best essay collections of 2022

While We’re On the Subject: 10 of the Best Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

One of the great things about being adult is that you only have to read the books you want to read now. No more assigned reading (unless you’re pursuing more education)! And while the word “essay” can conjure up images of homework, it’s actually just another really fun form of writing as a way to get information into your brain. An essay is a short piece of writing about a specific subject. That’s all. And just like all other writing, the subject possibilities are endless! There are so many amazing collections of essays to choose from. That’s why we’re helping you find a few great ones with this list of ten of the best essay collections.

These books cover a variety of topics, such as music, nature, race, and writing. Each of these are written by one particular author, but you can find essay collections with multiple contributors. The Best American Essays are a great place to start — the most recent one was guest edited by Alexander Chee, who has a book also listed below. He knows essays! I also highly recommend A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause by Shawn Wen. I had no idea how much I would love a small collection of essays about the famous mime Marcel Marceau until I picked it up. What a gem!

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

Poet, essayist, and critic Abdurraqib’s first collection is an amazing jumping-off point if you’ve not read many essays. These are smart and thoughtful pieces, some about life as viewed through the lens of culture, such as his experience at a Carly Rae Jepsen show and his thoughts on attending concerts in the wake of the shootings in Paris. And some are about his experience as a Black man living in America. This collection was so successful, it got a new five-year anniversary cover, so you might also find this with a blue cover with a wolf in a red track suit.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Baldwin’s famous essay collection about racism and the lives of Black people in America was written in the 1940s and early 1950s, at the start of the Civil Rights movement. A powerful writer and activist, Baldwin was one of the early writers discussing the violence and murder perpetrated against Black people. His essays exposed readers to police violence and racial injustice in a time before it was being discussed publicly and nationally.

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

Chee, who is a brilliant teacher as well as a published writer, discusses how the life of the writer is entangled in work in various ways. While explaining the importance of art and how it gives meaning to our lives, he revisits his own experiences, including the death of his father, the AIDS crisis, and writing his first novel Edinburgh .

Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use

Loitering: New and Collected Essays by Charles D’Ambrosio

D’Ambrosio tackles very different subjects in this collection of things that loiter in his brain, while weaving very personal, heartbreaking information into each one. There’s a discussion of the trial of jailed teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J.D. Salinger, a haunted house, weather, and more. It is also an examination of mental illness and suicide in his family.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion

Like Baldwin, Didion is one of the most famous essayists in the American literary canon. This memorable book includes her sharp, original takes on John Wayne and Howard Hughes, as well as a look at her life growing up in California, and other memorable takes on places around the state.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby

And if you want a collection that will make you laugh out loud, pick up this (or any of Irby’s other books.) These are screamingly funny, honest essays about relationships, health and bodies, sex, pet ownership, family, and more. (A few more funny essayists to check out: Jenny Lawson, Helen Ellis, Phoebe Robinson, and Mary Laura Philpott.)

Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver is one of the finest novelists of the last few decades, but did you know she also writes smart, touching nonfiction? Using nature as the underlying them in each one, Kingsolver probes our world, from mountains and trees, to the dangers of genetically modified foods, to what we owe the children of the world. It’s a collection about growth, literally and metaphorically.

Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver was an award-winning poet, and her immense, gorgeous talent for writing poetry is apparent in these beautiful, thoughtful essays. They examine her interest in nature and the world at large from a young age, and how the beauty she found around her influence her life and her work. Get ready to underline pretty much everything.

Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays by Elena Passarello

This is a fascinating collection about voices throughout popular culture, from an 18th century opera singer to Spaceballs to A Streetcar Named Desire . Passarello examines the sound and shape of the sounds that have contributed to the soundtracks of human lives. Equally fascinating is Animals Strike Curious Poses , her essay collection about famous animals throughout history.

Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan

And last but not least, another lesser-known gem. Pulphead is like a road trip in a book that covers pop culture, and events around America. Sullivan investigates a Christian rock festival, Real World alumni, the BP oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, and more. It’s an absorbing collection that belongs on the shelf of every essay lover.

For more essays to enrich your life, be sure to check out 100 Must-Read Essay Collections and Essay Collections That Make You Necessarily Uncomfortable .

You Might Also Like

• BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

The Best Essay Collections to Add to Your TBR List

Discover big ideas in small doses.

Anyone who has read very much of it knows that some of the best prose around is happening in nonfiction. From personal essays to political ones, cultural criticism to travelogues, these 10 books represent some of the best essay writing of the last century, spanning continents and languages, tackling subjects that range from political unrest to pulp fiction—and everything in-between. 

So, if you’re ready to expand your mind and change your outlook, add these essay collections to your TBR list today!

A Day in the Life of Roger Angell

By Roger Angell

While you may not recognize Roger Angell’s name, you probably know who he is. The stepson of legendary author E. B. White, Angell has worked for the New Yorker in various capacities for decades, including as a frequent contributing writer. 

He has written about all sorts of subjects, especially baseball, and this unique collection pulls together a variety of his best-loved pieces, including his famous Christmas poems, a variety of parodies, and a “tense correspondence over a short fiction contest that pays only in baked goods.”

Related: "Your Horoscope," by Roger Angell

My Seditious Heart

By Arundhati Roy

A New York Times  bestseller and Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy is many things, and in My Seditious Heart  she proves that among those is an “electrifying political essayist” ( Booklist ). 

Collecting essays from two decades of her life, this “lucid and probing” ( Time Magazine ) book presents a lifetime of battling for social and political justice and human rights, from American capitalism to the Hindu caste system and beyond. “The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering,” writes The New York Times Book Review . “Her pointed indictment is devastating.”

Want more great books? Sign up for the Early Bird Books newsletter and get the best daily ebook deals delivered straight to your inbox.

Men Explain Things to Me

By Rebecca Solnit

In these “personal but unsentimental essays” ( The New York Times ), National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Rebecca Solnit provides the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” ( The Stranger ). 

From the title essay, which explores why men talk over women and what the ultimate cost of that is, to essays about Virginia Woolf and marriage equality, Solnit’s unsparing prose has been called “ essential feminist reading ” by The New Republic – and simply “essential” by Marketplace .

Collection of Sand

By Italo Calvino

Newly translated into English for the first time by Martin McLaughlin, this “brilliant collection of essays” and travelogues, the last piece of new writing published by the legendary Italo Calvino before his death, “may change the way you see the world around you” ( The Guardian ). 

From antique maps to Japanese gardens, Calvino takes us on a tour of the world, but also of his own mind, in the process heightening our appreciation of the visual world around us. 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By Joan Didion

In her first work of nonfiction, one of America’s most “dazzling” prose stylists ( The New York Times ) also establishes herself as a singular voice on American culture, painting a vivid portrait of a nation in the midst of tumultuous change. 

First published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic , hailed as “a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country” by the New York Times Book Review . No wonder Time Magazine chose it as one of the 100 best and most influential nonfiction books to date.

Related: Joan Didion: Her Books, Life and Legacy

Essays After Eighty

By Donald Hall

A former Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall has “wrought his prose to a keen autumnal edge” in his waning years, according to The Wall Street Journal . This collection of essays written, as the title implies, after he turned 80, sees Hall reflecting on his life, on his career, on writing itself, and on the view out his window. 

“Alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny ” ( The New York Times ), these essays show that Hall has never lost his deft touch, nor his passion for life and all of its mysteries, whimsies, and wonders.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

By Angela Y. Davis

Author of such classic works as Women, Race, and  Class, Angela Y. Davis made a name for herself as an activist and scholar with a penetrating insight into social issues. 

In this new collection of essays, she tackles some of the most pressing issues that affect our present moment , from the Black Lives Matter movement to Palestine and beyond, calling upon us all to imagine a better world – and do the important work required to make it possible.

Illuminations

By Walter Benjamin

A German cultural critic who has been called one of most original thinkers of the 20th century, Walter Benjamin fled Germany in 1932, as the Nazi party rose to power, and died in exile before the end of the second World War. 

Hannah Arendt, herself one of the most influential political theorists of the modern age, hand-assembled this collection of some of Benjamin’s most famous and most important essays, including his legendary “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” to form this unforgettable book from a unique mind.

Tell Me How It Ends

By Valeria Luiselli

An American Book Award Winner and a finalist for both the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, this “essay in forty questions” is a “moving, intimate” account of serving as a translator for undocumented children facing deportation ( The New York Times Book Review ). 

As a volunteer worker, Luiselli translated these forty questions from a court form to ask undocumented children who were under threat of deportation. By structuring her writing around them, she helps to put a vitally human face on children who are thrust into an often-uncaring system in this book that is, “Worth of inclusion in a great American (and international) canon of writing about migration” ( Texas Observer ).

Maps and Legends

By Michael Chabon

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay “makes an inviting case for bridging the gap between popular and literary writing” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) in this appreciation of everything from pulp fiction to comic books, horror to westerns. 

By writing about the stories that move him, speak to him, and inspired him to write, Chabon also talks about his own identity as an author, and what storytelling means to all of us, whether he’s writing about Superman or Sherlock Holmes.

Related: 12 Michael Chabon Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down

Keep Reading: 10 Essential Essay-Length Memoirs You Can Read Online for Free

Get the best daily book deals delivered to your inbox

© 2024 OPEN ROAD MEDIA

• We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Twenty of Our Most Loved Essays of 2022

From politics, labor, and race to philosophy, literature, and sex.

Boston Review

• December 30, 2022

As 2022 comes to a close, we are looking back on an eventful year and counting down twenty selections of our most-loved essays we published over the last twelve months.

2022 has seen several new global challenges. In the weeks following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, our contributors provided essential context—examining the  role of NATO  in the lead-up to the war as well as the  theocratic  and  homophobic  ideologies animating Putin’s regime. This year also saw the continued global rise of the far right, which made inroads in Italy and  Sweden . Meanwhile, the collapse of crypto currency platform FTX brought increased attention to effective altruism and  longtermism , ethical theories popular among today’s tech moguls that rest on shaky philosophical assumptions.

