best essays 2021

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Nonfiction Books » Essays

The best essays: the 2021 pen/diamonstein-spielvogel award, recommended by adam gopnik.

WINNER OF the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Interview by Benedict King

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle

Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé

Maybe the People Would be the Times by Luc Sante

1 Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

2 unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, 3 nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, 4 terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, 5 maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

W e’re talking about the books shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay . As an essayist yourself, or as a reader of essays, what are you looking for? What’s the key to a good essay ?

Let’s turn to the books that made the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. The winning book was Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich , whose books have been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Tell me more. 

One of the criteria for this particular prize is that it should be not just for a single book, but for a body of work. One of the things we wanted to honour about Barbara Ehrenreich is that she has produced a remarkable body of work. Although it’s offered in a more specifically political register than some essayists, or that a great many past prize winners have practised, the quiddity of her work is that it remains rooted in personal experience, in the act of bearing witness. She has a passionate political point to make, certainly, a series of them, many seeming all the more relevant now than when she began writing. Nonetheless, her writing still always depends on the intimacy of first-hand knowledge, what people in post-incarceration work call ‘lived experience’ (a term with a distinguished philosophical history). Her book Nickel and Dimed is the classic example of that. She never writes from a distance about working-class life in America. She bears witness to the nature and real texture of working-class life in America.

“One point of giving awards…is to keep passing the small torches of literary tradition”

Next up of the books on the 2021 PEN essay prize shortlist is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick is a writer who’s been around for a very long time. Although longevity is not in itself a criterion for excellence—or for this prize, or in the writing life generally—persistence and perseverance are. Writers who keep coming back at us, again and again, with a consistent vision, are surely to be saluted. For her admirers, her appetite to re-read things already read is one of the most attractive parts of her oeuvre , if I can call it that; her appetite not just to read but to read deeply and personally. One of the things that people who love her work love about it is that her readings are never academic, or touched by scholarly hobbyhorsing. They’re readings that involve the fullness of her experience, then applied to literature. Although she reads as a critic, she reads as an essayist reads, rather than as a reviewer reads. And I think that was one of the things that was there to honour in her body of work, as well.

Is she a novelist or journalist, as well?

Let’s move on to the next book which made the 2021 PEN essay shortlist. This is Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle.

I have a special reason for liking this book in particular, and that is that it corresponds to one of the richest and oldest of American genres, now often overlooked, and that’s the naturalist essay. You can track it back to Henry David Thoreau , if not to Ralph Waldo Emerson , this American engagement with nature , the wilderness, not from a narrowly scientific point of view, nor from a purely ecological or environmental point of view—though those things are part of it—but again, from the point of view of lived experience, of personal testimony.

Let’s look at the next book on the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Awards, which is Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé. Why did these essays appeal?

One of the things that was appealing about this book is that’s it very much about, in every sense, the issues of the day: the idea of place, of where we are, how we are located on any map as individuals by ethnic identity, class, gender—all of those things. But rather than being carried forward in a narrowly argumentative way, again, in the classic manner of the essay, Sajé’s work is ruminative. It walks around these issues from the point of view of someone who’s an expatriate, someone who’s an émigré, someone who’s a world citizen, but who’s also concerned with the idea of ‘terroir’, the one place in the world where we belong. And I think the dialogue in her work between a kind of cosmopolitanism that she has along with her self-critical examination of the problem of localism and where we sit on the world, was inspiring to us.

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Last of the books on the shortlist for the 2021 Pen essay award is Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante.

Again, here’s a writer who’s had a distinguished generalised career, writing about lots of places and about lots of subjects. In the past, he’s made his special preoccupation what he calls ‘low life’, but I think more broadly can be called the marginalized or the repressed and abject. He’s also written acute introductions to the literature of ‘low life’, the works of Asbury and David Maurer, for instance.

But I think one of the things that was appealing about what he’s done is the sheer range of his enterprise. He writes about countless subjects. He can write about A-sides and B-sides of popular records—singles—then go on to write about Jacques Rivette’s cinema. He writes from a kind of private inspection of public experience. He has a lovely piece about tabloid headlines and their evolution. And I think that omnivorous range of enthusiasms and passions is a stirring reminder in a time of specialization and compartmentalization of the essayist’s freedom to roam. If Pyle is in the tradition of Thoreau, I suspect Luc Sante would be proud to be put in the tradition of Baudelaire—the flaneur who walks the streets, sees everything, broods on it all and writes about it well.

