Essays
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TITLE: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
AUTHOR: Cathy Park Hong WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 921 Hon SUMMARY: Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong confronts the Asian American condition, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. |
TITLE: All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
AUTHOR: George M. Johnson WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 921 Joh SUMMARY: A first book by the prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist shares personal essays that chronicle his childhood, adolescence and college years as a Black queer youth, exploring subjects ranging from gender identity and toxic masculinity to structural marginalization and Black joy. |
TITLE: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
AUTHOR: John Green CALL NUMBER: 814 Gre SUMMARY: The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet-from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu-on a five-star scale. |
TITLE: Just Us: An American Conversation
AUTHOR: Claudia Rankine CALL NUMBER: 305.8 Ran SUMMARY: This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend's explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. |
TITLE: Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy
AUTHOR: Edited by Kelly Jensen CALL NUMBER: 306.4 Bod SUMMARY: Thirty-seven contributors--including model Tyra Banks, gymnast Aly Raisman, and bestselling YA authors--explore the world in their unique bodies through essays, lists, comics, and art. |
TITLE: The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America
AUTHOR: Edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman CALL NUMBER: 305.8 Goo SUMMARY: A collection of essays by first- and second generation immigrants exploring what it's like to be 'othered' in an increasingly divided America. |
TITLE: Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America
AUTHOR: Edited by Amy Reed CALL NUMBER: 305.42 Our SUMMARY: Presents a collection of essays by twenty one young adult authors that explore diverse experiences of injustice, empowerment, and growing up female in America. |
TITLE: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
AUTHOR: Alicia Elliot CALL NUMBER: 814 Ell - NATIVE COLLECTION SUMMARY: In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. |
TITLE: My Time Among the Whites: Lessons from My Unfinished Education
AUTHOR: Jennine Capo Crucet CALL NUMBER: 814 Cru SUMMARY: A collection of essays that focuses on the author’s struggles to find a home and identity in America as the daughter of Cuban refugees despite her family’s efforts to fit in with white American culture. |
TITLE: The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
AUTHOR: Edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen CALL NUMBER: 305.9 Dis SUMMARY: Brings together a host of prominent refugee writers from around the world to explore and illuminate their experiences. |
TITLE: Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America
AUTHOR: R. Eric Thomas WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Tho SUMMARY: R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. |
TITLE: A History of My Brief Body
AUTHOR: Billy-Ray Belcourt CALL NUMBER: 814 Bel - NATIVE COLLECTION SUMMARY: This brilliant new essay collection on grief, colonial violence, joy, love and queerness from the youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize touches upon his personal history and demonstrates the power of words to both devastate and console us. |
TITLE: The Empathy Exams
AUTHOR: Leslie Jamison WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Jam SUMMARY: A collection of essays explores empathy, using topics ranging from street violence and incarceration to reality television and literary sentimentality to ask questions about people's understanding of and relationships with others. |
TITLE: Feel Free
AUTHOR: Zadie Smith WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 824 Smi SUMMARY: A collection of both previously unpublished works and classic essays includes discussions of recent cultural and political events, social networking, libraries, and the failure to address global warming. |
TITLE: I Wrote This Book Because I Love You
AUTHOR: Tim Kreider WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Kre SUMMARY: A writer for The New York Times and creator of a popular comic strip explores his relationships with women in a collection of essays that ruminate on his troubles finding lasting love, his commitment issues and his valued female friendships. |
TITLE: Interior States
AUTHOR: Meghan O'Gieblyn WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 O'Gi SUMMARY: A collection of essays about faith and the challenges of living in the Middle West. |
TITLE: This Idea Is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know
AUTHOR: John Brockman, editor WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 500 Bro SUMMARY: A collection of essays that respond to a question about what scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known. |
TITLE: This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
AUTHOR: Morgan Jerkins WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 305.48 Jer SUMMARY: A collection of essays in which the author interweaves personal experience with incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism. |
TITLE: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
AUTHOR: Jesmyn Ward, editor WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 305.896 War SUMMARY: A collection of essays addressing the history and predicament of race in an attempt to envision a better future. |
TITLE: Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-Seven Women Untangle an Obsession
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Benedict, editor WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 646.7 Ben SUMMARY: Twenty-seven writers share personal stories about their hair. |
TITLE: Bad Feminist
AUTHOR: Roxane Gay WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Gay SUMMARY: A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism. |
TITLE: Citizen: An American Lyric
AUTHOR: Claudia Rankine WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Ran SUMMARY: Recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. |
TITLE: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
AUTHOR: David Sedaris WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Sed SUMMARY: A collection of humorous autobiographical essays about his experiences traveling, from the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco. |
TITLE: How Did You Get This Number
AUTHOR: Sloane Crosley WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Cro SUMMARY: A new anthology of personal writings shares the author's whimsical observations of such locales as Paris, Portugal, and Alaska as well as her more experienced understandings of her home and relationships in New York. |
TITLE: All Art Is Propaganda
AUTHOR: George Orwell WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 824 Orw SUMMARY: Collects critical essays written by George Orwell in the 1940s, in which he discusses the work of Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Salvador Dali, and others; and also covers propaganda, politics, and more. |
TITLE: The White Album
AUTHOR: Joan Didion WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Did SUMMARY: Contains essays in which journalist Joan Didion writes of people, places, and events of the 1960s and '70s, including the Manson family, the John Paul Getty museum, and others. |
TITLE: Small Wonder
AUTHOR: Barbara Kingsolver WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Kin SUMMARY: Essays by a popular novelist describing her search for hope in nature and family in a world scarred by poverty and violence. |
TITLE: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
AUTHOR: David Foster Wallace WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 Wal SUMMARY: Presents seven essays on a variety of subjects including tennis, film, philosophy, and postmodern literary theory, as well as personal narratives about the author's experiences at the Illinois State Fair and aboard a luxury cruise ship. |
TITLE: One Hundred Great Essays
AUTHOR: Edited by Robert DiYanni WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE LIBRARY: 814 One SUMMARY: A reader with 100 classic and contemporary readings. Alphabetically-organized by author for ease and flexibility. |