immigration, of protest, of underemployment, of struggle, and of love and resilience despite disappointment, and in the ways in which we tend to the physical environment, to conserve against drought or be mindful of energy use and emissions. We must tend to the region’s various topographies in narrative. It’s imperative. Or they will be lost. As a chronicler, my responsibility is to try and tell an honest story. True to its roots. Even now, even in this quiet moment in the city, we must remember its cacophony, its music.

My Mustache, My Self (Wesley Morris, The New York Times Magazine )

This essay from Wesley Morris on growing a mustache during the pandemic is about so much more than quarantine-grown facial hair — it’s a brilliant and vulnerable piece on masculinity and race, one in which Morris reflects on becoming himself and considers and celebrates his Blackness.

The mustache had certainly conjoined me to a past I was flattered to be associated with, however superficially. But there were implications. During the later stages of the movement, a mustached man opened himself up to charges of white appeasement and Uncle Tom-ism. Not because of the mustache, obviously, but because of the approach of the sort of person who would choose to wear one. Such a person might not have been considered radical enough, down enough, Black enough. The civil rights mustache was strategically tolerant. It didn’t advocate burning anything down. It ran for office — and sometimes it won. It was establishmentarian, compromising and eventually, come the infernos at the close of the 1960s, it fell out of fashion, in part because it felt out of step with the urgency of the moment.

The Black-power salute is not a casual gesture. It’s weaponry. You aim that arm and fire. I aimed mine in solidarity — with white people instead of at a system they personify. And that didn’t feel quite right. But how would I know? I had never done a Black-power salute. It always seemed like more Blackness than I’ve needed, maybe more than I had. I’m not Black-power Black. I’ve always been milder, more apprehensive than that. I was practically born with a mustache.

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• Search Results

The best essay collections to read now

From advice on friendship and understanding modern life to getting a grasp on coronavirus, these books offer insight on life. 

What better way to get into the work of a writer than through a collection of their essays? 

These seven collections, from novelists and critics alike, address a myriad of subjects from friendship to how colleges are dealing with sexual assaults on campus to race and racism. 

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)

As a staff writer at The New Yorker , Jia Tolentino has explored everything from a rise in youth vaping to the ongoing cultural reckoning about sexual assault. Her first book Trick Mirror takes some of those pieces for The New Yorker as well as new work to form what is one of the sharpest collections of cultural criticism today.

Using herself and her own coming of age as a lens for many of the essays, Tolentino turns her pen and her eye to everything from her generation’s obsession with extravagant weddings to how college campuses deal with sexual assault.

If you’re looking for an insight into millennial life, then Trick Mirror should be on your to-read list.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker (1983)

Sometimes essays collected from a sprawling period of a successful writer’s life can feel like a hasty addition to a bibliography; a smash-and-grab of notebook flotsam. Not so In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens , from which one can truly understand the sheer range of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s range of study and activism. From Walker’s first published piece of non-fiction (for which she won a prize, and spent her winnings on cut peonies) to more elegiac pieces about her heritage, Walker’s thoughts on feminism (which she terms “womanism”) and the Civil Rights Movement remain grippingly pertinent 50 years on.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)

That David Sedaris’s ascent to literary stardom happened later in his life – his breakthrough collection of humour essays was released when he was 44 – suited the author’s writing style perfectly. Me Talk Pretty One Day is both a painfully funny account of his childhood and an enduring snapshot of mid-forties malaise. First story ‘Go Carolina’, about his attempt to transcend a childhood lisp, is told from a perfect distance and with all the worldliness necessary to milk every drop of tragic, cringeworthy humour from his childhood. It never falters from there: by the book’s second half, in which Sedaris is living in France, he’s firmly established his niche, writing about the ways that even snobs experience utter humiliation ­– and Me Talk Pretty One Day is all the more human for it. 

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The best essays: the 2021 pen/diamonstein-spielvogel award, recommended by adam gopnik.

WINNER OF the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Interview by Benedict King

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle

Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé

Maybe the People Would be the Times by Luc Sante

1 Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

2 unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, 3 nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, 4 terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, 5 maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

W e’re talking about the books shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay . As an essayist yourself, or as a reader of essays, what are you looking for? What’s the key to a good essay ?

Let’s turn to the books that made the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. The winning book was Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich , whose books have been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Tell me more. 

One of the criteria for this particular prize is that it should be not just for a single book, but for a body of work. One of the things we wanted to honour about Barbara Ehrenreich is that she has produced a remarkable body of work. Although it’s offered in a more specifically political register than some essayists, or that a great many past prize winners have practised, the quiddity of her work is that it remains rooted in personal experience, in the act of bearing witness. She has a passionate political point to make, certainly, a series of them, many seeming all the more relevant now than when she began writing. Nonetheless, her writing still always depends on the intimacy of first-hand knowledge, what people in post-incarceration work call ‘lived experience’ (a term with a distinguished philosophical history). Her book Nickel and Dimed is the classic example of that. She never writes from a distance about working-class life in America. She bears witness to the nature and real texture of working-class life in America.

