The Best American Essays 2017
Page 37
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 jason.arment@gmail.com.
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.
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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