Three essay collections I would read again
Hey, Readers! I’m getting back to a few of my neglected newsletter series this summer. This series is called genre files in my ideas notebook because I’m digging through my “files” (ahem, Goodreads) to uncover which books hooked me on each genre. I’ve covered Romance, Narrative Nonfiction, and Literary Fiction—today I’m pulling out three standout Essay Collections and sharing how I fell in love with the personal essay form.
My college and grad school workload was chock full of essays. There were essays on pedagogy and best practices in education, literary analysis essays, rhetorical analysis essays, and personal essays from fellow students in my Creative Nonfiction class. I liked reading essays in that I liked learning. I liked pulling apart an author’s argument and applying it to another text or dissecting the structure of a creative essay in order to better understand craft. I never thought to read a formally published essay collection because essays were for school and fiction was for fun. Of course, these three titles changed my mind.
Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard
After a jaunt to our favorite Oklahoma City bookstore in 2019, my friend let me read her purchase first, since she was in the middle of another book. I read Black is the Body by Emily Bernard during short breaks away from my grad school work. Because I was wrapping up my academic journey, I loved the scholarly tone of her essays. If I read the collection now, I’m not sure if the style would click. In twelve short essays, some more like vignettes, Bernard explores her physical, emotional, and intellectual identity as a mixed-raced woman in the United States. One essay details how she survived a stabbing, but the most memorable to me was an essay in which Bernard wrestles with her feelings about teaching classic literature with racist language to her students, as a Black professor at a mostly white college.
Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas
Here for It forever lives in the “2020 pandemic audiobook listening” section of my Goodreads record. Many of those books are lost to my anxiety-ridden memory, but my love of R. Eric Thomas and his humor remains. I love personal essays with a strong voice, and Eric has VOICE. He perfectly moderates the serious with the silly, deploying humor without being cynical. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, yet he manages to find poignant moments in life’s plot twists. His second collection of essays Congratulations, the Best is Over, actually takes my top billing over Here for It—but I recommend both collections to aspiring essay writers, comedians, or readers who love humor and heart.
Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives by Mary Laura Philpott
This essay collection made me cry. It’s unclear whether it was the postpartum hormones, the essays, or both. I listened to the audiobook while driving my first baby around to doctor appointments and errands. It seemed like I was eons away from Mary Laura Philpott’s mothering experience, but I knew (or I was told) the years would go by in a flash, so I eagerly listened to her stories. As she shared vivid details of her teenage son’s first seizure, my mind raced with new mom anxieties—and questions about my future as a parent. She perfectly captures how scary it is to love your loved ones, and to be a perfection-seeking go-getter in an imperfect world. The way her memoir-in-essays comes full circle still stuns me. She’s a master of the craft. I’ve been saving her first collection, I Miss You When I Blink, because I know I’ll love it, and I think it’s time to finally crack the spine this summer.
Additional Favorites
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
Monsters by Claire Dederer
Bad Feminist by Rozanne Gay
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
On My TBR
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