One point of giving awards, with all their built-in absurdity and inevitable injustice, is to keep alive, or at least to keep passing, the small torches of literary tradition. And just as much as we’re honoring the great tradition of the naturalist essay in the one case, I think we’re honoring the tradition of the Baudelairean flaneur in this one.

April 18, 2021

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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2021

Featuring joan didion, rachel kushner, hanif abdurraqib, ann patchett, jenny diski, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

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

1. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper)

21 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed Read Ann Patchett on creating the work space you need, here

“… excellent … Patchett has a talent for friendship and celebrates many of those friends here. She writes with pure love for her mother, and with humor and some good-natured exasperation at Karl, who is such a great character he warrants a book of his own. Patchett’s account of his feigned offer to buy a woman’s newly adopted baby when she expresses unwarranted doubts is priceless … The days that Patchett refers to are precious indeed, but her writing is anything but. She describes deftly, with a line or a look, and I considered the absence of paragraphs freighted with adjectives to be a mercy. I don’t care about the hue of the sky or the shade of the couch. That’s not writing; it’s decorating. Or hiding. Patchett’s heart, smarts and 40 years of craft create an economy that delivers her perfectly understated stories emotionally whole. Her writing style is most gloriously her own.”

–Alex Witchel ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion (Knopf)

14 Rave • 12 Positive • 6 Mixed Read an excerpt from Let Me Tell You What I Mean here

“In five decades’ worth of essays, reportage and criticism, Didion has documented the charade implicit in how things are, in a first-person, observational style that is not sacrosanct but common-sensical. Seeing as a way of extrapolating hypocrisy, disingenuousness and doubt, she’ll notice the hydrangeas are plastic and mention it once, in passing, sorting the scene. Her gaze, like a sentry on the page, permanently trained on what is being disguised … The essays in Let Me Tell You What I Mean are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense. They are about humiliation and about notions of rightness … Didion’s pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind—and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been. These essays offer a direct line to what’s in the offing.”

–Durga Chew-Bose ( The New York Times Book Review )

3. Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

12 Rave • 13 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Orwell’s Roses here

“… on its simplest level, a tribute by one fine essayist of the political left to another of an earlier generation. But as with any of Solnit’s books, such a description would be reductive: the great pleasure of reading her is spending time with her mind, its digressions and juxtapositions, its unexpected connections. Only a few contemporary writers have the ability to start almost anywhere and lead the reader on paths that, while apparently meandering, compel unfailingly and feel, by the end, cosmically connected … Somehow, Solnit’s references to Ross Gay, Michael Pollan, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Peter Coyote (to name but a few) feel perfectly at home in the narrative; just as later chapters about an eighteenth-century portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and a visit to the heart of the Colombian rose-growing industry seem inevitable and indispensable … The book provides a captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker … And, movingly, she takes the time to find the traces of Orwell the gardener and lover of beauty in his political novels, and in his insistence on the value and pleasure of things .”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

4. Girlhood by Melissa Febos (Bloomsbury)

16 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Girlhood here

“Every once in a while, a book comes along that feels so definitive, so necessary, that not only do you want to tell everyone to read it now, but you also find yourself wanting to go back in time and tell your younger self that you will one day get to read something that will make your life make sense. Melissa Febos’s fierce nonfiction collection, Girlhood , might just be that book. Febos is one of our most passionate and profound essayists … Girlhood …offers us exquisite, ferocious language for embracing self-pleasure and self-love. It’s a book that women will wish they had when they were younger, and that they’ll rejoice in having now … Febos is a balletic memoirist whose capacious gaze can take in so many seemingly disparate things and unfurl them in a graceful, cohesive way … Intellectual and erotic, engaging and empowering[.]”

