The Best American Essays 2017

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The Best American Essays 2017 Page 37

by Leslie Jamison


  After the tour, I look out at the garden through a plate-glass window. Between plants, I see what looks like a looped black hose, but I know. I stand with my nose centimeters from the glass and watch the liquid black body wind through the flowers. It seems to touch everything, to be everywhere at once. In the afternoon sun, it looks dipped in oil. The snake pauses and lifts its head out of a bed of tulips. The face and neck are surprisingly delicate for such a hefty body. Maybe it’s because of the pink tulips, but it strikes me as female. I watch her taste the air with her tiny vibrating tongue. The snake has seen or heard or felt me watching; she watches me back with keen black eyes.

  I’ve never subscribed to the idea that animals are dumb, nobody home, driven by mindless instinct—yet this is the first time I’ve sensed a snake’s intelligence. She’s just going about her afternoon business, maybe hoping to score a meal, while soaking up enough sun to stay mobile at night when she must avoid the owls. She is herself and I am myself, and we have nothing to do with each other.

  My exhalations have fogged the glass, but I notice that I’m breathing calmly. I’m seeing past my own trickery. How I use snakes as scapegoats for terrors I will not face. How they are my favorite shield. The phobia does not end with this; walking through grass will always make my blood hammer. But I’ve been granted a reprieve here, a moment of empathy for this she-snake, and with that, compassion for my most stubborn parts. The parts that refuse to mend.

  Contributors’ Notes

  JASON ARMENT served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a machine gunner in the USMC. He’s earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Lunch Ticket, Chautauqua, Hippocampus, the Burrow Press Review (Pushcart Prize nomination), Dirty Chai, Phoebe, Pithead Chapel, the Indianola Review, Brevity, the Florida Review, Atticus Review, Zone 3, New Madrid, Veterans Writing Project, Midwestern Gothic, and War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities. His writing has been anthologized in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors (volumes 2, 4, and 5) and is forthcoming in Duende and the Iowa Review. University of Hell Press will publish his memoir Musalaheen in 2017. Jason lives in Denver, where he coordinates the Denver Veterans Writing Workshop with the Colorado Humanities and Lighthouse. He can be reached at [email protected].

  RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of the forthcoming The Explainers and the Explorers (2018). Her essays and articles have appeared in the Paris Review, the Believer, Bookforum, Transition, Rolling Stone, Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. She has taught writing at Columbia University, Bard College, and Eugene Lang College. Her profile of Dave Chappelle was a finalist for the 2014 National Magazine Award. She lives in New York.

  ELIESE COLETTE GOLDBACH is a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other journals. She was the recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant and a winner of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest. She lives and writes in Cleveland, where her latest project has been a memoir about working in a Rust Belt steel mill.

  LAWRENCE JACKSON is the author of Chester B. Himes: A Biography (2017) and writes occasional essays for Harper’s Magazine and n+1. He is working on a collection of essays called Christmas in Baltimore, and is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University.

  RACHEL KUSHNER is the author of two novels, The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Telex from Cuba, also a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as The Strange Case of Rachel K, a collection of short prose. She is a Guggenheim fellow and winner of the Howard D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the Paris Review.

  ALAN LIGHTMAN is a novelist, essayist, and physicist with a PhD in theoretical physics. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and MIT and was the first person to receive dual faculty appointments at MIT in science and in the humanities. His essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, Granta, and other publications. Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. His latest books are The Accidental Universe, a collection of essays about how recent developments in science have changed our philosophical and theological views, and Screening Room, a memoir about the South.

  EMILY MALONEY’s work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Harper’s Magazine, Glamour, Virginia Quarterly Review, the North American Review, and the American Journal of Nursing. She is at work on a memoir and a collection of essays about health care in America.

  GREG MARSHALL is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. His essays have appeared most recently in Sonora Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Roanoke Review. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his husband, Lucas, and is at work on an essay collection called Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It.

