Presents a collection of the year's best essays as selected by best-selling author Alexander Chee.
An award-winning writer selects 20 essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. Original. 30,000 first printing.
A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.
Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
Arvustused
New Yorker writer Schulz (Being Wrong) collects essays that skillfully combine journalistic and literary sensibilities in this powerful addition to the annual anthology series This is a moving retrospective of a singular year. Publishers Weekly on The Best American Essays 2021
These essays challenge personal and political assumptions and show us life in all its complexities and contradictions. Which in this American moment, and in every other, matters. USA Today
[ A] thoughtful entry in the long-running series...The works in this years collection are a mix of the disconcerting, the probing, and the self-reflective, and well-suited to challenging times. Publishers Weekly
| Foreword |
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ix | |
| Introduction |
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xix | |
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Brian Blanch Field. Abasement from Territory |
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1 | (4) |
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Elissa Washuta. Drinking Story from Harper's Bazaar |
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5 | (5) |
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Debra Gwartney. Fire and Ice from Granta |
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10 | (1) |
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Vauhini Vara. Ghosts from The Believer |
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11 | (24) |
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Melissa Febos. The Wild, Sublime Body from The Yale Review |
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35 | (8) |
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Anthony Veasna So. Baby Yeah from n+I |
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43 | (14) |
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Jung Hae Chae. The Gye, the No-Name Hair Salon, the Coup d'Etat, and the Small Dreamers from New England Review |
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57 | (14) |
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Justin Torres. It Had to Be Gold from Los Angeles Times Image |
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71 | (8) |
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Alex Marzano-Lesnevich. Futurity from Harvard Review |
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79 | (13) |
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Naomi Jackson. Her Kind from Harper's Magazine |
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92 | (13) |
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Angelique Stevens. Ghost Bread from Prism |
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105 | (11) |
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Lina Mounzer. The Gamble from Freeman's |
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116 | (15) |
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Jason Brown. The Wrong Jason Brown from The New Yorker |
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131 | (14) |
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Tanner Akoni Laguatan. Between These Lives, Azeroth from Wired |
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145 | (7) |
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Calvin Gimpelevich. Among Men from Ploughshares |
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152 | (13) |
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Andrea Long Chu. China Brain from n+I |
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165 | (17) |
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Kaitlyn Greenidge. What She Would Always and Should Always Be Doing from BuzzFeed |
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182 | (8) |
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Gary Shteyncart. My Gentile Region from The New Yorker |
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190 | (18) |
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Jesus Quintero. Anatomy of a Botched Assimilation from Your Impossible Voice |
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208 | (23) |
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Elias Rodriques. Mother Country from Virginia Quarterly Review |
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231 | (14) |
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Aube Rey Lescure. At the Bend of the Road from Guernica |
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245 | (12) |
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Erika J. Simpson. If You Ever Find Yourself from The Audacity |
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257 | (13) |
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Ryan Bradley. The Lost List from The Sewanee Review |
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270 | (16) |
| Contributors' Notes |
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286 | (5) |
| Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2021 |
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291 | (13) |
| Notable Special Issues of 2021 |
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304 | |
ALEXANDER CHEE is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic, and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, T Magazine, Slate, Vulture, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.
ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.