–Michelle Hart ( Oprah Daily )

5. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told by Jenny Diski (Bloomsbury)

14 Rave • 7 Positive

“[Diski’s] reputation as an original, witty and cant-free thinker on the way we live now should be given a significant boost. Her prose is elegant and amused, as if to counter her native melancholia and includes frequent dips into memorable images … Like the ideal artist Henry James conjured up, on whom nothing is lost, Diski notices everything that comes her way … She is discerning about serious topics (madness and death) as well as less fraught material, such as fashion … in truth Diski’s first-person voice is like no other, selectively intimate but not overbearingly egotistic, like, say, Norman Mailer’s. It bears some resemblance to Joan Didion’s, if Didion were less skittish and insistently stylish and generated more warmth. What they have in common is their innate skepticism and the way they ask questions that wouldn’t occur to anyone else … Suffice it to say that our culture, enmeshed as it is in carefully arranged snapshots of real life, needs Jenny Diski, who, by her own admission, ‘never owned a camera, never taken one on holiday.’” It is all but impossible not to warm up to a writer who observes herself so keenly … I, in turn, wish there were more people around who thought like Diski. The world would be a more generous, less shallow and infinitely more intriguing place.”

–Daphne Merkin ( The New York Times Book Review )

6. The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner (Scribner)

12 Rave • 7 Positive Listen to an interview with Rachel Kushner here

“Whether she’s writing about Jeff Koons, prison abolition or a Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem, [Kushner’s] interested in appearances, and in the deeper currents a surface detail might betray … Her writing is magnetised by outlaw sensibility, hard lives lived at a slant, art made in conditions of ferment and unrest, though she rarely serves a platter that isn’t style-mag ready … She makes a pretty convincing case for a political dimension to Jeff Koons’s vacuities and mirrored surfaces, engages repeatedly with the Italian avant garde and writes best of all about an artist friend whose death undoes a spell of nihilism … It’s not just that Kushner is looking back on the distant city of youth; more that she’s the sole survivor of a wild crowd done down by prison, drugs, untimely death … What she remembers is a whole world, but does the act of immortalising it in language also drain it of its power,’neon, in pink, red, and warm white, bleeding into the fog’? She’s mining a rich seam of specificity, her writing charged by the dangers she ran up against. And then there’s the frank pleasure of her sentences, often shorn of definite articles or odd words, so they rev and bucket along … That New Journalism style, live hard and keep your eyes open, has long since given way to the millennial cult of the personal essay, with its performance of pain, its earnest display of wounds received and lessons learned. But Kushner brings it all flooding back. Even if I’m skeptical of its dazzle, I’m glad to taste something this sharp, this smart.”

–Olivia Laing ( The Guardian )

7. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan (FSG)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 5 Mixed • 1 Pan

“[A] quietly dazzling new essay collection … This is, needless to say, fraught terrain, and Srinivasan treads it with determination and skill … These essays are works of both criticism and imagination. Srinivasan refuses to resort to straw men; she will lay out even the most specious argument clearly and carefully, demonstrating its emotional power, even if her ultimate intention is to dismantle it … This, then, is a book that explicitly addresses intersectionality, even if Srinivasan is dissatisfied with the common—and reductive—understanding of the term … Srinivasan has written a compassionate book. She has also written a challenging one … Srinivasan proposes the kind of education enacted in this brilliant, rigorous book. She coaxes our imaginations out of the well-worn grooves of the existing order.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

8. A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

13 Rave • 4 Positive Listen to an interview with Hanif Abdurraqib here

“[A] wide, deep, and discerning inquest into the Beauty of Blackness as enacted on stages and screens, in unanimity and discord, on public airwaves and in intimate spaces … has brought to pop criticism and cultural history not just a poet’s lyricism and imagery but also a scholar’s rigor, a novelist’s sense of character and place, and a punk-rocker’s impulse to dislodge conventional wisdom from its moorings until something shakes loose and is exposed to audiences too lethargic to think or even react differently … Abdurraqib cherishes this power to enlarge oneself within or beyond real or imagined restrictions … Abdurraqib reminds readers of the massive viewing audience’s shock and awe over seeing one of the world’s biggest pop icons appearing midfield at this least radical of American rituals … Something about the seemingly insatiable hunger Abdurraqib shows for cultural transaction, paradoxical mischief, and Beauty in Blackness tells me he’ll get to such matters soon enough.”