  BERNARD FARAI MATAMBO’s work has appeared in Witness, Copper Nickel, Prairie Schooner, and Transition, among others. He has received fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center and the I-Park Foundation, and has served as a visiting artist at Gallery Delta in Harare, Zimbabwe. His first book of poems was awarded the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and is forthcoming in spring 2018. He is currently at work on a book of nonfiction from which the essay comes.

  KENNETH A. MCCLANE is the author of seven books of poetry and two volumes of personal essays, Walls: Essays, 1985–1990 (2010) and Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History (2009). His essays have appeared in many anthologies, including The Best African American Essays; The Art of the Essay; The Story and Its Writer; Literature for Life; Bearing Witness: Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century; The Anatomy of Memory; and You’ve Got to Read This. In 2012 he retired from Cornell University, where he was the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature.

  CATHERINE VENABLE MOORE is a writer and producer based in Fayette County, West Virginia. She is a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship in Long-Form Journalism, the Vermont Studio Center’s Mountain State Fellowship, the Highlander Center’s Appalachian Transition Fellowship, and a West Virginia Humanities Council Fellowship. She is also an honorary member of the United Mine Workers of America and is currently at work on a collection of essays. Find out more at beautymountainstudio.com.

  WESLEY MORRIS is a critic at large at the New York Times and a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine, where he writes essays about popular culture. He also hosts the culture podcast Still Processing with Jenna Wortham. For three years he was a staff writer at Grantland, where he wrote about movies, television, and the role of style in professional sports and cohosted the podcast Do You Like Prince Movies? with Alex Pappademas. Before that, he spent eleven years as a film critic at the Boston Globe, where he won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

  CHRISTOPHER NOTARNICOLA studies writing at Florida Atlantic University, where he also edits for Swamp Ape Review. His work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly and the North American Review. He lives in Pompano Beach, Florida.

  MEGHAN O’GIEBLYN is the recipient of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and her essays have appeared in n+1, the Point, Ploughshares, the Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

  KAREN PALMER is the author of the novels Border Dogs (2002) and All Saints (1997). She has received an NEA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Five Points, the Rumpus, and the Manifest-Station. “The Reader Is the Protagonist” is part of a memoir in progress.

  SARAH RESNICK is a writer who lives in New York. Since 2010 she has been an editor with the publisher and magazine
Triple Canopy.

  HEATHER SELLERS is the author of You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness; two volumes of poetry, The Boys I Borrow and Drinking Girls and Their Dresses; a collection of short stories, Georgia Underwater; and three books on the craft of writing, Page After Page, Chapter After Chapter, and The Practice of Creative Writing. She teaches poetry, essay, and micromemoir at the University of South Florida. She’s currently at work on a collection of essays.

  ANDREA STUART was born and raised in the Caribbean. She studied English at the University of East Anglia and French at the Sorbonne. Her first book, Showgirls, was published in 1996. It was adapted as a two-part documentary for the Discovery Channel in 1998 and has since inspired a theatrical show, a contemporary dance piece, and a number of burlesque performances. Her second book, The Rose of Martinique: A Biography of Napoleon’s Josephine, was published in 2003. It has subsequently been published in the U.S. (2004), in Germany (2004), in France (2006), and in Sweden (2006). The Rose of Martinique won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. Her third and current book, Sugar in the Blood: One Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire, was published in England (2012) and in the U.S. (2013). It was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize and the Spears Book Award and was the Boston Globe’s nonfiction pick of 2013. “Tourist,” a meditation on female sexuality, was published in Granta in 2014. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, and her articles have been published in a range of newspapers and magazines.

  JUNE THUNDERSTORM lives to rain on every single bourgeois parade. June Thunderstorm says what others are too fearful to say, too respectable to figure out. She seeks no blessings from parasitic professionals, nor caters to academic games of “reflexivity” (except maybe just now haha). Instead it’s like: May the bourgeoisie just fuck off and die. Indeed we aim to inspire glorious, glorious class rage. Enjoy her heartwarming autobiographical debut “Able-Bodied Until It Kills Us” (2013), as well as her “Fuck Legal Marijuana Manifesto” (2017), both also originally published in the Baffler. The rest is yet to come (fyi send large checks now tx).