“One point of giving awards…is to keep passing the small torches of literary tradition”

Next up of the books on the 2021 PEN essay prize shortlist is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick is a writer who’s been around for a very long time. Although longevity is not in itself a criterion for excellence—or for this prize, or in the writing life generally—persistence and perseverance are. Writers who keep coming back at us, again and again, with a consistent vision, are surely to be saluted. For her admirers, her appetite to re-read things already read is one of the most attractive parts of her oeuvre , if I can call it that; her appetite not just to read but to read deeply and personally. One of the things that people who love her work love about it is that her readings are never academic, or touched by scholarly hobbyhorsing. They’re readings that involve the fullness of her experience, then applied to literature. Although she reads as a critic, she reads as an essayist reads, rather than as a reviewer reads. And I think that was one of the things that was there to honour in her body of work, as well.

Is she a novelist or journalist, as well?

Let’s move on to the next book which made the 2021 PEN essay shortlist. This is Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle.

I have a special reason for liking this book in particular, and that is that it corresponds to one of the richest and oldest of American genres, now often overlooked, and that’s the naturalist essay. You can track it back to Henry David Thoreau , if not to Ralph Waldo Emerson , this American engagement with nature , the wilderness, not from a narrowly scientific point of view, nor from a purely ecological or environmental point of view—though those things are part of it—but again, from the point of view of lived experience, of personal testimony.

Let’s look at the next book on the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Awards, which is Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé. Why did these essays appeal?

One of the things that was appealing about this book is that’s it very much about, in every sense, the issues of the day: the idea of place, of where we are, how we are located on any map as individuals by ethnic identity, class, gender—all of those things. But rather than being carried forward in a narrowly argumentative way, again, in the classic manner of the essay, Sajé’s work is ruminative. It walks around these issues from the point of view of someone who’s an expatriate, someone who’s an émigré, someone who’s a world citizen, but who’s also concerned with the idea of ‘terroir’, the one place in the world where we belong. And I think the dialogue in her work between a kind of cosmopolitanism that she has along with her self-critical examination of the problem of localism and where we sit on the world, was inspiring to us.

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Last of the books on the shortlist for the 2021 Pen essay award is Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante.

Again, here’s a writer who’s had a distinguished generalised career, writing about lots of places and about lots of subjects. In the past, he’s made his special preoccupation what he calls ‘low life’, but I think more broadly can be called the marginalized or the repressed and abject. He’s also written acute introductions to the literature of ‘low life’, the works of Asbury and David Maurer, for instance.

But I think one of the things that was appealing about what he’s done is the sheer range of his enterprise. He writes about countless subjects. He can write about A-sides and B-sides of popular records—singles—then go on to write about Jacques Rivette’s cinema. He writes from a kind of private inspection of public experience. He has a lovely piece about tabloid headlines and their evolution. And I think that omnivorous range of enthusiasms and passions is a stirring reminder in a time of specialization and compartmentalization of the essayist’s freedom to roam. If Pyle is in the tradition of Thoreau, I suspect Luc Sante would be proud to be put in the tradition of Baudelaire—the flaneur who walks the streets, sees everything, broods on it all and writes about it well.

One point of giving awards, with all their built-in absurdity and inevitable injustice, is to keep alive, or at least to keep passing, the small torches of literary tradition. And just as much as we’re honoring the great tradition of the naturalist essay in the one case, I think we’re honoring the tradition of the Baudelairean flaneur in this one.

April 18, 2021

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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

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The decade’s best essay collections, from Zadie Smith to Jia Tolentino

Incisive and exacting, these collections make light work of untangling the last 10 years, writes annabel nugent, article bookmarked.

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Between the climate crisis, Brexit and the launch of winter Love Island , it is easy to feel caught in an existential spiderweb, waiting for anxiety (or the onset of World War Three, whichever comes first) to consume you.

But some writers are making light work of untangling the last 10 years. Incisive and exacting, their essays tackle the big and the small – meme culture, Dostoyevsky, Bieber pandemonium, race politics, and the climate crisis are made comprehensible in their hands. These are the essay collections that make any resolution to “read more nonfiction” infinitely more enjoyable.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)

Jia Tolentino rebuffs critics’ claims that she’s the voice of a generation, but after reading Trick Mirror , any other title seems to fall short. The New Yorker staff writer is most astute when deciphering her home ground – the internet. Her best essays talk double-tapping automaton, monetisation and surveillance, and hardcore fans begging their favourite celebrities to kill them. For anyone simultaneously disillusioned and addicted to the perils of modern life, Tolentino’s words will strike a chord.