There were also some glimmers of hope. The COP 27 climate summit in Egypt resulted in a historic agreement to create a loss and damage fund to aid countries facing the brunt of climate change—a small step toward the type of  reparations necessary  to address historic global injustices.

In addition to these topics, our most-loved essays this year explore the  social roots of mental illness , the  case for a world without borders , how  microeconomics hijacked economic policymaking , and  Edith Wharton’s use of gothic tropes  to challenge oppressive gender relations.

Whatever 2023 brings,  Boston Review ’s authors will continue to provide carefully researched, in-depth analysis of vital public issues.

20: The Deep Structure of Democratic Crisis — Ruth Berins Collier, Jake Grumbach

19: up from federalism — lisa l. miller, 18: labor’s militant minority — mie inouye, 17: why policing and prisons can’t end gender violence — angela y. davis, gina dent, erica r. meiners, beth e. richie, nia t. evans, 16: you owe me an argument — rachel fraser, 15: a century of serious difficulty — johanna winant, 14: twenty years of freedom dreams — robin d. g. kelley, 13: nine ways that capitalism is ruining sex — breanne fahs, 12: just give me my equality — teresa m. bejan, 11: “representation doesn’t just mean heroes. we need the villains as well.” — marlon james interviewed by nate file, 10: the fight for reparations cannot ignore climate change — olúfẹ́mi o. táíwò, 9: edith wharton’s ghosts — jennifer r. bernstein, 8: nato and the road not taken — rajan menon, 7: race and sweden’s fascist turn — tobias hübinette, 6: the u.s. christians who pray for putin — bethany moreton, 5: the new moral mathematics — kieran setiya, 4: putin’s anti-gay war on ukraine — emil edenborg, 3: bad economics — simon torracinta, 2: there is no “migrant crisis” — harsha walia, 1: mental illness is not in your head — marco ramos, boston review is nonprofit and reader funded..

We rely on readers to keep our pages free and open to all. Help sustain a public space for collective reasoning and imagination: become a supporting reader today .

Readers Also Liked

Boston Review Provides a Public Good

2022 Annual Report

Ten Essays You Might Have Missed

Sign up for our newsletter.

The best writing on ideas, politics, and culture delivered straight to your inbox.

Most Recent

UCLA’s Unholy Alliance

House Republicans accuse student protesters of vicious anti-Semitism, but it is administrators who are courting violence. 

Three Poems

Before I left him / on his deathbed, my father used to say  the ice is breathing : this quivering song  of things once-broken, mending. / This song of them breaking again.

You can say my mother didn’t know jack             about no line breaks, but she’ll tell you that one thing leads to another; and violence             and love can happen all at once.

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization.  Learn more about our mission

Make a tax-deductible donation today

Get Our Newsletter

Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox

Announcing our new issue

Can the nation-state serve social justice?

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò leads a forum with Thea Riofrancos , Mariame Kaba & Andrea Ritchie, Ishac Diwan & Bright Simons , and others. Plus Leila Farsakh on Palestinian statehood, Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on a “solidarity state,” Joshua Craze on rule by militia, and much more. 

Become a member and get it as your first issue.

Our new issue asks what a just state would look like and how to get there.

Become a member to get it as your first issue!

15 Essays To Read Again in 2022

A list of our staff’s favorite essays from the past year that they did not commission themselves, or that they think cover a topic that deserves a second look.

As we prepare for 2022, we wanted to share with you a list of our staff’s favorite essays from the past year that they did NOT commission themselves or that they think cover a topic that deserves a second look.

Why I Stopped Writing About Syria, by Asser Khattab

Riada Asimovic Akyol, Contributing Editor

Among so many informative, eloquent pieces published in New Lines this year, this one I think I will actually never forget. It hit so many buttons and allowed so many people to be seen like never before. I caught myself nodding so many times while reading it, and I know a lot of people from the Balkans could understand what Asser was sharing. Others could learn with humility. The way he wrote about growing up “surrounded by people who have never experienced the joy of peaceful tranquility,” thinking that was the normal , and both the vulnerability and confidence with which he wrote about different challenges, as well as his human and professional yearnings and aspirations, were powerful and inspiring. Many conversations in open, and behind closed doors, will from now on be held, with employers, between employees, among friends, across the borders thanks to Asser’s piece. I am thankful for New Lines for publishing it.

How Arabs Have Failed Their Language, by Hossam Abouzahr

Kevin Blankinship, Contributing Editor

After the requisite boilerplate about how hard it is to choose favorites, about how every essay adds something to knowledge, etc., let me say that his is the piece I liked most from 2021. The reason is that it surprised me. It surprised me not because it was new to me: As an Arabic professor, I’ve heard who knows how many catfights about “diglossia,” namely high versus low (colloquial) varieties of Greek, Chinese, Serbian and other languages. What surprised me was how fresh the wounds are. For a quarrel looping back a thousand years, when Arab linguists tried to check “pollution” from non-native speakers, especially Persians, by setting up rules of grammar, I was stunned to see how much it agitates today. Abouzahr’s essay came out and so did the partisans. Formal Arabic is the Arabic of Islam, some said: the Arabic of the Qur’an, of classical poetry. But, said others, colloquial Arabic is the Arabic of hearth and home, of jokes and secrets, of friendship. Could it not, I thought as I watched the skirmish, be both? In the spirit of Christmas, isn’t there room for all the Arabics at the inn? A naïve thought that softens the majesty, the Whitman-like container of multitudes and, what’s more, one that misses how real language is used by real people and how it can’t be everything to everyone. Oh, well, let the fight go on, then.

The ISIS War Crime Iraqi Turkmen Won’t Talk About, by Hollie McKay

Courtney Dobson, Senior Editor

In this essay, Hollie McKay reports on women in Iraq who have been “disappeared” by the Islamic State group, the group’s use of rape as a weapon of war and how minority communities struggle to heal and come to terms with the stigma associated with sexual violence. It is a haunting piece, but McKay masterfully conveys the anguish and pain that comes with sexual violence, not just for the victim, but also for their loved ones trying to help. “Through the gap in the door flap,” McKay writes, “I noticed that scores of men and boys had lined up outside, maintaining a respectful distance from the distraught women but with curiosity etched into their sun-kissed faces. They wanted to be involved somehow, to be part of the healing process, to remind us that men were not the enemy — twisted men were the enemy. These were the fathers and brothers and sons, the nephews and neighbors.” McKay’s essay resonates for communicating the universal need for support, connection and justice, while also laying bare why these don’t come easily. Published a few months after New Lines launched, this essay left a deep impression on me.

How I Escaped China’s War on Uyghurs, by Tahir Hamut Izgil

Rasha Elass, Editorial Director

When we launched New Lines we wanted to cover themes and stories from beyond the geographic Middle East. The oppression of the Uyghurs in China struck me as an underreported story in mainstream media because it hardly featured first-person voices from the Uyghur community. So I got to work and found Tahir Hamut Izgil, a Uyghur poet who tells a story with moving prose and nuance. His essay about the chilling effect of a document that the Chinese authorities require members of the Uyghur community to fill out is both simple and profound, capturing a Kafkaesque reality that is often lost in the daily coverage of foreign affairs. Months after we translated and published Izgil’s essay, other media outlets followed suit. To us this is a triumph, evidence that we are already creating new lines in international reporting.

F ull essay

A Castle in the Air: Trekking the Secret Mountain Paths of Yemen, by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Anthony Elghossain, Contributing Editor

Mountain men tell their stories. In Yemen, some folks speak of “an ancient city” atop a mountain. “What,” asks Tim Mackintosh-Smith after hearing them, “is really at the top of Jabal Balq?” To answer this question, he quests through myth, memory and the mind for a “castle in the air.” Is it a place? Maybe. Is it a journey? Yes. Having always gotten along with and been fascinated by folks in the mountains and hills, I was interested in reading this piece as soon as it was in our pipeline. And I loved how our writer came back for some “unfinished business.” Writing is about the quest. So, too, is life. Our writer captured those truths in this piece.

After America: Inside the Taliban’s New Emirate, by Fazelminallah Qazizai

Hassan Hassan, Editor in Chief

My choice of a favorite essay is to illustrate part of why we established  New Lines  in the first place. It was a dispatch by Fazelminallah Qazizai from a Taliban-held area, published four months before the Taliban would take over the country as fast as their trucks could drive through towns and provinces. If you read that story, nothing about what happened in the summer would come as a shock to you. After the Taliban’s takeover, it was easy for journalists to go through their old notes and write compelling stories about what they had witnessed in the months and years before, to make sense of what unfolded. It is harder to do that before the event, and Qazazai did just that. He also did it really well. The piece should be a template in how dispatches should be done. Qazazai was not parachuted into the country to come back with a piece from there. He is an Afghan journalist who actually knows the terrain, the society and history, and who goes to a Taliban area and eloquently captures and reconstructs the situation there.

The Key to Understanding Iran Is Poetry, by Muhammad Ali Mojaradi

Tam Hussein, Contributing Editor

Muhammad Ali Mojaradi in his essay is right: The key to understanding Iran is poetry. In Shiraz and Isfahan you see beggars recite Hafez and children hawking for money with birds picking couplets from small envelopes trying to tell your fortune. Perhaps it’s just Frank Miller’s “300” or the politics of the region that makes its peoples appear to have a culture built on hate and cruelty. But that is far from the truth. It has ambiguity built in, abundant variations on love, mysticism and much, much more. It just gave me an appreciation as to how all-encompassing Persianate culture is, including Iran, central Asia, Afghanistan and the subcontinent.

The Wandering Alawite, by Adnan Younes

Faysal Itani, Associate Editor

This was, as far as I’m aware, the best if not the only piece by a constituent of Syria’s mass murderer about his and his coreligionists’ implication in Bashar al-Assad’s crimes. I think it took tremendous intellectual courage to reflect on what drew Syria’s Alawites to support this regime, but it also posed an uncomfortable challenge to readers who understandably deplore any and all support for the war criminal Assad. It was difficult to write and difficult to read, because of its ability to humanize and contextualize horrible choices by Assad’s supporters and detractors alike. It was a tragic story in the most literal and compelling way.

