From Goodreads:
“The essay is political—and politically useful, by which I mean humanizing and provocative—because of its commitment to nuance, its explorations of contingency, its spirit of unrest, its glee at overturned assumptions; because of the double helix of awe and distrust—faith and doubt—that structures its DNA,” writes guest editor Leslie Jamison in her introduction. From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the genetic makeup of the eclectic and electric selections in The Best American Essays 2017 “thrill toward complexity.”
This was my first time reading a collection of essays by different people. I've read essays before, but ones that were written by one person, perhaps all centered on a particular topic. So this was new to me. Here are my thoughts on the subject:
I'm not really sure what the definition of an essay is, because based on the wide variety that is in this book, it seems like essays can be anything - thoughts on a subject of interest, personal stories, thoughts on a specific person (famous or not). When I had to write essays in school, they were a far cry from this, so I didn't really know what to expect with each new essay.
What I can say is, when I read reviews of other essays collections, Roxane Gay's, for example, I saw a lot of people complain about a lack of argument or break down of a topic into an argument. Now having read this collection (of the supposedly BEST essays in 2017) I can say that most essays do not make it clear what the argument is. In fact, most just seem to be a discussion, with the author's personal thoughts about the subject. So I think most people have the same problem as me and don't really know what an essay is (outside of a school context).
That being said, I enjoyed a lot of the essays in this book. Jamison did an excellent job of choosing a wide range of subjects and authors, whose topics were all over the map, including racism, abuse, addiction, and grief. Some of my favorites were "White Horse," "The Cost of Living," "If I Only Had a Leg," and "The Reader Is the Protagonist." These stories really drew me in and showed fascinating glimpses into the lives of people competently different from me.
I would recommend this or other collections in this series to those who enjoy slice of life narratives. They may be essays, but they are also stories, and you get very close to the author, they're showing you their brain working through something very intimately.
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