You can use our professional academic writing services. We write all kinds of academic papers and we are not afraid of the tightest deadlines.

CALCULATE THE PRICE

Welcome to the paper writing service that offers the best essays for college and high-school students! We have affordable prices and always keep our promises.

Why Should You Trust Best Essays Writing Service?

You won’t surprise anyone with a service that provides clients with academic writing assistance. It is a common thing today. However, not many of them can offer you what we can. Our exceptional writers with a solid academic background will help you with any assignment. Our expertise is not limited to college papers. We assist with business plan writing, cover letters composing, math problems solving, etc. You will get the best essays fast and easily.

Academic Writing Skills

We are experienced enough to help you with any challenge you’ve met. We do our best to deliver a paper that will meet your expectations to the fullest. We listen to you and hear what you say. You can provide us with as many requirements as you wish, and we guarantee all of them will be considered. There is no issue if you’ll give us new inputs when your order is already in progress. We got used to work in a rapidly changing environment and can quickly adapt to new conditions. Your satisfaction is all that matters.

Business Writing Tasks

If you are an independent professional, a start-up leader, or a business owner, do not hesitate to order writing help from us. Though our main course is academic writing, our writers are talented to deliver the best essays for business purposes, too. No matter what kind of business paper you need to master. We deliver the best CVs, marketing plans, and email campaign letters. Bold and exciting writing is in our blood!

Proofreading and Editing

This is one more reason why our academic writing assistance is the best. Our writers are not just writers, but editors. And it is a well-known fact they have the highest standards for texts and the best sense of language. So, when work on your order is finished, professional editors check it and improve based on their experience and expertise. Our Quality Assurance team never let us approve the paper if there will be even a teeny-tiny mistake. Thus, if you have a completed paper and want someone to give it a professional look, we are ready to help you.

Flexible Essay Writing Service You’ve Looked For

Individual Approach is the main paragraph in our communication policy. We respect each of our clients equally and are confident everyone deserves the best. We never limit our customers with the rules they can’t accept. We know how to give you what you want and reach a win-win situation. Either it’s a deadline, or a price, everything could be negotiated.

Experts Are On Duty

We are a best essay writing service, but we do not practice the same approach working with different orders. We assign your paper to an expert in a certain field. Your math problem will be solved by a writer with a degree in Engineering, your literature review will be written by an experienced journalist, or a writer with a degree in Creative Writing. Having applied such an approach, we are able to deliver the best essays in no time.

Your Privacy is Our Top Priority

We guarantee your anonymity. No one will get your personal data except for your bank when proceeding with payment. We have established high standards in our security system and stick to them. It is your right to act anonymously and we not only respect that but do everything we can to uphold it.

Outstanding Customer Support

We work hard to make our customers happy and turn first-time clients into loyal ones. To achieve this goal, we have trained the most attentive and client-oriented customer support team. If you have any questions at any time of the day, they will provide you with a proper answer. Contact us by any channel you’d like. We are available 24/7.

100% Original Papers

We don’t tolerate double standards and never allow our writers to use or rewrite parts of the already delivered papers. All our essays are written from scratch. We invest great resources in our writers’ team improvement and get superb results. Our papers will pass any plagiarism checker and grammar tool as they are absolutely original and free of any kinds of mistakes.

Rapid Delivery

Urgency is our second name. We know that often students look for academic writing help exactly due to unexpected circumstances. Thus, we offer customers a three hours deadline and they can be sure they’ll get their papers on time. The writer starts working on your assignments as soon as you have provided the payment. We never let you down as we know how crucial our prompt assistance could be.

Guaranteed Revisions

We always keep our promises. If we told you our papers are the best, it is the truth. We work with passion to meet your expectations and see things through to the end. Thus, if something in the paper you’ve got doesn’t suit you, we’ll give you a free revision. It is a matter of our reputation and the impact we make on your life.

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BestEssay.com has a rating of 4.6 stars from 215 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. Reviewers satisfied with BestEssay.com most frequently mention customer service, paper writer, and good quality. BestEssay.com ranks 44th among Essay Writing sites.

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“Good quality of writing”

I needed an entrance essay for college and didn't know where to start. Of course, there are a lot of guides online, but writing is not among my strengths. So, I've ordered it at bestessay and they were able to supply me with the one.

“WORST WRITING SERVICE-SCAM”

I paid $150 only for the "writer" to not be capable of reading instructions and paying attention to detail. The first draft I received was written ENTIRELY incorrect, and the sources required were also not met. He revised again and the next draft was just as lazy and poorly written. The length was a page short, sources were not used, and directions were not followed. I then receive a message an hour before it is due stating the writer is incapable of completing my paper. STILL waiting on my refund- DO NOT waste your money! There are countless other reliable services, this is not one.

Reviews (215)

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1. Is BestEssays.com scam?

Since they deliver poor-quality papers and don't provide refunds, this company is a scam.

2. Is BestEssays.com reliable?

According to the low ratings from lots of BestEssays reviews, it is not a reliable paper writing service.

3. Is BestEssays.com legit?

The service is legit. Unfortunately, these guys are a part of a non-US company.