A Multigenerational American Story of Immigration and Return, by Rasha Elass

Ola Salem, Managing Editor

A topic we often visit at New Lines is identity. Over the past year, we’ve run a number of first-person pieces looking at how environment and ancestry have shaped writers’ identity and how the answer is usually far more complex than a quick answer to the question, “Where are you from?” One story I found to be particularly fascinating was Rasha Elass’s piece in which she wrote about her Syrian great-grandfather who moved to America, carved a life for himself and later created a family of his own, only later to uproot his children and move back to Syria and face an attack from the French.

Gone to Waste: the ‘CVE’ Industry After 9/11, by Lydia Wilson

Chris Sands, South Asia Editor

The legacy of 9/11 has dominated my life and career. As a journalist for local newspapers in the U.K. in the weeks and months after the attacks, I saw and heard the racist backlash against British Muslims. Later, as a young reporter in the Middle East, I witnessed the daily indignities Palestinians suffer under Israeli occupation. But it was while living in Afghanistan for almost a decade that I came to understand the true folly of the countering violent extremism industry — a money-making enterprise perpetuated by governments, international NGOs and private companies in the guise of curbing Islamic militancy. Lydia Wilson’s article brilliantly details how this house of cards was built to ignore the social ills and legitimate political grievances that lie at the root of what was once called the “war on terror.”

The Bandit Warlords of Nigeria, by James Barnett

Kareem Shaheen, Middle East and Newsletters Editor

One of the things I was looking forward to the most when we started New Lines was giving the space to writers to explore stories that haven’t been told in the mainstream media. Too often, the rich tapestry of our lives and societies are obscured rather than illuminated. This piece is a fascinating investigation into an untold story that has long been neglected in favor of the “sexier” stories of Boko Haram extremists in Nigeria. It is about the farmer-herder conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives, has been exacerbated by climate change and is destabilizing important parts of Africa’s most populous country. The color and fascinating exchanges in the piece, chronicled through Barnett’s exclusive access to the bandit warlords, make this unique investigation shine.

Where the Russian Gulag Once Thrived, Life Remains Isolated, by Owen Matthews

Michael Weiss, News Director

Believe it or not, one of our best essays this year grew out of the field research journal for a forthcoming spy novel. Owen Mathews spent 10 days touring the remains of the Gulag Archipelago — the slave-labor camps Stalin built to punish to send his enemies (and quite a lot of his friends) in the Russian Arctic. Whole communities and cities sprung up around these grim “colonies” of the 20th century, which helped industrialize the Soviet Union at the price of around 6 million souls. As one might expect, this architecture of atrocity has been left to rot or freeze or be swallowed up by the taiga. Matthews, an accomplished historian and biographer, travels to parts unknown and unremembered with an eye for detail and — no small trick given the circumstances — a sense of humor.

How an Email Sting Operation Unearthed a Pro-Assad Conspiracy—and Russia’s Role in It, by Michael Weiss and Jett Goldsmith

Brian Whitaker, Contributing Editor

A moment of light relief in the weird world of conspiracy theorists. Paul McKeigue is a university professor who denies the Assad regime’s chemical attacks in Syria and claims that those who died in them were executed by rebel fighters in a gas chamber. He got the gas chamber idea from an American who had a dream about it after eating anchovy pizza shortly before going to bed. McKeigue considers himself a smart guy, so when a mysterious emailer contacted him using the name “Ivan,” he assumed “Ivan” was working for Russian intelligence and began passing him information – mainly about people who disagreed with his conspiracy theories. But “Ivan” was neither Russian nor an intelligence agent – the professor had been caught in a sting.

An Elegy for Afghanistan, by Habib Zahori

Lydia Wilson, Contributing Editor

The piece is everything I want an essay to be: personal, informative and visceral, communicating a raw experience while simultaneously expressing far bigger themes about humanity and war. We published it at a time when all eyes were on Afghanistan, after the Taliban took control once coalition forces had withdrawn. For me it’s pieces like this that really cut through the immense amount that was being published at that time on this subject; it was so well written and based on so much personal and intimate knowledge. And his love for Afghanistan – and the heartbreak of that love — came through powerfully.

In Search of African Arabic, by Vaughn Rasberry

Faisal Al Yafai, Executive Editor

It was always going to be difficult to choose one essay over the others, and many of the choices of the team could easily have been my first picks. But Vaughn Rasberry’s essay on the influence of the Arabic language in Africa stands out for me because it explores such a rarely considered subject.

Rasberry believes, as I do, that African histories cannot be told without understanding the role of Arabic in shaping the political, social and literary environments of many of the countries and civilisations of the continent. The flip side is also true: that the Arab world cannot understand itself without reference to the African continent.

As Rasberry points out, there is a vast corpus of literature in African countries written in Arabic, much of it under-explored – some, no doubt, still undiscovered. Hidden histories of the African continent and the Arab world are in those texts, waiting to be sought out. Without it, both regions will only know half of their own stories.

NATO Helped Georgia Counter Russian Trolls. Then the Strategy Backfired

The medical instrument behind 135 years of women’s pain, ukraine has every right to hit russians in russia with us weapons, the rise of a distinctly african speculative fiction, remembering sergei parajanov, the bard of the caucasus, against tyranny: two stories told in pictures warn us to fight on, sign up to our newsletter.

Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy

Our Most-Read Prose of 2022

Against the stream.

A Glass Essay

The abortion stories we tell, olga tokarczuk.

Theater of Shame

The Front House

I had always imagined that my mother’s death would cause some cathartic disintegration, or at least leave me profoundly altered.

Lili Hamlyn Camera Mortis

Who Owns Your Story?

Three Queer Writers on Craft and Cruising

Camera Mortis

New perspectives, enduring writing.

Support our award-winning little magazine. Subscribe to The Yale Review and receive four print issues per year.

Nine New Women-Authored Essay Collections

"Essay" could perhaps use a rebranding as the word may conjure up something you've been assigned to write in school, rather than something pleasurable to consume. Essay collections usually have an overarching question or theme, but each individual essay works as a self-contained narrative or argument inviting you to read at your own pace, skip around, and take in the central topic from multiple angles. From essay-style memoirs to more heady topics touching on culture, politics, and art, enjoy these collections below, all by women, released this past spring and summer.

.css-1t84354{transition-property:var(--nypl-transition-property-common);transition-duration:var(--nypl-transition-duration-fast);transition-timing-function:var(--nypl-transition-easing-ease-out);cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;outline:2px solid transparent;outline-offset:2px;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-primary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-underline-offset:2px;}.css-1t84354:hover,.css-1t84354[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:hover[data-theme=dark],.css-1t84354[data-hover][data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354:focus,.css-1t84354[data-focus]{box-shadow:var(--nypl-shadows-outline);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-primary);}.css-1t84354:visited{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-tertiary);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:visited[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-tertiary);}.css-1t84354 a:hover,.css-1t84354 a[data-hover]{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354 screenreaderOnly{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute!important;width:1px;word-wrap:normal;} The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays

by CJ Hauser

Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realized she'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Expanding on her viral sensation essay “The Crane Wife,” the author presents this deeply personal, candid and humorous memoir-in-essays that ponders what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all. 

She's Nice Though: Essays on Being Bad at Being Good

by Mia Mercado

Pondering her identity as an Asian woman living in the Midwest, including what “nice” means—and why anyone would want to be it, the author, in this thought-provoking and funny collection of essays, offers a mind-bending glimpse into our misperceptions and misconceptions as humans.

Some of My Best Friends: Essays in Lip Service

by Tajja Isen

Catapult  editor-in-chief and award-winning voice actor Tajja Isen explores the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through. These nine daring essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Isen takes on the cartoon industry’s pivot away from colorblind casting, the pursuit of diverse representation in the literary world, the law’s refusal to see inequality, and the cozy fictions of nationalism. Isen deftly examines the quick, cosmetic fixes society makes to address systemic problems and reveals the unexpected ways they can misfire.

Brown Neon: Essays

by Raquel Gutiérrez

Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection,  Brown Neon,  gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multigenerational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.

Awake With Asashoryu and Other Essays

by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Whether she is spending sleepless nights watching the sumo wrestler Asashoryu with her father, settling into a new life in a fishing hamlet in Cornwall, struggling with a beloved and ultimately untrainable corgi named Goblin, or emerging from a night in the woods rethinking who she might be, McKetta’s essays sparkle and twist round and about—funny and insightful and compelling.

I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood

by Jessi Klein

The New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer hilariously destroys the cultural myths and impossible expectations of modern-day motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.

How to Read Now: Essays

by Elaine Castillo

A deeply personal and searching history of one woman’s reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today. Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like  The Watchmen  to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

Ripe: Essays

by Negesti Kaudo

Essays at the intersection of race, sexuality, and pop culture that confront Kaudo's experience as a Black woman and ask what it means to own one's Blackness and body when contemporary white America simultaneously denigrates and appropriates Black culture. 

Crying in the Bathroom

by Erika L. Sánchez

In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest,  Crying in the Bathroom  is Sánchez at her best—a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.

• Biggest New Books
• Non-Fiction
• All Categories
• First Readers Club Daily Giveaway
• How It Works

The Best Reviewed Books of 2022: Essay Collections

Featuring bob dylan, elena ferrante, zora neale hurston, jhumpa lahiri, melissa febos, and more.