  ALIA VOLZ is a native daughter of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, the Threepenny Review, Nowhere Magazine, Utne Reader, the New England Review, and the recent anthologies Dig If You Will the Picture: Remembering Prince and Golden State: Best New Writing from California. The Squaw Valley Community of Writers awarded her the Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship twice. SF Weekly named her among the “Best Writers Without a Book in San Francisco.” To make up for that, she’s currently working on a book.

  *

  Leslie Jamison would love to thank Benjamin Nugent for allowing her to cite his Writing After the Election lesson plan, as well as all the students—past, present, and future—who helped her articulate the possibilities of the essay: Marcus Creaghan, Nicholas Dilonardo, Lisa Factora-Borchers, Meghan Gilligan, Harrison Hill, Bethany Hughes, Joseph Lee, Jack Lowery, Taleen Mardirossian, Zoe Marquedant, Kristen Martin, Katherine Massinger, Kalle Mattila, Andrew Miller, and Heather Radke.

  Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2016

  SELECTED BY ROBERT ATWAN

  W. ROYCE ADAMS

  Hands, Catamaran, Summer

  KIM ADDONIZIO

  Blue Guitar, New Letters, vol. 83, no. 1

  DANIEL ALARCÓN

  The Ballad of Rocky Rontal, The California Sunday Magazine, August 7

  MARCIA ALDRICH

  Float, The Normal School, Spring

  KENDRA ALLEN

  When You Learn the Alphabet, December, Spring/Summer

  SAM ANDERSON

  David’s Ankles, The New York Times Magazine, August 21

  KATE ANGUS

  When We Were Vikings, American Literary Review, Spring

  JACOB M. APPEL

  Why Get There from Here?, Fourth Genre, Spring

  AMELIA ARENAS

  Sex, Violence, and Faith: The Art of Caravaggio, Arion, Winter

  NOGA ARIKHA

  Body and Soul, Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall

  PHILIP ARNOLD

  Stereoscopic Paris, Apt, June

  CHRIS ARTHUR

  Crux, Hotel Amerika, Spring

  POE BALLANTINE

  The Wreck Up Ahead, The Sun, December

  BILL BARICH

  A Weary Desperado, Narrative, Spring

  JUDITH BARRINGTON

  The Walk Home, Creative Nonfiction, Summer

  TAD BARTLETT

  My Time with You, Chautauqua, no. 13

  ELIF BATUMAN

  Cover Story, The New Yorker, February 8 & 15

  SOPHIE BECK

  Returning the Gaze, The Point, Winter

  DIANNE BELFREY

  Adrift, The New Yorker, November 7

  KAREN BENNING

  One Way It Might Have Happened 1931, The Chattahoochee Review, Fall

  LESLIE BERLIN

  Where the Heart Is, The American Scholar, Winter

  ANURADHA BLTOWMIK

  High Stakes, Copper Nickel, Fall

  SVEN BIRKERTS

  Birkerts and I, Agni, no. 83

  HEATHER BIRRELL

  Further Up and Further In!, Canadian Notes & Queries, Winter

  LUCIENNE S. BLOCH

  What Is Left, The Sewanee Review, Fall

  SUSAN BLOCH

  The Mumbai Massacre, Blue Lyra Review, Spring

  MARC BOOKMAN

  The 14-Year-Old Who Grew Up in Prison, Vice, July 20

  JENNY BOULLY

  Instant Life, Story Quarterly, no. 49

  SARAH BOXER

  Reading Proust on My Cellphone, The Atlantic, June

  JOHN H. BRACEY JR.