–Gene Seymour ( Bookforum )

9. On Animals by Susan Orlean (Avid Reader Press)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed Listen to an interview with Susan Orlean here

“I very much enjoyed Orlean’s perspective in these original, perceptive, and clever essays showcasing the sometimes strange, sometimes sick, sometimes tender relationships between people and animals … whether Orlean is writing about one couple’s quest to find their lost dog, the lives of working donkeys of the Fez medina in Morocco, or a man who rescues lions (and happily allows even full grown males to gently chew his head), her pages are crammed with quirky characters, telling details, and flabbergasting facts … Readers will find these pages full of astonishments … Orlean excels as a reporter…Such thorough reporting made me long for updates on some of these stories … But even this criticism only testifies to the delight of each of the urbane and vivid stories in this collection. Even though Orlean claims the animals she writes about remain enigmas, she makes us care about their fates. Readers will continue to think about these dogs and donkeys, tigers and lions, chickens and pigeons long after we close the book’s covers. I hope most of them are still well.”

–Sy Montgomery ( The Boston Globe )

10. Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South  by Margaret Renkl (Milkweed Editions)

9 Rave • 5 Positive Read Margaret Renkl on finding ideas everywhere, here

“Renkl’s sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported … Renkl at her most tender and most fierce … Renkl’s gift, just as it was in her first book Late Migrations , is to make fascinating for others what is closest to her heart … Any initial sense of emotional whiplash faded as as I proceeded across the six sections and realized that the book is largely organized around one concept, that of fair and loving treatment for all—regardless of race, class, sex, gender or species … What rises in me after reading her essays is Lewis’ famous urging to get in good trouble to make the world fairer and better. Many people in the South are doing just that—and through her beautiful writing, Renkl is among them.”

–Barbara J. King ( NPR )

Our System:

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

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The Best American Essays 2021

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“The world is abundant even in bad times; it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness,” writes guest editor Kathryn Schulz in the introduction to The Best American Essays 2021 . Featuring essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Molly McCully Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Wesley Morris, to name a few, this installment of the annual anthology captures writers at work during a historic year of grief and tumult. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one during the pandemic to an exploration of the political and aesthetic history of a mustache, this collection demonstrates what it is to be writing during an unprecedented time, offering readers and writers solace and inspiration through rigorous prose.  

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The Best American Essays 2021

by Kathryn Schulz, Robert Atwan

• On Sale: 10/12/2021

Price: $16.99

Format: Trade PB

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About the Book

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz

“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.

The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780358381754
• ISBN 10: 0358381754
• Imprint: Mariner Books
• Trimsize: 5.500 in (w) x 8.250 in (h) x 0.000 in (d)
• List Price: $16.99
• BISAC1 : FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Collections & Anthologies
• BISAC2 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General
• BISAC3 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays

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Kathryn Schulz

Kathryn Schulz is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine , Rolling Stone , Foreign Policy , the Nation , the Boston Globe , and the "Freakonomics" blog of the New York Times . She lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

Being Wrong: The Book

Kathryn Schulz at the Huffington Post

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Robert Atwan

ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

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The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz

“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.

The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

About the Author

Kathryn Schulz is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine , Rolling Stone , Foreign Policy , the Nation , the Boston Globe , and the "Freakonomics" blog of the New York Times . She lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

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The Best American Poetry 2023 (The Best American Poetry series)

The Best American Poetry 2022 (The Best American Poetry series)

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The Best American Short Stories 2022

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The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022: A Collection

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The Best American Poetry 2021 (The Best American Poetry series)

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The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz “The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

• Kathryn Schulz - Editor
• Robert Atwan - Author

Kindle Book

• Release date: April 16, 2024

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• ISBN: 9780358381228
• File size: 2863 KB

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Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358381228 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358381228 File size: 2863 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

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The Top Ten Most-Read Essays of 2021

In 2021, democracy’s fortunes were tested, and a tumultuous world became even more turbulent. Democratic setbacks arose in places as far flung as Burma, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Sudan, and a 20-year experiment in Afghanistan collapsed in days. The world’s democracies were beset by rising polarization, and people watched in shock as an insurrection took place in the United States. In a year marked by high political drama, economic unrest, and rising assaults on democracy, we at the  Journal of Democracy  sought to provide insight and analysis of the forces that imperil freedom. Here are our 10 most-read essays of 2021:

Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez Nayib Bukele has developed a blend of political tactics that combines populist appeals and classic autocratic behavior with a polished social-media brand. It poses a dire threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

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Trade Paperback

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz

“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.