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime ; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

1. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing  by Elena Ferrante (Europa)

12 Rave • 12 Positive • 4 Mixed

“The lucid, well-formed essays that make up In the Margins  are written in an equally captivating voice … Although a slim collection, there is more than enough meat here to nourish both the common reader and the Ferrante aficionado … Every essay here is a blend of deep thought, rigorous analysis and graceful prose. We occasionally get the odd glimpse of the author…but mainly the focus is on the nuts and bolts of writing and Ferrante’s practice of her craft. The essays are at their most rewarding when Ferrante discusses the origins of her books, in particular the celebrated Neapolitan Novels, and the multifaceted heroines that power them … These essays might not bring us any closer to finding out who Ferrante really is. Instead, though, they provide valuable insight into how she developed as a writer and how she works her magic.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Star Tribune )

2. Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri (Princeton University Press)

8 Rave • 14 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the ‘essential aesthetic and political mission’ of translation. She is excellent in all three modes—so excellent, in fact, that I, a translator myself, could barely read this book. I kept putting it aside, compelled by Lahiri’s writing to go sit at my desk and translate … One of Lahiri’s great gifts as an essayist is her ability to braid multiple ways of thinking together, often in startling ways … a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they’re complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up. ‘Look,’ her essays seem to say: Look how much there is for us to wake up to.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

3. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)

10 Rave • 15 Positive • 7 Mixed • 4 Pan

“It is filled with songs and hyperbole and views on love and lust even darker than Blood on the Tracks … There are 66 songs discussed here … Only four are by women, which is ridiculous, but he never asked us … Nothing is proved, but everything is experienced—one really weird and brilliant person’s experience, someone who changed the world many times … Part of the pleasure of the book, even exceeding the delectable Chronicles: Volume One , is that you feel liberated from Being Bob Dylan. He’s not telling you what you got wrong about him. The prose is so vivid and fecund, it was useless to underline, because I just would have underlined the whole book. Dylan’s pulpy, noir imagination is not always for the squeamish. If your idea of art is affirmation of acceptable values, Bob Dylan doesn’t need you … The writing here is at turns vivid, hilarious, and will awaken you to songs you thought you knew … The prose brims everywhere you turn. It is almost disturbing. Bob Dylan got his Nobel and all the other accolades, and now he’s doing my job, and he’s so damn good at it.”

–David Yaffe ( AirMail )

4.  Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (Catapult)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an excerpt from Body Work here

“In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative , memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill … Febos rejects these belittlements with eloquence … In its hybridity, this book formalizes one of Febos’s central tenets within it: that there is no disentangling craft from the personal, just as there is no disentangling the personal from the political. It’s a memoir of a life indelibly changed by literary practice and the rigorous integrity demanded of it … Febos is an essayist of grace and terrific precision, her sentences meticulously sculpted, her paragraphs shapely and compressed … what’s fresh, of course, is Febos herself, remapping this terrain through her context, her life and writing, her unusual combinations of sources (William H. Gass meets Elissa Washuta, for example), her painstaking exactitude and unflappable sureness—and the new readers she will reach with all of this.”

–Megan Milks ( 4Columns )

5. You Don’t Know Us Negroes by Zora Neale Hurston (Amistad)

12 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

“… a dazzling collection of her work … You Don’t Know Us Negroes reveals Hurston at the top of her game as an essayist, cultural critic, anthropologist and beat reporter … Hurston is, by turn, provocative, funny, bawdy, informative and outrageous … Hurston will make you laugh but also make you remember the bitter divide in Black America around performance, language, education and class … But the surprising page turner is at the back of the book, a compilation of Hurston’s coverage of the Ruby McCollom murder trial … Some of Hurston’s writing is sensationalistic, to be sure, but it’s also a riveting take of gender and race relations at the time … Gates and West have put together a comprehensive collection that lets Hurston shine as a writer, a storyteller and an American iconoclast.”

–Lisa Page ( The Washington Post )

6. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed Listen to an interview with Rachel Aviv here

“… written with an astonishing amount of attention and care … Aviv’s triumphs in relating these journeys are many: her unerring narrative instinct, the breadth of context brought to each story, her meticulous reporting. Chief among these is her empathy, which never gives way to pity or sentimentality. She respects her subjects, and so centers their dignity without indulging in the geeky, condescending tone of fascination that can characterize psychologists’ accounts of their patients’ troubles. Though deeply curious about each subject, Aviv doesn’t treat them as anomalous or strange … Aviv’s daunted respect for uncertainty is what makes Strangers to Ourselves distinctive. She is hyperaware of just how sensitive the scale of the self can be.”

–Charlotte Shane ( Bookforum )

7. A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 1 Positive Read an excerpt from A Line in the World here

“Nors, known primarily as a fiction writer, here embarks on a languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark … The dramas of the past are evoked not so much through individual characters as through their traces—buildings, ruins, shipwrecks—and this westerly Denmark is less the land of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and sleek Georg Jensen designs than a place of ancient landscapes steeped in myth … People aren’t wholly incidental to the narrative. Nors introduces us to a variety of colorful characters, and shares vivid memories of her family’s time in a cabin on the coast south of Thyborøn. But in a way that recalls the work of Barry Lopez, nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight.”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

8. Raising Raffi: The First Five Years by Keith Gessen (Viking)

4 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Raising Raffi here

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene … Is it OK to out your kid like this? … Still, this memoir will seem like a better idea if, a few decades from now, Raffi is happy and healthy and can read it aloud to his own kids while chuckling at what a little miscreant he was … Gessen is a wily parser of children’s literature … He is just as good on parenting manuals … Raising Raffi offers glimpses of what it’s like to eke out literary lives at the intersection of the Trump and Biden administrations … Needing money for one’s children, throughout history, has made parents do desperate things — even write revealing parenthood memoirs … Gessen’s short book is absorbing not because it delivers answers … It’s absorbing because Gessen is a calm and observant writer…who raises, and struggles with, the right questions about himself and the world.”

–Dwight Garner ( The New York Times )

9. The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (Doubleday)

8 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed • 1 Pan Watch an interview with CJ Hauser here

“17 brilliant pieces … This tumbling, in and out of love, structures the collection … Calling Hauser ‘honest’ and ‘vulnerable’ feels inadequate. She embraces and even celebrates her flaws, and she revels in being a provocateur … It is an irony that Hauser, a strong, smart, capable woman, relates to the crane wife’s contortions. She felt helpless in her own romantic relationship. I don’t have one female friend who has not felt some version of this, but putting it into words is risky … this collection is not about neat, happy endings. It’s a constant search for self-discovery … Much has been written on the themes Hauser excavates here, yet her perspective is singular, startlingly so. Many narratives still position finding the perfect match as a measure of whether we’ve led successful lives. The Crane Wife dispenses with that. For that reason, Hauser’s worldview feels fresh and even radical.”

–Hope Reese ( Oprah Daily )

10. How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo (Viking)

8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from How to Read Now here

“Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now begins with a section called ‘Author’s Note, or a Virgo Clarifies Things.’ The title is a neat encapsulation of the book’s style: rigorous but still chatty, intellectual but not precious or academic about it … How to Read Now proceeds at a breakneck pace. Each of the book’s eight essays burns bright and hot from start to finish … How to Read Now is not for everybody, but if it is for you, it is clarifying and bracing. Castillo offers a full-throated critique of some of the literary world’s most insipid and self-serving ideas … So how should we read now? Castillo offers suggestions but no resolution. She is less interested in capital-A Answers…and more excited by the opportunity to restore a multitude of voices and perspectives to the conversation … A book is nothing without a reader; this one is co-created by its recipients, re-created every time the page is turned anew. How to Read Now offers its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we’re all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity—a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return.”

–Zan Romanoff ( The Los Angeles Times )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Get the Book Marks Bulletin

Email address:

• Categories Fiction Fantasy Graphic Novels Historical Horror Literary Literature in Translation Mystery, Crime, & Thriller Poetry Romance Speculative Story Collections Non-Fiction Art Biography Criticism Culture Essays Film & TV Graphic Nonfiction Health History Investigative Journalism Memoir Music Nature Politics Religion Science Social Sciences Sports Technology Travel True Crime

May 20 – 24, 2024

• Six student journalists at Columbia discuss what they’ve learned while covering the protests
• Minneapolis librarians are working to reimagine how public libraries work with homeless patrons
• Anthony Lane explores the rise of book-abbreviation apps

Longreads : The best longform stories on the web

Our Most-Read Longreads Originals of 2022

Share this:.

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)

The 10 stories below were funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers .

It’s that time of year again! Our annual year-end series has evolved over the past decade, but our aim remains the same: to share and celebrate the best in longform nonfiction storytelling across the internet, and to honor writers and journalists publishing exceptional work. We’re thrilled to kick off our Best of 2022 collection with today’s list of our 10 most-read essays and reported stories .

The digital publishing landscape is uncertain, and continues to change. In 2023 we’ll continue to curate our favorite reads on the web, and publish original essays and reading lists from both established and emerging writers. Thanks for reading and supporting us!

— Carolyn, Cheri, Krista, Peter, and Seyward

1. Queens of Infamy: Isabella of France

Anne Thériault | June 2022 | 29 minutes (8,006 words)

Married off at age 12, Isabella put up with her husband’s shenanigans over decades. Eventually, the She-Wolf of France had had enough.

2. The Women Who Built Grunge

Lisa Whittington-Hill | June 2022 | 16 minutes (4,445 words)

Bands like L7 and Heavens to Betsy were instrumental to the birth of the grunge scene, but for decades were treated like novelties and sex objects. Thirty years later, it’s time to reassess their legacy.

3. Love Song to Costco

Yuxi Lin | June 2022 | 12 minutes (3,311 words)

In the great halls of Costco, two of our greatest fears are assuaged — that of not having enough, and that of not being enough.

4. ‘That Girl is Going to Get Herself Killed’

Krista Diamond | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,342 words)

There is risk in the wilderness — even in mild adventures — and yet we still seek to reason with it, to assign order to it, to control it, and to tempt it.

5. The Cabin on the Mountain

Colin Dickey | March 2022 | 24 minutes (4,226 words)

Sometimes, the mechanism of the answer is something ludicrously complex, a thing that must be pieced out bit by bit. Other times, the solution requires retooling your perspective.

6. Life in the Slow Lane

Olivia Potts | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,649 words)

Cooking all day while the cook is away. How the slow cooker changed the world.

7. The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country

Ashley Stimpson | February 2022 | 26 minutes (7,219 words)

The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.

8. Final Girl, Terrible Place

Lesley Finn | July 2022 | 27 minutes (7,517 words)

I was expecting a handy theory. What I found was a way of seeing that would help me decode a script I’d been stuck in for much of my life.

