Includes contributors' notes and list of other notable essays from 2020.
The Trayvon generation / Homecoming / The broken country / Acceptance parenting / The kitchen is closed / Bent arrows: on anticipation of my approaching disappearance / Vicious cycles / Clarity / Oh Latitudo / Insane after coronavirus? / Love in a time of terror / What I learned when my husband got sick with coronavirus / What money can't buy / Two women / My mustache / Apparent / The designated mourner / Going postal / In orbit / Witness and respair / Elizabeth Alexander, from The New Yorker -- Hilton Als, from The New Yorker -- Molly McCully Brown, from Virginia Quarterly Review -- Agnes Callard, from The Point -- Gabrielle Hamilton, from The New York Times Magazine -- Tony Hoagland, from Ploughshares -- Greg Jackson, from Harper's Magazine -- Ruchir Joshi, from Granta -- Amy Leach, from Granta -- Patricia Lockwood, from London Review of Books -- Barry Lopez. from Literary Hub -- Jessica Lustig, from The New York Times Magazine -- Dawn Lundy Martin, from Ploughshares -- Claire Messud, from A Public Space -- Wesley Morris, from The New Yorker Magazine -- Beth Nguyen, from The Paris Review -- Fintan O'Toole, from The New York Review of Books -- Max Read, from Bookforum -- Dariel Suarez, from The Threepenny Review -- Jesmyn Ward, from Vanity Fair.
"The world is abundant even in bad times,"guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, "it is lush with interestingness,and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness." The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year"--
9780358381754 0358381754
American essays--21st century. American essays--2020.