The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

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The best video essays of 2021

An escape from the most popular to the most captivating

by Ransford James and Wil Williams

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

As coronavirus cloistered the world, the genre of video essays continued to augment in popularity on Youtube. Despite the homogeny of the creator space being apparent from a cursory glance, 2021 saw POC video essayists gaining momentum on the platform. From behemoths like D’Angelo Wallace to humble creators like myself, there is a gradient of experiences that are finally being represented thanks to YouTube’s algorithm “apparently” being an equalizer. That being said, this article hopes to shed light on some of gems you may have missed.

Beyond the players, the format of video essays has also evolved. Gone are the days when a midwestern man could aggregate thousands of views on a video about why water is wet. (OK, jk, that still happens.) But most of today’s video essays now amalgamate several genres of YouTube videos. Whether it’s the commentary crossovers à la Tara Mooknee , or the stand-up comedy stylings of Chill Goblin , there is a variety of variations to find. Here are a few that surprised us in the last year. —Ransford James, aka Foreign

[ Ed. note: This list is ordered chronologically rather than ranked by preference, meaning everything is worth checking out. And if you need more to watch, check out last year’s list .]

“Your Island is a Commune pt. 1,” Nowhere Grotesk

I first discovered this touching series on Animal Crossing: New Horizons via the social posts on F. D. Signifier’s YouTube channel — more on him later, but credit where credit’s due. Nowhere Grotesk’s bio on social media reads, “We’re two visual artists that create and examine art through a utopian leftist lens,” and that feeling permeates this series.

Discussing Animal Crossing: New Horizons through the lens of communal living and pastoral nostalgia, Nowhere Grotesk pushes back on the easy joke that Tom Nook is a greedy capitalist. Instead, this series shows how Animal Crossing: New Horizons conveys the concept of community as directly in conflict with urbanization and capitalism, thriving only when everyone’s needs are met without the turmoil of work. Even the addition of the Happy Home Paradise DLC , which gives players the option to work for additional outcomes, doesn’t nullify the anticapitalist argument here; working is a choice you can but don’t have to make. The island even meets more of the players’ needs by providing free healthcare. Animal Crossing isn’t the apolitical fluff many seem to think; instead, it’s a lovely, immersive argument for anarcho-communism, mutual aid, and rooting our politics in community. —Wil Williams

“The Market of Humiliating Black Women,” Tee Noir

This offering is far from obscure, but by the off chance that Tee Noir has evaded your eyes and eluded your ears, consider my favorite video from her so far: “ The Market of Humiliating Black Women .” Without spoiling this masterpiece, Tee breaks down what is such an innocuous experience that not many people even notice: How quotidian Black women’s pain is in popular media. From high-budget Tyler Perry movies to grainy WorldstarHipHop videos, the parodying of pain that Black women face on the daily is rewarded with thousands of millions of views and thousands of shares.

This is an experience that is far from second-hand with regard to Tee Noir, as she faces scrutiny that men don’t, simply by virtue of being a Black woman on this platform — let alone her queerness. —RJ

“The Day Rue ‘Became’ Black,” Yhara Zayd

After hitting shelves in 2008, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games was praised for the way it conveyed real-life modern class struggles in a strange, borderline fantastical world. The Hunger Games was clear about what it was saying and referencing, but apparently, some readers didn’t get the memo — or perhaps they refused to.

In this video, Zayd pulls on the Hunger Games fandom’s history to dissect what made some readers so shocked when Amandla Stenberg, a young Black actress, was cast as Rue, a young girl who is ... canonically Black. This isn’t just about people reading a book wrong, though; it’s about why audiences felt less protective of Rue the moment she “became” Black “in casting.” It’s also about why most of those comments have since been scrubbed from the internet.

Yhara Zayd’s work has been featured on all of my video essay lists , and for good reason. Her sharp, concise, passionate analysis is scored by a low-key (but not necessarily relaxed) aesthetic and narration style. Her occasional breaks to make a joke or loosen up her script emphasize what’s so important about the topic at hand: the humanity. —WW

