#Essays Best American Essays 2017

• Author: Leslie Jamison (editor)
  
• Title: Best American Essays 2017 (20 essays)
  
• Published: 2017
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly plan
• #TBR  2019 challenge update  
• #TBR  2018 challenge update

Conclusion:

1. I’ve reviewed the first 5 essays
2. …and will let you discover the rest.
3. The BEST essay was by Rachel Ghansah.
4. “The Weight”
5. Try to read anything by this Pulitzer Prize winner
6. ….you won’t be disappointed.

Last Thoughts:

1. Personally I was  NOT impressed with the selected essays.
2. They lacked creativity, insight and
3. there were too many long personal essays.
4. I’m not interested with your family relationships!
5. I’ve read other collections that are WELL worth your reading time:
6. Zadie Smith – Feel Free

1. Ashleigh Young – Can You Tolerate This?

1. Fiona Wright – Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger

1. Best Australian Essays 2016

1. Best Australian Science Writing 2018

My notes:

1. Two Shallow Graves  C+
   
2. Jason Arment…
3. served in Operation Iraqi Freedom
4. as a Machine Gunner in the USMC.
5. He’s earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction
6. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
7. Arment is a warrior as witness who writes down things we don’t want to know.
8. Reading time: 22 minutes
9. Conclusion:
10. This is not an essay
11. …it is probably a chapter from
12. Arment’s published book in 2017  Musalaheen (memoir)
13. Arment writes vividly
14. …but I’m not interested in war literature.

1. The Weight  A++++++
   
2. Rachel K. Ghansah…
3. is an American award-winning essayist.
4. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2018 for her profile of
5. white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof
6. who killed nine black people at a church in South Carolina.
7. Gahnsah writes about her past reluctance
8. to revere James Baldwin in this essay.
9. She wants to provide a model others can build upon so that they
10. …do not buckle under “The Weight” of Baldwin’s legacy.
11. The man can finally rest in peace.
12. Reading time: 38 minutes
13. Conclusion:
14. This essay is absolutely stunning!
15. I suggest you read anything you can find
16. by Rachel K. Ghansah!

1. White Horse     D- 
   
2. Elise Goldbach...
3. She writes  a courageous personal essay about  a
   
4. campus sexual attack and its aftermath.
5. After 6 minutes I realize this is not the
6. …essay I want to spend time reading.
7. Reading time:   — minutes
8. Conclusion:
9. This essay is difficult to read….so DNF!
   

1. The City That Bleeds  D-
   
2. Lawrence Jackson…
3. is a professor of English and history at
4. Johns Hopkins University.
5. He is a  literary critic and compelling biographer.
6. Essay starts out as a description of police officers
7. on trial for brutality…and suddenly is a essay about
8. L. Jackson’s ancestors in Baltimore.
9. Reading time:  15 minutes
10. Conclusion:
11. This essay is makes valid points on
12. the state affairs in Baltimore
13. …the city that bleeds
14. …but it did not hold my interest.
15. It felt like Jackson shifts words here and there
16. and tells me things I read in the news.
17. The essay lacks depth.

1. We Are Orphans Here   C+
   
2. Rachel Kushner…
3. is an author of several novels
4. The Flamethrowers (2013) and The Mars Room (2018)
5. Ms Kushner spends a weekend in the Shuafat Refugee
6. Camp in East Jerusalem.
7. The essay is probably not simply about a place or a journey,
8. but rather is about what she may discover
9. about people, life on that journey and in that place.
10. Reading time:  15 minutes
11. Conclusion:
12. This essay is travel essay
13. The hard part was trying to find
14. Kushner’s quest…
15. …the reason for writing this essay.
16. I think she wanted to confront the image
17. that the international media uses to depict
18. Shuafat Camp…
19. ” …as the most dangerous place in Jerusalem”
20. with her personal experience pg 66
21. “…how wonderful it was in Shuafat Camp…how safe I felt.”
22. The essay was….average.
23. Unfortunately, it did not appeal to me