“Biss’ pairings of ideas, like those of most original thinkers, have the knack of seeming brilliant and obvious at the same time…forceful, beautiful essays.”
—NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
“Biss is telling us the story of our country—one we never saw coming.”
—THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
In a book that begins with a series of lynchings and ends with a series of apologies, Eula Biss explores race in America. Her response to the topic is informed by the experiences chronicled in these essays—teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting for an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and settling in Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood. As Biss moves across the country—from New York to California to the Midwest—she brings an eclectic education to the page, drawing variously on the Eagles, Laura Ingalls Wilder, James Baldwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Joan Didion, religious pamphlets, and reality television shows. These spare, sometimes lyric essays explore the legacy of race in America, artfully revealing in intimate detail how families, schools, and neighborhoods participate in preserving racial privilege.
“Whether pointing out the self-serving hypocrisy of modern institutional agendas or rewriting Joan Didion’s famous ‘Goodbye to All That,’ Biss’s steady gaze is invaluable to the contemporary essay.”
—RAIN TAXI REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Traversing an isthmus between white America and nonwhite America, she notes her own, ample opportunities, yet refuses to relinquish the struggle for racial identity to those that have traditionally been more oppressed.”
—COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
“[Biss] raises some troubling questions.”
—TIMEOUT NEW YORK
“Biss, inquisitive and buoyant, swings back and forth between the shores of nurture and nature, asking tough questions about which aspects of race and culture we inherit and which we acquire.…Matters of race, sense of self, and belonging involve everyone, and Biss’ crossing-the-line perspective will provoke fresh analysis of our fears and expectations.”
—BOOKLIST, starred review