“Infantilization and the Body Hair Debate,” Shanspeare

Unironic ASMR, charismatic candor, and witty humor are but a few of Shanspeare’s calling cards. Despite the myriad of channels dedicated to analyzing pop culture, none do it quite like Shanspeare. “ Infantilization and the Body Hair Debate ” is one of the most eye-opening videos that I have encountered, and it has provoked me — a cishet Afro-Caribbean man — into thoroughly addressing my own contributions to the subject matter. This deep dive into how the world incentivizes childlike behavior from women is as unnerving as it is necessary to watch. From the way I speak to women, to my subconscious preference of nicely shaven legs, Shanspeare details how all of that is essentially the product of a purposeful inculcation that was underway far before I was even a thought. I cannot emphasize to you enough that you should watch this masterpiece and all of her other ones as well. —RJ

“Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos,” CJ the X

Thanks to my specific symptoms of ADHD, it can be really hard for me to devote time to watch video essays that are over an hour long, and even harder for me to really fall in love with them. I hope this will help convey the gravity with which I am saying that I watched this two-and-a-half-hour video more times than any other video on YouTube this year. What starts as an analysis of Bo Burnham’s Inside slowly morphs into something else, then something else, then something else . This video transitions so gracefully between discussions of posthumanism, the internet, online fame, and what makes something funny, all while being punctuated with CJ the X’s hallmark near-absurdist blink-and-you’ll-miss-it humor. What makes this video an instant classic of the medium, though, is how it lands: a deep, sincere, vulnerable love letter to empathy and human connection, wound up in a personal anecdote that makes the thesis feel even more real.

I struggled to have basic hope or faith in humanity this year. I struggled to tell myself that everything is worth it. No piece of media helped me more with those struggles than this video. I wrote a piece on my read of Inside before seeing this video, and after watching it, my read on Inside has changed. And I’m so grateful. — WW

“The Reign of the Slim Thick Influencer,” Khadija Mbowe

I hope that this creator needs no introduction, because I feel woefully unequipped to introduce them myself. Khadija Mbowe walks the walk, and the walk is an onerous one. Being a feminine-presenting nonbinary creator of an obsidian hue, they brazenly break down some of the most nuanced topics with empathy and levity. Moreover, they pay it forward by promoting creators that the algorithm may have missed — much like myself, and in the same way Tee Noir promoted them a year ago.

“ The Reign of the Slim-Thick Influencer ” is arguably my favorite Khadija Mbowe video this year. It’s a discussion of the trend of Brazilian butt lifts , how influencers like Kim Kardashian perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards, and the awful origins of commodifying the Black woman’s body. This is a must-see for everybody who consumes social media, which is … everybody. — RJ

“make more characters bi, you cowards: why (not) romance?,” voice memos for the void

An installment of Voice Memos for the Void’s Romance in Media series, “make more characters bi, you cowards: why (not) romance?” does what it says on the tin. This video analyzes the strange state of bisexual characters in media, pointing out how rarely bisexual characters get to fall in love. Not have sex, but fall in love. Voice Memos for the Void effortlessly combats rebuttals to this idea that we hear every time we ask for more representation and romance: “Why do they need to be queer?” “Why do they need to be in love?” It also dives into different depictions of masculinity, a history of Byronic heroes, and the troubling tropes that follow bisexual characters around in media, like that of the Magical and/or Hedonistic Bisexual . Forgive the glitchy camera in this video; equipment is expensive, and the commentary more than makes up for the video fidelity. We can thank F. D. Signifier’s feed for putting this video on my radar, too. — WW

“The Black Right Wing,” Anansi’s Library

While Tee Noir enjoys (?) a visibility that many POC creators don’t, Anansi boasts a dedicated 15,000 subscriber count but is deserving of far more. They stay closer to the format that many video essays have in the past of concealing their face in their videos, relying more on the merit of their musings than the luster of their looks. Many of us simply create and comment on the actions of others, but Anansi, for lack of a better term, is really in the field. They are deeply entrenched in American activism, which makes their videos simply an accompaniment to a much larger concerted effort.