9. How Wednesday Addams Birthed a Generation of Cynics

Emily Alford  |  November 2022  |  8 minutes (2,132 words)

Nearly 30 years ago, Christina Ricci’s version of the character reinforced millennials’ suspicion that “the bright side” is an illusion.

10. Children in the Garden

Devin Kelly | January 2022 | 27 minutes (7,394 words)

Another beauty of endurance is that it is happening at all times. It is everywhere we look. To see someone, anyone, in this world is to witness someone engaged in a feat of endurance.

You can also browse all of our year-end collections since 2011  in one place .

Support Longreads

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

• Seen & Heard

Zora Neale Hurston Essay Collection Coming in 2022

BY Michael Schaub • July 29, 2021

A new essay collection by Zora Neale Hurston is coming next year, Literary Hub reports .

You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, which describes the book as “the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.”

Hurston, one of America’s most acclaimed Black authors, was known both for her fiction and her work in anthropology. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is considered a classic; her other novels include Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Moses, Man of the Mountain . Much of her work was published after her death in 1960.

The essays in You Don’t Know Us Negroes will cover subjects ranging from African American art to Jim Crow laws.

“The essays in this essential collection are grouped thematically and cover a panoply of topics, including politics, race and gender, and folkloric study from the height of the Harlem Renaissance to the early years of the Civil Rights movement,” Amistad says. “Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and time.”

You Don’t Know Us Negroes is slated for publication on Jan. 4, 2022.

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.

• Seen & Heard Michael Richards Talks Book With ‘People’ Magazine

• Awards ‘Solenoid’ Wins the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

• Seen & Heard Memoir by Abigail Heringer Coming This Summer

• Perspectives In Search of the Perfect Summer Read

Our Take On This Week's Bestsellers

Our Verdict

More Seen & Heard

Featured Interviews

• podcast Episode 373: Guest Host Christopher Paolini

• podcast Episode 372: Miranda July

• podcast Episode 371: Best May Books with Aimee Nezhukumatathil

• podcast Episode 370: Alexandra Tanner

• podcast Episode 369: Guest Host David Levithan

The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews

Featuring 318 industry-first reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and YA books; also in this special Summer Reads Issue: interviews with Kevin Kwan, Ronald Drabkin, Andrea Wang, and Shivaun Plozza; and more

The Kirkus Star

One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

The Kirkus Prize

The Kirkus Prize is among the richest literary awards in America, awarding $50,000 in three categories annually.

Great Books & News Curated For You

Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in Kirkus Reviews . Get awesome content delivered to your inbox every week.

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Literature & Fiction
• Essays & Correspondence

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Return this item for free

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

The Best American Essays 2022 Paperback – November 1, 2022

Purchase options and add-ons.

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.

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Mariner Books
• Publication date November 1, 2022
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 035865887X
• ISBN-13 978-0358658870
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

“ 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 year’s collection are a mix of the disconcerting, the probing, and the self-reflective, and well-suited to challenging times.” — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

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.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (November 1, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 035865887X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358658870
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• #66 in American Fiction Anthologies
• #205 in Essays (Books)
• #487 in Writing Reference

About the author

Robert atwan.

Robert Atwan is the founder and series editor of the annual Best American Essays. The editor of numerous anthologies, he has written on the ancient literature of the Near East and his critical essays and poetry reviews have appeared in many national periodicals. Laurance Wieder is the author of several volumes of poetry, including The Coronet of Tours; No Harm Done; The Last Century: Selected Poems; and One Hundred Fifty Psalms, a complete psalter. He has taught Bible and Ancient Authors at Cornell University.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2022

Whether you’re looking to learn, laugh, or lose yourself in a great story, there’s something here for every kind of reader.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Our favorite nonfiction books of the year, several of them just the very best books of the year , touch on some of the most pressing topics of our time, from autocracy to conspiracy to healthcare reform. They vary in form, from reported nonfiction to memoir to a comic guidebook to supervillainy. Whether you’re looking to learn, laugh, or lose yourself in a great story, there’s something here for every kind of reader.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, by Paul Newman

After six decades of Hollywood superstardom, it’s difficult to imagine that anything could remain unknown about Paul Newman . But that’s the particular magic trick of this memoir, assembled by way of a literary scavenger hunt. Between 1986 and 1991, Newman sat down with screenwriter Stewart Stern for a series of soul-baring interviews about his life and career. With the actor’s encouragement, Stern also recorded hundreds of hours worth of interviews with his friends, family, and colleagues. The whole enterprise was destined to become Newman’s authorized biography, but his feelings on the project soured; in 1998, he gathered the tapes in a pile and set fire to them. Luckily, Stern kept transcripts—over 14,000 pages worth. Now, those transcripts have been streamlined into this honest and unvarnished memoir, in which the actor speaks openly about his traumatic childhood, his lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and his tormenting self-doubt. But the highs are there too—like his 50-year marriage to actress Joanne Woodward—as well as the mysteries of making art, and the “imponderable of being a human being.” All told, the memoir is an extraordinary act of resurrection and reimagination.

Bad Sex, by Nona Willis Aronowitz

When Teen Vogue ’s sex columnist decided to end her marriage at 32 years old, chief among her complaints was “bad sex.” Newly divorced, Aronowitz went in search of good sex, but along the way, she discovered thorny truths about “the problem that has no name”—that despite the advances of feminism and the sexual revolution, true sexual freedom remains out of reach. Cultural criticism, memoir, and social history collide in Aronowitz’s no-nonsense investigation of all that ails young lovers, like questions about desire, consent, and patriarchy. It’s a revealing read bound to expand your thinking.

The High Sierra, by Kim Stanley Robinson

A titan of science fiction masters a new form in this winsome love letter to California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. Constructed from an impassioned blend of memoir, history, and science writing, The High Sierra chronicles Robinson’s 100-plus trips to his beloved mountains, from his LSD-laced first encounter in 1973 to the dozens of ​​“rambling and scrambling” days to follow. From descriptions of the region’s multitudinous flora and fauna to practical advice about when and where to hike, this is as comprehensive a guidebook as any, complete with all the lucid ecstasy of nature writing greats like John Muir and Annie Dillard.

My Pinup, by Hilton Als

Has any book ever roved so far and wide in just 48 pages as My Pinup ? In this slim and brilliant memoir, Als explores race, power, and desire through the lens of Prince. Styling the legendary musician in the image of his lovers and himself, Als explores injustice on multiple levels, from racist record labels to the world's hostility to gay Black boys. “There was so much love between us,” the author muses. “Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?” These 48 meandering pages are difficult to describe, but trust us: My Pinup is a heady cocktail you won’t soon forget.

Bloomsbury Publishing Dirtbag, Massachusetts, by Isaac Fitzgerald

In this bleeding heart memoir, Fitzgerald peels back the layers of his extraordinary life. Dirtbag, Massachusetts opens with his hardscrabble childhood in a dysfunctional Catholic family, then spins out into the decades of jobs and identities that followed. From bartending at a biker bar to smuggling medical supplies to starring in porn films, it’s all led him to here and now: he’s still a work in progress, but gradually, he’s arriving at profound realizations about masculinity, family, and selfhood. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish. It's blisteringly honest and vulnerable, pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy. “To any young men out there who aren’t too far gone,” Fitzgerald writes, “I say you’re not done becoming yourself.”

Dickens and Prince, by Nick Hornby

What do Charles Dickens, nineteenth century chronicler of social issues, and Prince, modern-day music’s master of sensuality, have in common? You’d be forgiven for struggling to come up with an answer, but for Nick Hornby, the ties are obvious—and numerous, too. In Dickens and Prince , the biographical similarities between these two late luminaries come into plain sight. But what really links Dickens and Prince, Hornby argues, is their “particular kind of genius”—as the author reveals, both shared an extraordinary drive to create and generated massive bodies of work, even though they died before reaching sixty. But beneath the surface of this fascinating biography, there lies a warm and wise craft book about what it takes to make great art in any century. Read an interview with Hornby here at Esquire.

Because Our Fathers Lied, by Craig McNamara

How do we reckon with the sins of our parents? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. At once a loving and neglectful parent, the elder McNamara’s controversial lies about the war ultimately estranged him from his son, who hung Viet Cong flags in his childhood bedroom as a protest. The pursuit of a life unlike his father’s saw the younger McNamara drop out of Stanford and travel through South America on a motorcycle, leading him to ultimately become a sustainable walnut farmer. Through his own personal story of disappointment and disillusionment, McNamara captures an intergenerational conflict and a journey of moral identity.

Raising Lazarus, by Beth Macy

Macy’s gripping follow-up to the mega-bestselling Dopesick finds her in a familiar milieu: back on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, where she embeds with healthcare workers, legislators, and activists seeking to save lives and heal communities. Where Dopesick focused on addiction sufferers and their families, Raising Lazarus turns the lens to the fight for justice, from the prosecution of the Sackler family to the reformers pioneering innovative treatments for the afflicted. Enlightening and exhaustive, it’s at once a damning exposé about greed and a moving paean to the power of community activism.

Fight Like Hell, by Kim Kelly

With a galvanizing groundswell of unionization efforts rocking mega-corporations like Amazon and Starbucks, there’s never been a better time to learn about the history of the American labor movement. Fight Like Hell will be your indispensable guide to the past, present, and future of organized labor. Rather than structure this comprehensive history chronologically, Kelly organizes it into chapter-sized profiles of different labor sectors, from sex workers to incarcerated laborers to domestic workers. Each chapter contains capsule biographies of working-class heroes, along with a painstaking focus on those who were hidden or dismissed from the movement. So too do these chapters illuminate how many civil rights struggles, like women’s liberation and fair wages for disabled workers, are also, at their core, labor struggles. After reading Fight Like Hell , you’ll never look at American history the same way again—and you may just be inspired to organize your own workplace. Read an interview with Kelly here at Esquire.