White Girls by Hilton Als (2013)

Hilton Als cut his teeth on theatre reviews (earning him a Pulitzer Prize in 2017), but the writer’s talents are anything but narrow. Race, class and sexuality coalesce in a collection of essays that opens up American culture for prying eyes. Als writes equally well on Eminem and porn as he does queerness and love. Flannery O’Connor, Michael Jackson and Truman Capote all feature in this politically astute, moving collection.

Books of the decade

See What Can be Done by Lorrie Moore (2018)

The title borrows from a phrase that Moore’s editor at The New York Review would use when editing her fiction. See What Can be Done does not simply despair at the state of today, but mines that despair to find some way forward. The master of short stories writes expectedly well on fellow literary greats such as Margaret Atwood , Miranda July and Philip Roth . More surprising is her poetic wrestling with subjects like Barack Obama , HBO’s True Detective and the Republican primary debate. Each chapter offers up enormous wisdom far beyond its bite-sized proportions.

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)

John Jeremiah Sullivan takes a scalpel to pop culture and history in Pulphead . Incisive prose on everything from Christian Rock festivals in the Ozarks to Bunny Wailer with vigour and humanity. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, Sullivan writes prose with the qualities of storytelling and the grounding of in-depth research.

Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami (2011)

The Japanese author is known for surrealist fiction and running ultra-marathons, but here, he sits down instead with friend and former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa. What ensues is an enthusiastic and unpretentious discussion on their shared love for classical music. Their metiers are in perfect sync – boring industry topics like mundane bureaucracies and performer personalities are transformed by Murakami’s deft hand. While the subject may be esoteric, its appeal is definitely not.‘

When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (2012)

The list of books by Marilynne Robinson is upsettingly short, but every brilliant word she writes makes up for the scarcity. Robinson’s prose takes on a more exacting frankness in her nonfiction than in her Gilead trilogy. Essays on society and theology sound like a drag, but in this collection they are anything but. The Christian core of her Pulitzer prize-winning fiction comes through more visibly in these essays, but similarly does not have the alienating effect you would expect.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith (2018)

Razor-sharp essays take a long, hard look at topics both large – think intelligent takes on Bieber fever – and very, very small, as in the author’s childhood bathroom. As the title suggests, each essay explores the concept of freedom in all its meanings, but most are concerned with the artistic kind and the act of taking it, whether it’s given to you or not. Smith’s writing is casual and discursive but never rambling. Feel Free champions art as a place where freedom allows for complex issues to be safely explored.

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (2010)

Elif Batuman makes Russian literature fun. An unapologetic nerd for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Batuman’s book is likely to be the best thing that’s happened to the genre in modern times. The Possessed is a biblio-memoir of sorts, tracking the author’s time spent studying Russian lit at Stanford. The New Yorker staff writer fires on all cylinders in a collection of essays more about reading as a way of life than the idiosyncrasies of The Idiot .

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks (2010)

In this collection, bell hooks moves deftly between affection, respect, commitment, gender stereotypes, domination, ego and aggression. With the help of psychological and philosophical ideas, the author pins down the airiness of love in a ruthless dissection, moments of ecstasy offset by brooding on patriarchal thinking. This collection paves the way for a more universal understanding of love.

• Six of the biggest books released this month

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox (2017)

The last decade has birthed monsters of the good, bad and ugly varieties. In his debut novel, art critic Charlie Fox writes on modern monstrosity. In nine essays, Fox pays tribute to the art world’s outsiders. His subjects are diverse, taking on the 19th century poet Rimbaud as impressively as he grapples with The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things . This Young Monster is a love letter to those who “rebel against a reality that’s too cruel or boring for them to inhabit”. Fox’s voice is equal parts critical and personal, and always playful.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism v the Climate by Naomi Klein (2014)

Naomi Klein takes no prisoners in this polemic book on climate change. Klein makes a damning argument against powerful right-wing think tanks, lobby groups and corporate elites that have dictated catastrophic environmental policies and contributed to widespread climate change denial. Klein’s writing is forthright in its condemnation of capitalism. This Changes Everything is an urgent read and one that couldn’t be more pertinent than it is today – or tomorrow, and all the days after that.

