Edited and with an Introduction by Leslie Jamison
Robert Atwan, Series Editor
"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."
Copyright © 2017 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Introduction copyright © 2017 by Leslie Jamison
ISBN 978-0-544-81733-3
Contents
Foreword by Robert Atwan ix
Introduction by Leslie Jamison xvi
JASON ARMENT Two Shallow Graves 1
from The Florida Review
RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin 16
from BuzzFeed
ELIESE COLETTE GOLDBACH White Horse 29
from Alaska Quarterly Review
LAWRENCE JACKSON The City That Bleeds 45
from Harper's Magazine
RACHEL KUSHNER "We Are Orphans Here" 60
from The New York Times Magazine
ALAN LIGHTMAN What Came Before the Big Bang? 72
from Harper's Magazine
EMILY MALONEY Cost of Living 82
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
GREG MARSHALL If I Only Had a Leg 91
from Electronic Literature
BERNARD FARAI MATAMBO Working the City 104
from Transition
KENNETH A. McCLANE Sparrow Needy 115
from Kenyon Review
KATHERINE VENABLE The Book of the Dead 128
from Oxford American
WESLEY MORRIS Last Taboo 160
from The New York Times Magazine
CHRISTOPHER NOTARNICOLA Indigent Disposition 176
from North American Review
MEGHAN O'GIEBLYN Dispatch from Flyover Country 180
from The Threepenny Review
KAREN PALMER The Reader Is the Protagonist 192
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
SARAH RESNICK H. 203
from n+1
HEATHER SELLERS Haywire 232
from Tin House
ANDREA STUART Travels in Pornland 252
from Granta
JUNE THUNDERSTORM Revenge of the Mouthbreathers: A Smoker's Manifesto 267
from The Baffler
ALIA VOLZ Snakebit 275
from The Threepenny Review
Contributors’ Notes 285
Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2016 291
Notable Special Issues of 2016 301
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