Phasers on Stun!, by Ryan Britt

Whether you're a tried and true Trekkie or a newbie hooked on Strange New Worlds , there's something for every science fiction obsessive in this lively cultural history of Star Trek . Through extensive reporting and research, Britt takes us inside the franchise's nearly sixty-year history, from its influence on diversifying the space program to its history-making strides for LGBTQIA+ representation. Featuring interviews with multiple generations of cast members and creatives, Phasers On Stun! merrily surprises, informs, and entertains. Read an exclusive excerpt about Star Trek 's efforts to diversify television here at Esquire.

Year of the Tiger, by Alice Wong

In this mixed media memoir, disability activist Alice Wong outlines her journey as an advocate and educator. Wong was born with a form of progressive muscular dystrophy; as a young woman, she attended her dream college, but had to drop out when changes to Medicaid prevented her from retaining the aides she needed on an inaccessible campus. In one standout essay, Wong recounts her struggle to access Covid-19 vaccines as a high-risk individual. The author's rage about moving through an ableist world is palpable, but so too is her joy and delight about Lunar New Year, cats, family, and so much more. Innovative and informative, Year of the Tiger is a multidimensional portrait of a powerful thinker.

Fen, Bog & Swamp, by Annie Proulx

The legendary author of “Brokeback Mountain” and The Shipping News delivers an enchanting history of our wetlands, a vitally important but criminally misunderstood landscape now imperiled by climate change. As Proulx explains, fens, bogs, swamps, and estuaries preserve our environment by storing carbon emissions. Roving through peatlands around the world, Proulx weaves a riveting history of their role in brewing diseases and fueling industrialization. Imbued with the same reverence for nature as Proulx’s fiction, Fen, Bog, and Swamp is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action. Read an exclusive interview with the author here at Esquire.

Butts, by Heather Radke

This crackling cultural history melds scholarship and pop culture to arrive at a comprehensive taxonomy of the female bottom. From 19th-century burlesque to the eighties aerobics craze to Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking backside, Radke leaves no stone unturned. Her sources range from anthropological scholarship to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” making for a vivacious blend, but Butts isn’t all fun and games. Radke explores how women’s butts have been used “as a means to create and reinforce racial hierarchies,” acting as locuses of racism, control, and desire. Lively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction—the kind that forces you to see something ordinary through completely new eyes.

Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami

In this winsome volume, one of our greatest novelists invites readers into his creative process. The result is a revealing self-portrait that answers many burning questions about its reclusive subject, like: where do Murakami’s strange and surreal ideas come from? When and how did he start writing? How does he view the role of novels in contemporary society? Novelist as a Vocation is a rare and welcome peek behind the curtain of a singular mind.

How You Get Famous: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, by Nicole Pasulka

Pasulka takes us tumbling down a glittery rabbit hole in this engrossing look at the last decade of Brooklyn ballroom culture. How You Get Famous introduces readers to electric performers like Merrie Cherry, who overcame a stroke to continue her drag career; Aja, a multiple-time contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race ; and Sasha Velour, who made waves with her bald head. Through this electric constellation of performers, Pasulka paints a vivid portrait of a singular subculture: joyful and scrappy, it’s gone on to galvanize a community and inspire a wider cultural movement.

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach, by Sarah Stodola

Quick—picture your perfect vacation. Does it involve staying at a resort and sipping a Mai Tai on the beach? We’re not out to yuck anyone’s yum, but beachgoers everywhere need to read this gripping account about the dark side of paradise. In The Last Resort , Stodola investigates the origins of beach culture, revealing that our understanding of the beach as paradise is actually a modern concept; it wasn’t until the 18th century that the seaside wellness craze changed our views about the ocean, once seen as a fearsome foe. Today, beach travel has become de rigueur, but it carries heavy costs, as it strangles local economies, threatens natural resources, and widens social inequality. After reading The Last Resort , you’ll never look at an all-inclusive vacation quite the same way.

Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, by Ken Auletta

Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote a definitive New Yorker profile of Harvey Weinsten, which exposed the movie mogul as a violent and volatile person. But one story remained frustratingly ungraspable: though it was rumored that Weinstein was a sexual abuser, none of his victims would go on the record. Award-winning journalists including Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, and Ronan Farrow would later draw on Auletta’s reporting in their quests to expose the truth about Weinstein. Now, with his erstwhile subject behind bars, Auletta is revisiting him anew—and paying dogged attention to the systems that allowed him to operate unchecked. From the executives who abetted him to the brother who covered his tracks, Weinstein didn’t act in a vacuum, Auletta reveals—rather, he was enabled at nearly every turn. Exhaustively reported and utterly enraging, Hollywood Ending is a damning look at Hollywood’s history of corruption and complicity.

The Last Days of Roger Federer, by Geoff Dyer

“Life is weather. Life is meals,” the great James Salter once wrote. Life is also endings, according to Dyer, as fine and curious a cultural critic as they come. In this roving volume, Dyer explores ​​“things coming to an end, artists’ last works, time running out,” from Roger Federer’s impending retirement to Nietzsche’s descent into madness. Assessing the long twilight of his many subjects, Dyer leads us through the peripatetic maze of his free-associative thinking. Expect to emerge from the other side feeling grateful for “this magnificent life, whatever ruin comes in its wake.”

The Gotti Wars, by John Gleeson

For decades, Mafioso John Gotti captivated the American imagination. This notorious mobster, known as “The Dapper Don,” became a sartorial icon and graced the cover of Time (by way of an Andy Warhol portrait)—until it all came crashing down, thanks to federal prosecutor John Gleeson. The Gotti Wars is the riveting story of Gleeson’s fight to bring Gotti to justice, which spanned years, brought him into the crosshairs of organized crime, and ultimately took down five major mob families. It’s an electrifying true crime story of the Mafia-smitten 80s and 90s, to be certain, but also a vivid memoir of Gleeson’s development as a lawyer, and an excavation of the celebrity culture that turned a murderer into a superstar. Suspenseful and multifaceted, The Gotti Wars can’t be missed.

Dress Code, by Véronique Hyland

In an age where what we wear is shaped as much by algorithms and influencers as by personal taste, the fashion landscape looks different than ever before. To make sense of it all, turn to this roving, insightful collection of essays from a bona fide fashion expert, who breaks down everything from normcore to politicians’ wardrobes to the ubiquity of leggings. Rich in historical context and cultural criticism, Dress Code unpacks how clothing is both personal and political, and how it deserves serious consideration as a distinctive lens on the world. After all, as Hyland writes, “With fashion, you have no choice but to opt in.”

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Best of 2022

The Best Documentaries of 2022

The 20 Best Memoirs of 2022

The Best Books of 2022

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022

The 25 Best Albums of 2022

The 23 Best Action Movies of 2022

The Best Comedy Specials of 2022

The Best Movies of 2022

The 45 Best Songs of 2022

The 2022 Esquire Spirit Awards

The Best Video Games of 2022 (So Far)

The Best Black Non Fiction of 2022 [UPDATED]

2022 was a great year for black books. here are even more of our favorites..

There’s nothing like a good book to leave you inspired, heartbroken or rolling on the floor with laughter. From touching personal stories of triumph to personal reflections on the culture, this was an amazing year for non-fiction. So before we say goodbye to 2022, we wanted to show a little love to some of our favorite reads. Check out our list of the best non-fiction works by Black authors this year.

“The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times” by Michelle Obama

In “The Light We Carry,” our Forever First Lady Michelle Obama shares inspiring stories from her experience as a wife, mother and First Lady and how she manages to go high when the rest of the world around her seems to be going so low.

“The Trayvon Generation” by Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander’s essay, The Trayvon Generation went viral when it was published in The New Yorker in June 2020. In the piece, she refers to the challenges young people face growing up in an age where young Black men and women suffer from abuse while the world watches. The book, by the same name, elaborates on the conversation, while offering a message of hope for the future.

“Black Women Will Save The World: And Anthem” by April Ryan

As a White House correspondent and political analyst, April Ryan has covered some of the most important stories in Washington. And she is the best person to write a celebration of Black women’s strength and resilience. In “Black Women Will Save the World,” Ryan uses interviews with influential Black women to highlight the ways in which they have helped hold up our democracy time and again.

“The World Record Book of Racist Stories” by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

In “The World Record Book of Racist Stories,” sisters Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar share stories of some of the most ridiculously racist things that have happened to them and other members of their family in the most hilarious way. I guarantee you’ll find yourself asking, “Is this real?” and “What year is this?” more than a few times while you’re reading.

“Finding Me: A Memoir” by Viola Davis

Actress Viola Davis gets real in “ Finding Me ,” the story of her rise to fame. She writes about everything from growing up in Rhode Island to becoming one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood and all of the peaks and valleys along the way. There’s a reason why this one was a 2022 Oprah’s Book Club pick and a Harper’s Bazaar Best Book of 2022.

“Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic” Edited by Valerie Boyd

Nine months after her untimely death, Valerie Boyd blessed us with this powerful collection of stories from well-known Black writers, including Alice Walker, Deesha Philyaw, Rosalind Bentley and Tayari Jones. In “ Bigger Than Bravery ,” writers share their reflections on the intersection of COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement.

“Walking in My Joy: In These Streets” by Jennifer Lewis

“ Walking in My Joy ” is like a conversation with your favorite auntie. Actress and activist Jennifer Lewis’ witty sense of humor comes through in this collection of stories from her travels that are almost too fascinating to be true. She even manages to put a hilarious spin on fainting at an Obama holiday party! Throughout the book, the fierce mental health advocate encourages readers to continue to love on themselves and walk in their joy.

“Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women” by Shanita Hubbard

Black women have been conditioned to believe that they have to dedicate their energy to being everything to everyone else. But in “ Ride or Die ” author, adjunct professor of sociology, and former therapist Shanita Hubbard gives us permission to put our oxygen masks on first. She lays out all of the ways being a “ride-or-die chick” can wear on Black women, leaving them overworked, exhausted and unfulfilled.

“Scenes From My Life” by Michael K. Williams

Michael K Willams’ memoir, “ Scenes From My Life ,” is a deeply personal look at the late actor’s life. He puts everything on the table from growing up in Brooklyn to his ongoing battle with addiction. The New York Times and NPR called it one of the best books of the year.