This video on The Black Right Wing is redolent of the very fight that they have fought on many occasions. It details this unique subset of Black Americans that embraces the Trumpian conservatism that still plagues the United States to this very day. If you are fascinated by the neurosis necessary to align oneself with a party that is antipodal to your existence, then this is the video for you! — RJ

“On Leftist Disunity,” St. Andrewism

By now you must see the peaks and valleys that this list is riding, from creators who have passed the 100,000 mark to those who are still in the 10,000s. The themes that combine in all of them are apparent: their marginalized status, the video essay format, and most of all, the quality. Over the last year, the Trinibagan St. Andrewism has amassed over 50,000 subscribers, and his video On Leftist Disunity is a highlight. This video is the quintessential love letter to the leftist community that encourages the embrace of the many differences it has within it. Instead of approaching this with the pessimism that many people do, St. Andrew seems gleefully optimistic that this diversity of thought will end up saving not only the United States but the world. —RJ

“Break Bread,” F. D. Signifier

OK, now we can talk about F. D. Signifier in earnest. In my video essay list for our Masterpieces of Streaming series, I gave a brief history of video essays through the lens of educational videos. In “Breaking Bread,” F. D. Signifier offers an uncomfortably accurate parallel history: the rise of video essays from rant reviewers like The Nostalgia Critic. The trend of debate bros and, in F. D. Signifier’s words, every LeftTuber making a video about Ben Shapiro, isn’t just rooted in the medium’s history, though; it’s also rooted in whiteness. That lens and style of video stays prominent thanks to the YouTube algorithm, and while the homogeneity of video essays has been critiqued many times, “Break Bread” breaks down the issue with an astounding level of complexity, research, and guests from all over the video essay ecosystem. How much of a video essayist’s success comes down to talent? How much comes down to luck? And how much comes down to the algorithm knowing that what keeps people watching is simply who looks familiar? — WW

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The best essays of 2021.

As the year ends, I thought I’d revisit some of my favorite entries from the past twelve months:

• The Productivity Frontier: Can You Get More Done Without Making Sacrifices? – How much more productivity can you squeeze out of your day? Is such a squeeze sustainable? Productivity enthusiasts like me often talk about systems to maximize the amount you can do. But sometimes, it’s more helpful to look at trade-offs and make decisions about what to prioritize.
• Is Life Better When You’re Busy? – Research suggests we prefer activity to idleness, sometimes to the point that we busy ourselves unnecessarily. Is there a sweet spot for busyness that keeps up engaged but not overwhelmed?
• Is Modernity a Myth? – My review/explainer of Bruno Latour’s fascinating (and confusing) book We Have Never Been Modern . While postmodern philosophy always walks a line between profundity and nonsense, Latour’s writing kept me thinking for weeks—a sign of a good book!
• Digging the Well – We spend years digging deep wells of expertise to sustain our professional lives. But what do you do when the water runs dry?
• How I Do Research – Some thoughts on the research process from a non-expert researcher. How do you make sense of topics you’re unfamiliar with? How do you reach sound conclusions on issues that matter? Research is a lot of work, but it seems to be a skill worth learning.
• My 10 Favorite Free Online Courses – This list proved to be (by far) my most popular work of 2021. If you’re interested in learning something new in 2022, here’s a great place to start.
• The Craft is the End – Why do we strive to be successful? What if we never get the respect we feel we’re due? Some meditations on C. S. Lewis’s famous speech, “The Inner Ring,” and the goal of finding work we can be proud of.

I’ll be back next week with new writing. Happy holidays!

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From the Heart to Higher Education: The 2021 College Essays on Money

Each year, we ask high school seniors to send us college application essays that touch on money, work or social class. Here are five from this year’s incoming college freshmen.

Credit... Robert Neubecker

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By Ron Lieber

• June 18, 2021

When the most selective — or, even better, rejective — schools in the United States are accepting under 10 percent of the people pleading for a spot in the next freshman class, it eventually becomes impossible to know why any one person receives an offer, or why a student chooses a particular school.

So in this particularly unpredictable season — as we publish a selection of application essays about money, work or social class for the ninth time — we’ve made one small but permanent change: We (and they) are going to tell you where the writers come from, but not where they are headed.

Our overarching point in publishing their essays isn’t to crack the code on writing one’s way into Yale or Michigan, as if that were even possible. Instead, it’s to celebrate how meaningful it can be to talk openly about money and write about it in a way that makes a reader stop and wonder about someone else’s life and, just maybe, offers a momentary bit of enlightenment and delight.

One writer this year helps her mother find a new way of bringing joy into the world, while another discovers the cost of merely showing up if you’re a female employee. A young man reflects on his own thrift, while a young woman accepts a gift of ice cream and pays a price for it. Finally, caregiving becomes a source of pride for someone young enough to need supervision herself.

Each of the writers will make you smile, eventually. And this year in particular, we — and they — deserve to.

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