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The Best American Essays 2020

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A collection of the year’s best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller  Call Me by Your Name. “An essay is the child of uncertainty,” André Aciman contends in his introduction to  The Best American Essays 2020 . “The struggle to write what one hopes is entirely true, and the long incubation every piece of writing requires of a writer who is thinking difficult thoughts, are what ultimately give the writing its depth, its magnitude, its grace.” The essays Aciman selected center on people facing moments of deep uncertainty, searching for a greater truth. From a Black father’s confrontation of his son’s illness, to a divorcée’s transcendent experience with strangers, to a bartender grieving the tragic loss of a friend, these stories are a master class not just in essay writing but in empathy, artfully imbuing moments of hardship with understanding and that elusive grace.  The Best American 2020 Essays includes  RABIH ALAMEDDINE • BARBARA EHRENREICH • LESLIE JAMISON JAMAICA KINCAID • ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH • A. O. SCOTT • JERALD WALKER • STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS and others   

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• Release date: April 16, 2024

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• ISBN: 9780358358589
• File size: 4884 KB

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Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358358589 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358358589 File size: 4884 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• André Aciman - Editor
• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

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Read this week's magazine

4 Insightful New Essay Collections

The word "essay," as just about every avid reader of creative nonfiction already knows, derives from the French verb essayer , meaning "to try" or "to attempt." Essays are, fundamentally, attempts at capturing, taming, and understanding a subject, whether it be literary esoterica or the contents of the writer's own heart. These four new essay collections do just that, covering a range of topics and experiences with clarity, insight, and wit.

Time Come: Selected Prose

Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes

The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays

Best Essays of 2020: The 15 Most Shared (and Debated) Columns About Students, Schools & Remote Learning We Published This Year

L earning loss. Virtual instruction. Family stress. Student supports. As the nation’s schools shuttered this spring, and then restructured operations for a second disrupted school year, it led to a wave of memorable essays here at The 74 about the challenges being faced by districts, the innovations being tried by teachers and the difficult reality of what it was like to be a public school student in 2020. As we then reached September, and it became apparent that the disruptions caused by coronavirus would also extend well into 2021, a new series of essays took the longer view, of how school leaders, parents and state policymakers should brace for continued hardships. Below are our 15 most memorable essays of the year; you can our latest commentary and analysis delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter .

Student Voice: Two Weeks, Five Siblings and One Working Laptop. How I Navigated the Nation’s Largest School System in Search of an iPad — and What It Taught Me About America’s Digital Divide

Pandemic Notebook: Back in March, Brandon Yam woke up and dialed the tech department of the nation’s largest school system in New York City. For two weeks, he writes in this addition to the “Pandemic Notebook” series, Yam fruitlessly pursued the district to learn the status of his application for one of 300,000 devices available for students who lack them. Yam is a junior at highly selective Francis Lewis High School. But he also comes from a poor immigrant family in the city’s Flushing neighborhood, where his parents, a chef and a postal employee, are essential workers and he shares the family’s 10-year-old laptop with five siblings. He writes: “My siblings and I butted heads to get to the router at the center of our living room for a bar of internet connection. … I often pinched the corners of my iPhone 6 screen wide, squinting to see my trigonometry and physics teachers doing practice problems on paper.” Along the way, he learned some sobering lessons about privilege and navigating the digital divide. Now, he writes, “I sit here wondering how many other children have had to act on their own with parents at work — playing the roles of traffic cop, translator and support system.” Read Yam’s full reflection here .

“Pandemic Notebook” registered as The 74’s most read and shared essay series of the year — and we now plan on extending the effort into 2021 as the classroom disruptions caused by coronavirus continue through a second school year. A few other memorable entries from 2020:

• Student Safety: ‘A bird trapped in a golden cage’ — Amid the pandemic, one student’s story of abuse during quarantine ( Read the full essay )
• Remote Learning: Part staycation, part home detention, my life during pandemic is a study in contrasts ( Read the full essay )
• Family Stress: My mom Is 55, Black, and just returned to work in a doctor’s office in New York City. That’s why I’m scared ( Read the full essay )
• Go Deeper: See our full “Pandemic Notebook” archive

An Open Letter to Parents From a National Teacher of the Year on Tips for Remote Learning and How to Support Your School Community

Resilience: “Dear Parents/Guardians, I know that, amid all the uncertainty and fear right now, it’s overwhelming to suddenly take over as your children’s teacher. Don’t worry — they’re going to learn just fine with you in charge.” So begins an open letter from Rodney Robinson , 2019 National Teacher of the Year and a 20-year veteran educator. “But we could all use a little extra help at the moment, so here are some tips to help you get through the next few months while the education system adjusts.” From self-care for parents and patience in making decisions to academic and social-emotional support, he writes, “Remind yourself that although we are experiencing perhaps the greatest challenge since World War II, everything is going to work out. Love, empathy and compassion will get us through this pandemic… We can’t wait to see you when school opens.” Read the full letter .