“It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him” by Justin Tinsley

Just in time for what would have been his 50th birthday, journalist Justin Tinsley dropped “ It Was All a Dream ,” a brilliant biography of the late Notorious B.I.G. The book includes interviews with some of Biggie’s closest friends as well as DJs and other music journalists who reflect on his life and his place among hip hop’s greatest.

“The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride” by David J. Dennis Jr.

David Dennis Jr. collaborated with his father David Dennis Sr. on Steph Curry’s book club pick, “ The Movement Made Us .” The book is a touching personal reflection on the impact the Civil Rights Movement had on the Black Lives Matter Movement of today.

“Uphill” by Jemele Hill

Jemele Hill suffered a devastating setback when she lost her job at ESPN after speaking her mind on social media about former President Donald Trump. In her memoir, “Uphill,” she shares stories of her difficult journey to the top and how she managed to rebuild on her own terms after haters tried to knock her down.

“Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop ” by Danyel Smith

“ Shine Bright ” Danyel Smith’s writes about the history of Black women’s music and their influence on American pop as we know it. She writes brilliantly as a well-respected pop culture writer and a fan of Black music. From Mahalia Jackson to Aretha Franklin to Mariah Carey, Smith is here to let readers know that Black women have their foot all up in all of the music we know and love.

“South to America” by Imani Perry

In “South to America,” Imani Perry explores the influence of the American South on our culture and the country. This amazing story was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner.

“Admissions” by Kendra James

In “Admissions,” Kendra James peels back the curtain on life for students of color at elite independent schools that are usually almost completely white. She reflects on her own experience as a student who navigated microaggressions and all-out conflicts with classmates as well as an admissions office who was charged with selling the experience to other students of color.

“This Boy We Made” by Taylor Harris

“This Boy We Made” is a powerful story of one Black mother’s relentless quest to get answers about her son’s mysterious medical condition. But as she tries to learn more about him, she makes a surprising discovery about herself – one that will change their lives forever.

“Call Me Chef, Dammit!: A Veteran’s Journey from the Rural South to the White House” by Andre Rush

Chef Andre Rush went from the Mississippi housing projects to becoming a master sergeant and celebrity chef who served four United States presidents. “ Call Me Chef Dammit ” is his inspiring story about overcoming PTSD and racism to becoming a world-renowned chef as well as his tireless advocacy on behalf of our military.

“My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family” by Nabil Ayers

Nabil Ayers didn’t grow up with his father, the legendary musician Roy Ayers. In fact, his mother knew things would be that way when she gave birth to him. In “My Life in the Sunshine,” Ayers writes candidly about his quest to learn more about his famous father, and the amazing new extended family he met along the way.

“This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us” by Cole Arthur Riles

In “This Here Flesh” Cole Arthur Riley explores the impact her father and grandmother had on her view of life and faith. Bestselling author Ashley C. Ford says, “This is the kind of book that makes you different when you’re done.”

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

What These Stories About Samuel Alito’s “Provocative” Flags Are Really About

No, john roberts is not going to do anything about this one either..

It’s easy to be furious at Samuel Alito, who has recently racked up yet another petty personal grievance display over, of all things, flags. Last week saw the earthquake report that his wife flew a flag upside down—signaling either that the country is in danger or that the election was stolen—in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. This week,   the New York Times further reports that Alito was flying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house this past summer. That flag is not merely another Jan. 6 signifier but is also rooted in John Locke’s “appeal to heaven,” meaning “a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule.”

In some ways, this is another very ridiculous, very 2024 story about the lengths to which ostensible adults will go toward owning the libs, and one justice’s fantastically bad judgment and cluelessness about the appearance of impropriety. But this is not even about Samuel Alito. Neither, actually, was the bombshell report about his alleged leak of the outcome of the Hobby Lobby decision in 2014 to wealthy religious Supreme Court lobbyists about Samuel Alito. To expend energy railing against this one petty, petty little man is to inveigh against the symptom as opposed to the problem.

It is just as easy to be enraged at Clarence Thomas and his myriad and corrosive ethics violations. His wife has texted with Mark Meadows over what she believed to be a stolen 2020 election, tried to encourage state legislators to support a slate of dummy electors, attended part of the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, and testified before the Jan. 6 committee that she still believed that that election had been stolen. And Thomas has declined to recuse himself from the three Jan. 6 cases heard at the high court this year. But again, this is not about Ginni or Clarence Thomas. Expending energy hopelessly trying to shame Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito is an act of incalculable futility.

It is not even, I fear, about Chief Justice John Roberts, who might have, in a different time and under different circumstances, been the type of history-minded leader who would have dealt with this shameless and flagrant squandering of the court’s reputation as a serious body. After all, Roberts once told Jeffrey Rosen in the Atlantic, “The Court is also ripe for a similar refocus on functioning as an institution, because if it doesn’t it’s going to lose its credibility and legitimacy as an institution.” But that chief justice left the chat at least a decade ago. In failing to act, over and over, he has been a powerful actor.

In Legitimacy Roberts’ stead we have been left with yet another defensive , thin-skinned thunderer about judicial independence and a longtime coddler of insurrectionists and grifters. Which is why calling on Roberts to take a page from Chief Justice Earl Warren’s playbook and use his moral authority to do something about Alito and Thomas—as Warren once did about Abe Fortas—is almost as futile as calling for him to put real teeth into an ethics code or conduct a meaningful investigation of the Dobbs leak. Roberts, respectfully, has long ago made the decision that he is simply one coequal vote among nine. He neither wants nor possesses the authority to rein in the MAGA justices. He may vote as though he cares about court legitimacy, but he chief justices like the harassed mother of a kid throwing a tantrum at Safeway—all shrugs and eye rolls. We can and should demand that Roberts account for what he knew and when he knew it, but Roberts will not solve the problem he has allowed to fester and grow.

So if the real problem here is not Sam Alito, or Clarence Thomas, or John Roberts, why have we wasted years of ink and umbrage and energy trying to change their behavior? Alito and Thomas will not be recusing themselves from either Fisher or the Trump immunity case. The chief justice will not be urging them to do so. No lawyer arguing in front of the court will, as Sherrilyn Ifill has been urging , demand a recusal or an investigation of justices with blatant conflicts of interest hearing these Jan. 6 cases because, as Noah Bookbinder of CREW recently told us on the Amicus podcast, to ask the very people you want to cast votes for you to find themselves conflicted is rank insanity. “The system of leaving it up to litigants to challenge justices as potentially conflicted doesn’t make any sense,” Bookbinder said. “Of course that’s not going to work. And leaving justices to make that determination doesn’t make any sense. You need to have some kind of outside body who can evaluate those kinds of questions.”

Who, who, who might that outside body be? Tapping my chin—you tap yours.

Bookbinder’s answer points beautifully to the real problem: We have a judicial enterprise that rules over us with absolutely no one ruling over it. Nobody should be all that surprised that Sen. Dick Durbin has announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will not launch a probe into Alito’s recent conduct. The Senate has also been trying to unearth the financing for Thomas’ quarter-million-dollar, salt-of-the-earth RV, amid other ethics violations, and Leonard Leo has declined to comply with subpoenas related to it. Yes, the Senate should be acting to resolve this problem, but that seems to have largely stalled at “Ask them to recuse.”

So, just to review, this isn’t really a Sam Alito problem, or a Clarence Thomas problem, or a John Roberts problem—but it also isn’t even a Senate-Dems-who-can’t-muster-the-energy-to-close-the-deal problem.

No, I have come to conclude that this is an us problem. Because rather than hurling ourselves headlong into the “Alito Must Recuse” brick wall of “yeah, no,” we need to dedicate the upcoming election cycle, and the attendant election news cycle, to a discussion of the courts. Not just Alito or Thomas, who happen to go to work every day at the court, and not just Dobbs and gun control, which happen to have come out of the very same court, but the connection between those two tales: what it means to have a Supreme Court that is functionally immune from political pressure, from internal norms of behavior, from judicial ethics and disclosure constraints, and from congressional oversight, and why that is deeply dangerous. More so, why justices who were placed on the court to behave as well-compensated partisan politicians would do so in public as well as on paper. Until we do that, Alito will continue to fly around the world, giving speeches about his triumph in Dobbs and Thomas will keep taking gifts and failing to disclose them. That won’t be the end of the Supreme Court story; it will be just the start of it.

My friend Jennifer Rubin unspooled a call for Democrats to run in November on the promise of abortion rights and court and filibuster reform. That too will be a start. But Donald Trump is already training us to accept the argument that presidents need to be able to order the assassination of their rivals, and Alito is training us to tolerate the notion that if we don’t grant presidents immunity for such acts, they won’t agree to peacefully leave office. In the span of a week, Alito has also trained us to accept that justices can fly whatever inciting and ideological symbols they like, even if the guys who work in the SCOTUS mailroom can’t, because justices are also the recipients of blanket immunity. The problem with these arguments about offering immunity to bad actors is that you can metabolize the helplessness almost as rapidly as you metabolize the idea of immunity itself. It’s not merely the idea that law is for suckers that we have normalized in this precarious moment—it’s the tragic collective conclusion that there is nothing to be done about the fact that the light is really flashing red right now.

An imperial court is the problem, not Martha-Ann Alito’s childish tantrums and not whatever her husband will tell Fox News tomorrow about how the haters made him fly a Christian nationalist flag as the court took on the mifepristone case. Please don’t let the rapid riptides of the news cycle or the sense that God wants us all to live under the fist of an imperial court forever and ever, amen, distract from the fact that term limits, court expansion, an inspector general, and filibuster reform, all of this is possible, and none of it is happening in the wake of the Alito flag revelations, just as none of it was happening when Ginni Thomas showed up at an insurrection rally. The court is hearing cases on the docket while some justices are living life off the docket that prove one thing only: that institutional immunity is not so much taken as silently and invisibly conferred. If we have learned anything at all in the recent past, it’s that it’s also contagious.

The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.

