|
Contemporary American Stories
|
|
|
Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America
by
R. Eric Thomas
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. Ultimately, Eric seeks the answer to the ever more relevant question: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Eric finds the answers to these questions by re-envisioning what "normal" means, and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.
|
|
All You Can Ever Know
by
Nicole Chung
A Korean adoptee who grew up with a white family in Oregon discusses her journey to find her identity as an Asian American woman and a writer after becoming curious about her true origins.
|
|
Wow, No Thank You
by
Samantha Irby
A new collection of humorous and edgy essays from the author of Meaty and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life that highlight the ups and downs of aging, marriage and living with step-children in small-town Michigan.
|
|
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-delusion
by
Jia Tolentino
A New Yorker writer presents nine original essays examining the fractures at the center of culture today, offering insights into the conflicts, contradictions, incentives and changes related to the rise of toxic social networking.
|
|
The Collected Schizophrenias
by
Esmé Weijun Wang
The award-wining author of The Border of Paradise presents a collection of evocative essays on mental illness that build on her own experiences with schizoaffective disorder while examining the vulnerabilities of institutionalization, PTSD and Lyme disease.
|
|
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
by
Alexander Chee
In a series of essays that illustrate how we form our identities in life and in art, a best-selling author and activist, examining some of the his most formative experiences and those of our nation’s history, shows how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him.
|
|
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided
by
Diane Guerrero
The author and actress discusses her life in America as an undocumented immigrant, specifically the day when she was fourteen-years-old and her parents were detained and deported while she was at school.
|
|
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me
by
Bess Kalb
The award-winning Jimmy Kimmel Live writer reflects on her relationship with her loving grandmother, the daughter of immigrants from 19th-century Belarus whose hardships, sacrifices and headstrong nature shaped the author’s perspectives on family and career.
|
|
Minor Feelings
by
Cathy Park Hong
How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition--if such a thing exists? Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively confronts this thorny subject, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history. As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today.
|
|
|
|
|
|