Open Letter to Joe Biden — The Votes of Black and Brown Charter School Parents Matter. Ignore Us at Your Own Peril

Politics: This past spring, the Democrats formed six so-called Unity Task Forces intended to give hope and unification to the party. They may do so for some forces within the party, writes contributor Howard Fuller, but to Black and brown families who have chosen public charter schools to ensure their children get the best education possible, the makeup of the Task Force on Education is an insult . “What is grossly obvious when looking at the list of advisers creating educational policy for the Democratic Party platform is that the 3.3 million students and over 219,000 teachers attending and working in public charter schools have not been considered at all. … Joe Biden, you and your Democratic Party are sending a message to the families of public charter schools that we don’t matter because our educational choices go against the status quo … you are sending the message that you do not support the right of Latino and Black parents to make these critically important, and potentially lifesaving, choices for their children. We demand to be seen, valued and heard. We want to be more than photo ops to be used in your campaign literature. We will not accept second-class citizenship. We demand our seat at the table so you can hear and learn from our collective expertise and experiences, which come out of rich histories of struggle against oppression in this country. … You cannot ignore us and expect us to march blindly to the ballot box to support you.” Read Fuller’s open letter .

Chad Aldeman: How Much Learning Time Are Students Getting? In 7 Large School Districts, Less Than Normal — and in 3, They’re Getting More

Remote Learning: Back in August, contributor Chad Aldeman calculated that the remote learning schedule for his local public school district of Fairfax, Virginia, was offering less than half of a typical school year to his first-grade son. This trend is not unique to Fairfax: The majority of American students are experiencing either a partial school day or week, or fully virtual classes. While Aldeman doesn’t question the logic of district decisions in this regard, he wondered — collectively, how much learning time will these policies cost students? To find out, he compared the number of hours of live instruction planned this year for 5th-, 8th- and 11th-graders in 10 large districts with their state’s requirement for the amount of school time students should normally receive. Seven of the 10 — Los Angeles; Clark County, Nevada; Wake County, North Carolina; New York City; Montgomery Country, Maryland; Fairfax; and Chicago — are planning to deliver far less instructional time to students than normal. But Houston; Gwinnett County, Georgia; and Miami-Dade, Florida, are on track to surpass the minimal state requirements for instructional hours. Read the full analysis .

Derrell Bradford: Black Lives Matter and Black Education Matters Because Freedom Matters. Only When Black Folks Are Safe to Both Learn and Live Will America Be Free

Equity: The killing of George Floyd and subsequent calls to action by the Black Lives Matter movement drove home some long-ago lessons for contributor Derrell Bradford about the continuum on which race, the police and education interact. “If you think about race and education and policing as intertwined, there is also no moment when you do not see how they conspire for the betterment or detriment of the country’s children; and, for much of my adult life, the country’s Black children. … And at this moment, the overlap could not be clearer. You cannot solve a problem of Black lives with an all-lives solution. We can’t have an ‘all education matters’ approach to the challenges of Black education . One that doesn’t require states or districts to meet the needs of kids who, too, are fighting to be free and equal, but instead demands they conform to systems that have not historically worked for them in the name of the public good. All education cannot matter until Black education does. … As the only people in this nation’s history who have been both physically enslaved and intellectually starved as a result of not just sentiment, or economics, but public policy, no solution that requires the sacrifice of Black people to be successful will be a solution that works for Black people. The story of Black people is the story of our country’s efforts to live up to its founding values. Black lives matter, and Black education matters, because everyone’s freedom matters. And only when Black folks are safe to both learn, and live, will all Americans be free.” Read the full essay .

A Teacher’s View: 2020 Can Be an Opportunity for Us to Hone Our Craft and Become Better Educators. We Must Not Waste It

Instruction: In just a few short months, contributor Mandy Peyrani’s city of Houston has experienced massive challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as nurses work on the front lines battling the coronavirus, educators are on the front lines of a battle against learning loss. Teachers have always been heroes — and this moment, she writes, presents an opportunity like never before to show the world why that’s true . Despite unprecedented instructional challenges, distance learning can be viewed as a once-in-a-generation chance for teachers to hone their craft. In virtual classrooms, instructional coaches can efficiently dip in and out of lessons, offering immediate feedback, and in schools where the best educator on a given topic delivers the lesson, colleagues can witness that educator’s pedagogical techniques, gauge the response from the class and then integrate them into their own toolkits — a kind of real-time professional development. “Teachers everywhere can and should meet this moment to show just how important we are to eventually achieving normalcy amid a pandemic — and to exemplify the difference we can make, particularly for kids who need our support most.” Read the full essay .

Andrew Rotherham: From Homeschooling to the Digital Divide to Philanthropy, 10 Questions About COVID-19 and the Future of Education

2021 and Beyond: Considering how little we knew about coronavirus in May, it was striking to contributor Andrew Rotherham how much certainty there was about different aspects of the crisis playing out in real time. The education world was no exception; despite a generally haphazard response, a surprising certitude about what would work and not work or happen or not happen was pervasive . Whether it was ed tech boosters or teachers union leaders, everyone’s take seemed to line up with their priors from before the novel coronavirus struck, even as the situation seems to call for radical pragmatism. But working with stakeholders around the country made Rotherham certain only about the uncertainty. From homeschooling and the digital divide to the quality of curriculum, real estate and education philanthropy, here were 10 questions he started asking during the first wave of the pandemic. Read the full essay .

