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louisejulig's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
“Devastating” is how I would describe this essay collection by Eula Biss. I picked it up after hearing it recommended in several different contexts and remembering her amazing essay “The Pain Scale,” but I had no idea before reading that this book is themed around race and whiteness. It feels like the author’s intention is to bring readers along on a journey of increasing discomfort while she picks away at the notion that any of our actions are race-neutral in our society. As white people, this goes contrary to everything we have been acculturated to our whole lives.
Start with the opening essay, “Time and Distance Overcome,” on telephone poles. Except it’s not just about telephone poles, because in her research she discovered how commonly they were used for lynchings. Or her essay about being a professor in Iowa noting that despite some of the “dangerous” places she has lived, including Harlem, Chicago’s Roger’s Park, and Mexico, “Iowa City remains, to this day, the only place I have ever lived where I have had reason to speak with the police with any regularity,” due to the violence and harassment of unchecked white college students.
From there she goes on to interrogate her experiences as a young, unprepared teacher in New York City schools, her stint as a reporter for an African American community newspaper in San Diego discovering how disproportionately the foster system removes black children from their extended families, and many other experiences that continually open her eyes. In “Letter to Mexico” she writes:
From there she goes on to interrogate her experiences as a young, unprepared teacher in New York City schools, her stint as a reporter for an African American community newspaper in San Diego discovering how disproportionately the foster system removes black children from their extended families, and many other experiences that continually open her eyes. In “Letter to Mexico” she writes:
“My past, I discovered in Mexico, was both simpler and more complicated than I had ever thought it to be. I had, very simply, enjoyed great privilege in life, and great opportunity. But it was much worse than that. I began to recognize at whose price I had enjoyed a comfortable life. This is not to say that I immediately understood the intricacies of international trade agreements—it is only to say that I felt a nameless, crushing remorse.”
This excerpt is typical of her writing in that she doesn’t pretend to know everything, and she doesn’t include solutions. She just wants to convey how the discoveries she comes to make her feel. To me they feel devastating in the best way.
P.S. The edition I have also includes research notes for each essay at the end, which I found incredibly helpful as a writer. I wish all essay collections included this!
pattricejones's review against another edition
I'll agree with Sherman Alexie's blurb on the back cover. This book is sometimes so right and sometimes so wrong and sometimes both at once but (or maybe so) worth reading.
reikista's review against another edition
3.0
Essays about race with a personal perspective. Deep, painful, but also satisfying reading.
christinajcraig's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing. So smart. So readable. So decisive. This might be my favorite collection of essays ever.
samwreads's review against another edition
4.0
Essays suffused with confusion and anger.
Biss does a good job of taking injustices playing out on the national or international scale and bringing them back to a very personal level.
That said, I personally liked the two essays without a distinct narrative arc the best - the ones on telephone poles and on apologies. Their economy of language and concise paragraphs really distilled the emotional and logical content, while letting the message build more like a poem than a traditional essay.
Overall I do think that the essays in this book serve more as an introduction to challenging topics rather than say things I found distinctly new. But they do this well and the anecdotes, while often sad and frustrating, are also humorous in a darkly entertaining way.
Biss does a good job of taking injustices playing out on the national or international scale and bringing them back to a very personal level.
That said, I personally liked the two essays without a distinct narrative arc the best - the ones on telephone poles and on apologies. Their economy of language and concise paragraphs really distilled the emotional and logical content, while letting the message build more like a poem than a traditional essay.
Overall I do think that the essays in this book serve more as an introduction to challenging topics rather than say things I found distinctly new. But they do this well and the anecdotes, while often sad and frustrating, are also humorous in a darkly entertaining way.
graceinthebooks's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75