Supported by

• Share full article

By The New York Times Books Staff

• May 24, 2024

Fiction | Nonfiction

We’re almost halfway through 2024 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more thoughts on what to read next, head to our book recommendation page .

James , by Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Good Material , by Dolly Alderton

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

Martyr! , by Kaveh Akbar

A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.

The Hunter , by Tana French

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

Wandering Stars , by Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

Headshot , by Rita Bullwinkel

Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote: This story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”

Beautyland , by Marie-Helene Bertino

In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder , by Salman Rushdie

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis , by Jonathan Blitzer

This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook , by Hampton Sides

By the time he made his third Pacific voyage, the British explorer James Cook had maybe begun to lose it a little. The scientific aims of his first two trips had shifted into something darker. According to our reviewer, the historian Hampton Sides “isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s ‘ The Wager ’ and Candice Millard’s ‘ River of the Gods ,’ in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism .”

The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon , by Adam Shatz

This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.

Fi: A Memoir , by Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

An assault led to Chanel Miller’s best seller, “Know My Name,” but she had wanted to write children’s books since the second grade. She’s done that now  with “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All.”

When Reese Witherspoon is making selections for her book club , she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, who died on May 14 , specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope , spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

“The Light Eaters,” a new book by Zoë Schlanger, looks at how plants sense the world  and the agency they have in their own lives.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Advertisement

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

The Best Reviewed Short Story Collections of 2022

Featuring george saunders, ling ma, colin barrett, jamil jan kochai, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Short Story Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

21 Rave • 5 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an interview with Ling Ma here

“The eight wily tales mark the return of an author whose inventive debut, Severance, urgently announced her as a writer worth watching … an assured follow-up, a striking collection that peddles in the uncanny and the surreal, but it often lacks Severance ’s zest. Some stories are confident in their strangeness and ambiguity, a handful feel like promising sketches of sturdier narratives and the rest fall somewhere in between. The connections between them are loose, tethered by similar leads …

Wry, peculiar stories like Los Angeles and Yeti Lovemaking confirm that Ma’s imagination operates on the same chimerical frequency as those of Helen Oyeyemi, Samanta Schweblin, Meng Jin. Each of these stories leans un-self-consciously into the speculative, illuminating Ma’s phantasmagoric interests. They are funny, too … Despite their nagging loose ends, Ma’s stories stay with you—evidence of a gifted writer curious about the limits of theoretical possibility. They twist and turn in unpredictable ways and although the ride wasn’t always smooth, I never regretted getting on.”

–Lovia Gyarkye ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Liberation Day by George Saunders (Random House)

16 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed (86) Read George Saunders on reading chaotically and the power of generous teachers, here

“Acutely relevant … Let’s bask in this new collection of short stories, which is how many of us first discovered him and where he excels like no other … Saunders’ imaginative capacity is on full display … Liberation Day carries echoes of Saunders’ previous work, but the ideas in this collection are more complex and nuanced, perhaps reflecting the new complexities of this brave new world of ours. The title story is only one of a handful of the nine stories in this collection that show us our collective and personal dilemmas, but in reading the problems so expressed—with compassion and humanity—our spirits are raised and perhaps healed. Part of the Saunders elixir is that we feel more empathetic after reading his work.”

–Scott Laughlin ( The San Francisco Chronicle )

3. Homesickness by Colin Barrett (Grove Press)

16 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an essay by Colin Barrett here

“Its comedy stands in balance to the collection’s more tragic tenor … expands [Barrett’s] range, and though the first took place in the fictional Irish town of Glanbeigh, the books share a fabric shot through with dark humor, pitch-perfect dialogue and a signature freshness that makes life palpable on the page. The language counterpoints the sometimes inarticulate desperation of the working-class characters, and that dissonance lends an emotional complexity to their stories …

As a writer, Barrett doesn’t legislate from the top down. His unruly characters surge up with their vitality and their mystery intact. Their stories aren’t shaped by familiar resolutions—no realizations, morals or epiphanies. The absence of a conventional resolution does risk leaving an otherwise charming story like The Silver Coast with the rambling feel of a slice of life. But in the majority of the stories in this book, to reinvent an ending is to reinvent how a story is told, and overall, Homesickness is graced with an original, lingering beauty.”

–Stuart Dybek ( The New York Times Book Review )

4. Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House)

13 Rave • 4 Positive Read a story from Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century here

“..the horrors are more intimate, smaller, and less global in scale. This is not a collection filled with fantastic beasts, although a sea monster does make an appearance, but instead illuminates the monstrous nature of humanity … Technology, rather than magic, catalyzes these changes. That is not to say there are not some traces of unexplained fantasy, such as a girl who sprouts wings from her ankles, but mostly, Fu’s monsters manifest from modernity … The success of Kim Fu’s stories is the element of the unexpected. There are surprises lurking in these narratives, whether it is a quick final plot twist or unexpected peculiarity …

Although Fu seems more concerned with alienation stemming from individual relationships, there is criticism of conventional consumer capitalism … The characters in Fu’s collection are eccentric and unexpected in their choices, and many of their stories feature unforeseen endings that strike the right tone for the dark era we live in … Fu opens a window looking onto the sad possibilities of our own failures.”

–Ian MacAllen ( The Chicago Review of Books )

5. If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (MCD)

12 Rave • 4 Positive Read an essay by Jonathan Escoffery here

“Ravishing … The book, about an immigrant family struggling to make ends meet, delights in mocking the trope of an immigrant family struggling to make ends meet … There’s peacocking humor, capers, and passages of shuddering eroticism. The book feels thrillingly free … Escoffery’s protagonists, though resourceful, can’t accomplish the impossible; nor do they sacrifice themselves for the reader’s sentimental education … The prose comes alive …

These characters are strange amalgams of limited agency and boundless originality. Their survival, perhaps, comes down to their style … Escoffery deftly renders the disorienting effects of race as they fall, veil-like and hostile, over a world of children … Throughout, the refrain runs like an incantation: What are you? Escoffery, hosing his characters in a stream of fines, bills, and pay stubs, studies the bleak math of self-determination.”

–Katy Waldman ( The New Yorker )

6. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai (Viking)

12 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an essay by Jamil Jan Kochai  here

“Kochai, an Afghan-American writer, shapes and reshapes his material through a variety of formal techniques, including a fantasy of salvation through video gaming, a darkly surrealist fable of loss, a life story told through a mock résumé, and the story of a man’s transformation into a monkey who becomes a rebel leader…Like Asturias, Kochai is a master conjurer…The collection’s cohesion lies in its thematic exploration of the complexities of contemporary Afghan experience (both in Afghanistan and the United States), and in the recurring family narrative at its core: many of the stories deal with an Afghan family settled in California… Kochai is a thrillingly gifted writer, and this collection is a pleasure to read, filled with stories at once funny and profoundly serious, formally daring, and complex in their apprehension of the contradictory yet overlapping worlds of their characters.”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

7. Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (Tin House Book)

12 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed Listen to an interview with Morgan Talty here

“Talty depicts the relationship between David and Paige perfectly—the siblings clearly care for each other; it’s evident beneath the bickering and the long periods when they don’t see each other … The story ends with both mother and son experiencing terrifying medical emergencies; it’s almost excruciating to read, but it’s undeniably powerful, and, in its own way, beautiful … Talty’s prose is flawless throughout; he writes with a straightforward leanness that will likely appeal to admirers of Thom Jones or Denis Johnson. But his style is all his own, as is his immense sense of compassion. Night of the Living Rez is a stunning look at a family navigating their lives through crisis—it’s a shockingly strong debut, sure, but it’s also a masterwork by a major talent.”

–Michael Schaub ( The Star Tribune )

8. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (William Morrow)

10 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an excerpt from How High We Go in the Dark here

“If you’re a short-story lover—as I am—you’ll be impressed with Nagamatsu’s meticulous craft. If you crave sustained character and plot arcs, well, you’ll have to settle for admiring the well-honed prose, poignant meditations and unique concepts. Hardly small pleasures … The reader might best approach the book like a melancholy Black Mirror season … This is a lovely though bleak book. Humanity has long turned to humor in our darkest moments, but levity feels absent even in a chapter narrated by a stand-up comedian. That said, the somber tone unifies the disparate characters and story lines … a welcome addition to a growing trend of what we might call the ‘speculative epic’: genre-bending novels that use a wide aperture to tackle large issues like climate change while jumping between characters, timelines and even narrative modes … Nagamatsu squarely hits both the ‘literary’ and ‘science fiction’ targets, offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits … a book of sorrow for the destruction we’re bringing on ourselves. Yet the novel reminds us there’s still hope in human connections, despite our sadness.”

–Lincoln Michel ( The New York Times Book Review )

9. Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle (Viking)

9 Rave •  5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“… a quietly devastating collection of short stories that brilliantly portrays the pervasive sense of hopelessness that immobilised us during the dog days of Covid … Lest he be accused of focusing too much on men and their sense of victimhood, the countervailing magnificence of his women is worth noting. Part of Doyle’s genius resides in a kind of bathetic amusement at the follies of his male characters and always it’s the stoical good sense of women that saves the day … Another of his great strengths is the ability to drop in those little epiphanies that resolve the tension and conflict of a story in a single significant moment … Doyle breaks our free fall into despair by emphasizing the redemptive power of humor, love and the kindness of strangers.”

–Bert Wright ( The Sunday Times )

10. Stories From the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana (Scribner)

12 Rave Read an interview with Sidik Fofana here

“… outstanding … The brilliance of this debut, however, is that Fofana doesn’t let anyone go unseen … masterfully paints a portrait of the people most impacted by gentrification … Fofana brings his characters to life through their idiosyncratic speech patterns. Auxiliary verbs are dropped, words are misspelled, prepositions are jostled, all to create a sense of vernacular authenticity…Grammar is an instrument that Fofana plays by ear, to much success.”

–Joseph Cassara ( The New York Times Book Review )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Previous Article

Next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Follow us on Twitter

“I Don’t Want to Be That Kind of Writer...” Sam Lipsyte on Eliminating the Desire to Imitate Other Writers

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month