John Bailey & Olivia Shaw: How Are Families Navigating COVID-19? This Week-by-Week Survey of 500 Parents Has Some Answers

Parent Perceptions: The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the lives of millions of Americans, but for parents, it has created a unique set of challenges . Many suddenly found themselves homeschooling their kids, working from home, facing reduced hours at their jobs or, in some cases, unemployed. To better understand how parents are navigating these challenges, the American Enterprise Institute is analyzing weekly surveys, conducted by Echelon Insights, of 500 public school parents. The results of these surveys, which began in April, provide a unique insight into the concerns and experiences of parents through their evolving responses to COVID-19, and can help leaders with their plans for reopening schools. Contributors John Bailey and Olivia Shaw break down the top findings. Read the full analysis .

Marguerite Roza & Katie Silberstein: Pandemic-Fueled Financial Turbulence Is Hitting School Districts Across the Country. 5 Big Things to Watch For

School Finances: It’s tough to overstate just how much the pandemic is asking of school districts and their financial leaders, write contributors Marguerite Roza and Katie Silberstein of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. They’re being asked to budget in the face of whiplash-inducing on-again, off-again reopening scenarios — all set against a backdrop of collapsing state revenues for K-12 education. At Edunomics Lab, they’ve been tracking districts’ budget decisions in the wake of the pandemic-triggered financial upheaval, and while their effort doesn’t provide an exhaustive national picture, it does offer a snapshot of a fast-moving situation . What they’re seeing are some short-term district actions that could have significant — and, in some cases, troubling — long-term ramifications. Among these are awarding emergency financial powers, tapping reserve funds and locking in spending for services that students can’t access while learning at home. “While none of us wished for this wildly uncertain future,” they write, “here we are. The essential job description for district financial leaders continues to be one of leveraging limited resources to maximize student learning. But doing that job is now immensely more complicated than at any time in recent history.” Read the full analysis .

Conor Williams: Coronavirus Pandemic Reveals the Reality — and the Risk — of America’s Child Safety Net Being Its Public Schools

School Communities: The angst that accompanied the decision by many superintendents to close schools in the spring — especially in big urban centers like New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles — was not all about lost learning. If the calculation were merely about missed classroom time vs. public health and safety, the choice would have been simpler. But as contributor Conor Williams explains, our public schools, which serve a majority of the nation’s low-income students, are much more than learning centers. They are where students are fed, receive medical, dental and mental health services and even wash their clothes . As Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a press conference in March, “Public education is also this state’s child care system. It is this nation’s child care system,” meaning schools allow parents to work and society to function. The coronavirus crisis, Williams writes, “illuminates just how much we now ask of our public education system. That’s the real question. As Americans spend the next few weeks managing their isolated, individual anxieties, it’s worth asking whether the cancellation of classes should mean that large numbers of children go without food.” Read the full essay .

David Steiner & Daniel Weisberg: When Students Go Back to School, Too Many Will Start the Year Behind. Here’s How to Catch Them Up — in Real Time

Learning Loss: It’s September 2021. You are a 10th-grade English teacher. Your curriculum says teach George Orwell’s novel 1984 , but half your class lacks the vocabulary and interpretive skills to read the book. So you ask those students to read Lois Lowry’s The Giver , a seventh-grade text, instead. Versions of this scene will play out in thousands of classrooms across the country next year, as students who have missed months of learning time finally return to classrooms far behind academically. Giving those students lower-level work to help them catch up — or, in the more extreme version, asking them to repeat an entire grade — has good intentions and a certain logic. It’s also largely ineffective, write contributors David Steiner and Daniel Weisberg; rather than delay access to grade-level material for students who’ve fallen behind, accelerate it, doing focused work with the less-prepared students before the whole class encounters the text. Done right, these interventions can give students who are lagging the ability to handle grade-level assignments at the same time as their peers. ”Even in the best-case scenario, mastering an entirely new approach to catching students up will take time. That’s okay. Just trying to give every child a real chance to do grade-level work, however imperfectly, will lead to far better results than picking and choosing who gets those opportunities. … In the aftermath of this crisis, schools will have an opportunity to provide students, especially marginalized students, with far better academic experiences than they did before. It starts with a commitment to accelerating learning instead of ratcheting it ever downward.” Read the full essay .