  The Coming of John, The Massachusetts Review, Winter

  CINDY BRADLEY

  Death, Driveways, and Dreams, Under the Sun, no. 4

  NICOLE BREIT

  An Atmospheric Pressure, Room, vol. 39, no. 4

  TRACI BRIMHALL

  Murder Ballad in the Arctic, Copper Nickel, Fall

  TAFFY BRODESSERE AKNER

  Tennis Lessons, Racquet, Autumn

  KATHRYN BROWN

  Attacked, Baltimore Review, Winter

  JANET BURROWAY

  Around the Corner, New Letters, vol. 83, no. 1

  AMY BURROUGHS

  Two Strangers on a Train, Jabberwock Review, Summer

  JACK BUSHNELL

  Writing on Water, Tampa Review, no. 53

  AMY BUTCHER

  Flight Behavior, The American Scholar, Summer

  PATRICIA BYRNE

  Milk Bottles in Limerick, New Hibernia Review, Spring

  KELLY GREY CARLISLE

  The Dead Baby Window, Cherry Tree, no. 2

  LUCAS CARPENTER

  Byron’s Pistols, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fall

  TOM CARSON

  True Fakes on Location, The Baffler, no. 31

  DOUG PAUL CASE

  Elegy for a Photograph Deleted, Whiskey Island, no. 67

  BEA CHANG

  The River My Father Promised, Broad Street, Spring/Summer

  EMILY CHASE

  In Defense of Grudges, Tusculum Review, no. 12

  JAMES M. CHESBRO

  Green Mazes, The Collagist, March

  ALEXANDER CHEE

  Our Well-Regulated Militia, Longreads, April 18

  S. ISABEL CHOI

  His Anger Is Not New, Slice, Fall/Winter

  CAITLYN LUCE CHRISTENSEN

  Why a Girl Would Want To, Indiana Review, Summer

  KRISTA CHRISTENSEN

  Etymologies, New Ohio Review, Spring

  GEORGE CRAIG

  Aging: An Insider’s Look, Raritan, Spring

  CAITLIN CRAWSHAW

  Dark Spots, Event, vol. 45, no. 3

  RACHEL CUSK

  Coventry, Granta, no. 134

  EDWIDGE DANTICAT

  A Voice from Heaven, Brown Alumni Magazine, January/ February

  GEORGE DARDESS

  The Mosque O
utside the Mosque: Aerosol Arabic and the One Experience, Image, no. 89

  PWAANGULONGII DAUOD

  Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men, Granta, no. 136

  CAROL ANN DAVIS

  On Slaughter and Praying: An Essay in Two Parts, The Georgia Review, Fall

  DAWN S. DAVIES

  Keeping the Faith, Chautauqua, no. 13

  COLIN DAYAN

  The Old Gray Mare, The Yale Review, April

  JENNIFER M. DEAN

  Sounding in Fog, Crazyhorse, Spring

  LARISSA DIAKIW

  Mirror Land, Brick, no. 97

  JAQUIRA DIAZ

  Monster Story, Ninth Letter, Spring/Summer

  NATALIE DIAZ

  The Hand Has Twenty-Seven Bones, Tin House, no. 67

  MARGARET DIEHL

  And Then the Letting Go, Alligator Juniper, no. XX

  LAURA DISTELHEIM

  On Kindness, The Briar Cliff Review, no. 28

  BRIAN DOYLE

  The Stone Nose, Ruminate, Fall

  JACQUELINE DOYLE

  A Eulogy, Despite, Full Grown People, April 14

  ANDRE DUBUS III

  Carver and Dubus, New York City, 1988, Five Points, vol. 17, no. 2

  IRINA A. DUMITRESCU

  The Things We Take, The Things We Leave Behind, Southwest Review, vol. 101, no. 1

  STEVE DURHAM

  Human out of Me, Opossum, Fall

  LUCY DURNEEN

  All the Things, Hotel Amerika, Spring

  ANJALI ENJETI

  Identity Lost and Found, Atlanta Journal Constitution, September 11

 

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