Morgan Polikoff & Daniel Silver: Getting Testy About Testing — K-12 Parents Support Canceling Standardized Testing this Spring. That Might Not Be a Good Idea

Accountability: In March, with students suddenly learning from home, the U.S. Department of Education granted states a blanket exemption from standardized testing. The decision was relatively straightforward, as there was virtually no infrastructure in place for securely administering high-stakes exams remotely. But with many schools at least partially reopening in the fall, deciding what to do about standardized testing this coming spring is anything but . It’s a complex issue, with historically stressful circumstances for students and teachers on one side and crucially important data on the other. One thing, though is clear, write contributors Daniel Silver and Morgan Polikoff of the University of Southern California: Parents want the tests canceled. The Understanding America Study, administered by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research to a nationally representative sample of 1,335 U.S. K-12 households, found the proportion who “support” or “strongly support” such a move has risen steadily from 43 percent in mid-April to 64 percent in mid-October. Read their full analysis of why canceling exams, even with all their challenges, might not be a good idea .

Mahnaz Charania & Julia Freeland Fisher: Mapping Students’ Support Networks Is Key to Supporting Their Remote Learning Success. How Schools Can Make That Happen

Student Supports: Despite educators’ valiant efforts this past spring, many students still struggled to connect to their peers, teachers and counselors. Some went missing from virtual classes altogether, leaving teachers and principals scrambling to find them. Others, particularly middle and high school students, reported a troubling lack of people to turn to for academic and emotional help . These levels of disconnection threaten both students’ well-being and their academic progress. Surrounding students with an interconnected web of positive relationships is the foundation of healthy youth development, write contributors Mahnaz Charania and Julia Freeland Fisher. And within that web, access to what researchers dub a “person on the ground” — a mentor, tutor, parent or neighbor who is physically present to offer support — is a proven, critical ingredient to successful distance learning. Schools that understand the quantity and quality of relationships at their students’ disposal will be well positioned to sustain their well-being and academic progress in the coming year, whether campuses open or remain closed. Read the full analysis .

Kimberly A. Smith: A Call to Action — Black Educators Need White Co-Conspirators to Combat Racism in Schools and Empower Our Students to Succeed

Racism: The image of George Floyd gasping for air held symbolic resonance for contributor Kimberly A. Smith — racism in America’s schools, she writes, is suffocating Black students. But as a Black woman working in education, she knows the system cannot be changed solely by Black leaders or educators; it is centered in whiteness, so transformation resides in the privilege afforded to white leaders, from policymakers to nonprofit executives to superintendents. Hence, the need for “co-conspirators” willing to be unapologetically anti-racist, committed to listening and learning, willing to cede power while using privilege to invite others to lead , uncompromising in providing high-quality education for Black children and prepared to take political risks to advance their needs. The work, she says, must be done in full and equitable partnership with Black leaders in order to shape the pillars of an education institution that values and celebrates Black students. “I seek to identify a national coalition of white education co-conspirators willing to use their privilege to catalyze anti-racist actions in partnership, advocacy and support of Black leaders, with the goal of creating the conditions for Black students to thrive.” Read the full essay .

A Principal’s View: Social-Emotional Learning Is More Important Than Ever. Here’s How We Do It Virtually at My School

Social-Emotional Learning: As Principal Sara Carlson Striegel prepared to launch the new virtual school year in August, they were working to ensure students have access to high-quality academic resources and teacher guidance. But just as important was for students and teachers to come together in support of their mental health. Last fall, the school launched a social-emotional learning program, Compass Circles, which provides a framework for teachers to host regular meetings with small groups of students. When in person, participants sit in a circle and go through structured rituals where they discuss how they are doing emotionally and support their peers and colleagues in doing the same. When schools began shutting down last spring, they moved their Circle practice online using video conferencing platforms . Once a week, third- through fifth-graders join a Zoom room with other members of their Circle and go through the same sequence they would have in person. From deep-breathing exercises and emotional check-ins to “badge work” and a closing cheer, Principal Striegel describes how this SEL practice works online and the benefits it provides in keeping the school community healthy and connected. Read the full essay .

Go Deeper: See all our top coverage from 2020 in The 74’s ‘Best Of’ Roundups . Get our latest news, commentary and exclusives delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter .

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On The 74 Today

Why We Need Essay Collections Now More Than Ever

Zoe Robertson

Zoe Robertson is a horror fiction writer and lover of bizarre books, literature in translation, and vampires.

View All posts by Zoe Robertson

The essay collection has always been the open door to new ideas. Offering a buffet of food for thought, essays are the vehicle for dynamic perspectives and passions that can often go on to inspire in their reader something previous undiscovered, such as a new way of perceiving the world, a reignited drive for wider change, or maybe just a well-worded phrase to print on an encouraging poster.

The range of topics that the essay collection can cover is endless, too. Do you want a meditation on the process of writing as a jaunt to the Underworld? Check out Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead . Maybe you’re interested in reading more about feminism and resisting racism? Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider is a cornerstone compilation of emphatic, powerful calls to action that everyone should read. The View from the Cheap Seats is even a window into Neil Gaiman’s thoughts on art, reading, and more. Whatever your interest, however niche, the essay collection is here for you when you have questions about the world.

This type of writing also has the added benefit of providing a simulation of getting to know their authors personally. In curling up with these books, we become privy to the intimate machinations of great minds, are suddenly companions in conversation, and can put a part of their mind on our shelves – and that’s just really fun. “You have such interesting ideas, Ursula K. Le Guin, acclaimed author of The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction , ” we can say to our book. “I’m so glad you’ve trusted me with them.”

It is easy, then, to see how the humble essay collection is the tool we need to keep shouting above the noise of injustice. Additionally, the rise of independent publishing opportunities with intersectional and inclusive aims crucially transfers important, previously unheard ideas into the hands and minds of readers. This connects and constructs communities: no longer will ideas belong solely to academic institutions, to elite symposiums, but to book fairs and book clubs and even indie zines on Etsy stores.

There is undeniable power in passing along the thoughts of another, in learning and discussing how or if they reflect your own views, and how you can then embody or even challenge them.

These conversations are why, now more than ever, essay collections are needed to combat the rising tide of oppression and hostility that we are still seeing on the news and even in our streets. This is especially relevant to essay anthologies with a determinedly political edge, which compile varying perspectives and opinions on a certain theme or experience from a range of writers.

These anthologies offer the reader a chance to understand and interact with a range of discussions and viewpoints that reveals the depths of a singular theme. They also write against conformity, to resist stereotypes, to form independent, crucial spaces in the world. The essay collection therefore offers writers and readers the chance to assume agency and own words that may have previously been taken away or spoken over. Plus, the inherent diversity of voices, the invitation to consider new things and develop a nuanced understanding of the ways of the world, all helps in our ongoing pursuit of empathy in an increasingly divided and cynical world.

Despite how great it is to have access to so many different people and opinions on our timelines every day, as we become not only aware of how the world works but also able to develop international friendships, it’s still easy to feel alone or disorientated by the sheer mass of content. However, the wealth of voices woven throughout the humble essay collection proves that we’re in it together. It unites the passion of disparate tweets into an organised catalog to pour over and enjoy.

Here are some recent nonfiction anthologies that collect these powerful voices and offer their reader the opportunity to go through that open door toward new ideas and new ways of thinking. These essay collections prove that the fight against injustice is far from over, but we can now be heard and write our way out of the boxes we may have been confined to.

Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers and Magical Rebels edited by Katie West and Jasmine Elliot

This collection of essays presents multiple perspectives on what it means to embrace the occult and the monstrous as part of radical acts against heteropatriarchal limitations. From instructions for how to resist capitalist demands to musings on how playing and developing video games offers the opportunity for us to process our internal struggles in an endless open space to meditations on our connection to the natural world in an ever-increasingly metropolitan, industrial landscape, this collection is a must-read for people interested in the magic of everyday determination.

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

A relevant and timely collection of reflections on race in contemporary America, Ward’s anthology of essays is a momentous text that refuses passivity and ignorance, instead demanding your attention and a fighting spirit. Reacting to James Baldwin’s 1963 assessment of race in the United States, entitled ‘The Fire Next Time’, Ward’s compilation includes personal memoirs and sharp commentaries on the past, present, and future of the country’s racism to demonstrate the necessary confrontation of the truth, however violent and bleak, in order to break oppressive systems apart.

The Bi-ble edited by Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond

Each essay in this collection offers important reflections on the state of bisexual experiences in modern queer spaces, as well as comforting reassurance and shared wisdom that is not only immediately relatable, but also inspiring. It covers fan fiction communities, bisexuality in history, and the frequency of – and resistance to – bi erasure, illuminating the unique and multidimensional experiences of LGBT people. This intelligent and accessible collection puts the spotlight on a community that refuses to become invisible – and the second volume, New Testimonials , is out, too!

She Called Me Woman edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan and Rafeeat Aliyu

This resilient collection combats the erasure of queer women in Nigeria by providing them the space to discuss the multifaceted richness of their experiences: both the beauty and the harrowing intensity of it. Not so much a collection of essays, but a collection of interviews (what the editors call ‘snapshots’) with anonymous individuals on their realities, this anthology provides a gorgeous and crucial map of queer lives that resists dehumanisation and stereotyping.

The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write edited by Sabrina Mahfouz

This anthology has the added bonus of combining nonfiction essays with poetry and some fiction prose, but all focus on answering the question of what it means to be a British Muslim woman. Speaking out against the increasing hostility that Muslim people are subjected to, and also celebrating their culture, this book is undeniably striking and necessary. Its fierce determination to reclaim and own the voices these women have been denied is passionate and relevant today.

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.