4. Is Bestessays.com cheap?

No, the prices are quite high.

5. Is Bestessays.com fraud?

No. But customer support's poor quality of work and lack of response raises some concerns.

6. Is Bestessays.com cheating?

The heavy plagiarism in my order suggests that they are cheating their customers.

7. Is Bestessays.com legal?

Yes, they are a legal company.

8. Is Bestessays.com trustworthy?

Based on my experience, I do not find them trustworthy.

9. Is Bestessays.com reliable?

No, I do not find them reliable based on my experience.

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BestEssays Review 2024

John Milovich

WE DO NOT RECOMMEND BestEssays TO OUR READERS

BestEssays is rated 1.85 by ScamFighter and is not on our TOP Writing Services

Table of contents

Executive summary.

BestEssays

Web reputation 1.85 Minimal deadline 3.0 Minimal price 19.30

Is Bestessays.com scam? In my professional experience as a student and ghostwriter, reviewing Bestessays Com has been an insightful journey. While the range of services offered is commendable, the lack of transparency regarding the qualifications and origins of their writers raises concerns. The ambiguity around whether the writers are native speakers is a significant drawback.

BestEssays is probably one of the oldest companies in the essay writing services market. It was launched in 1997 and has been providing services to the clients to this day. Bestessays com assures that it has a huge team of professional writers which consists of more than 1000 experts. However, right after this claim, the company states that they have more than 700 experienced writers from different English-speaking countries.

Bestessays Writers

In my quest to understand and evaluate Bestessays, I encountered several issues. The website's lack of clarity about the writers' backgrounds was a major concern. It's essential to know if the writers are native speakers or possess the language skills required for high-quality academic papers. This information remained elusive despite my efforts and perusing through various Bestessays.com reviews. Additionally, the website's design was far from intuitive, significantly detracting from the user experience.

Basic User Experience

My experience with Best Essays review began with navigating their website to place an order. The process was not as smooth as expected from a professional writing service. The site's interface was cluttered and not user-friendly, making finding the information I needed efficiently challenging.

Pros and Cons

  • The company exists over 20 years
  • A huge variety of services
  • Very high prices
  • Refund policy leaves much to be desired
  • Average quality

Types of Academic Services

Bestessays.com offers a wide array of services catering to various academic needs. This extensive range is a highlight in many Bestessays.com reviews. They provide typical writing services such as essays, term papers, research papers, and more specialized assistance like thesis and dissertation writing. Despite this variety, the site’s presentation of these services is somewhat cluttered, making navigating and understanding the full extent of their offerings challenging.

The Real Paper Quality

For my Bestessays.com review, I ordered a 7-page Environmental Economics research paper on inefficient natural resource allocation with specific sources and analytical depth instructions. Unfortunately, the final product was a letdown. The paper was riddled with basic grammatical errors and stylistic inconsistencies, indicating either a non-native English speaker or a lack of proper editing.

best essay.com

Furthermore, several key points from my instructions were overlooked or misunderstood, leading to a lack of depth in the analysis. Sources were also problematic, with several key references missing or incorrectly cited. This experience highlighted a significant gap in the quality control of Bestessays.com, as the paper delivered did not meet the academic standards required for such an assignment.

Cost Overview

Relevant prices.

Even though I’ve read some Bestessays reviews and I knew that the prices for their services are quite high, but I really didn’t expect that they would be that high! Approximately 20.50 dollars for just a 1-page essay with a deadline of 10 days. And keep in mind that it’s without any additional features. Two things surprised me the most. First of all, is that if you choose a UK writer it will make your work more expensive. Well, if you work in the market of the USA, the UK, and Australia, and have support there, then I guess there should also be writers from those countries. Then why does the UK style make my paperwork more expensive? And why don’t they have the option of the Australian style? The second thing is that if you want your work to be proofread by the editor, then you’ll have to pay additional 5 dollars. Maybe it’s logical, but I expected that they do proofreading anyway and that it should be included in the price.

The thing that I didn’t see in any Bestessay review, is that you cannot apply a discount of 15 % that you received as a newcomer only if your order costs more than 47 dollars. It will not be difficult to reach that amount considering the prices for the additional features, but anyway it doesn’t encourage newcomers to place the order.

New customers typically get a 15% discount on their first order if they contact support agents. There are also periodic promotions and discounts for returning customers, although the details and availability of these offers can be unclear and seem to change frequently.

Ordering Process

The ordering process at Bestessays.com is fairly standard yet somewhat cumbersome. Users navigate through web pages to select their desired service, fill in order details, and make payments. While the process is guided, the website's user interface can be confusing, making the overall experience less intuitive than expected.

Web Reputation

best essay.com

In my comprehensive analysis of Best Essays reviews, I examined feedback from various platforms, including Reddit, Quora, Sitejabber, Trustpilot, and other review aggregators. The consensus from these sources is predominantly negative. A recurring theme in these reviews is the poor quality of the papers provided. Many customers expressed dissatisfaction with the writing standards, noting that the papers were often poorly written, lacked depth, and did not adhere to the specified requirements.

best essay.com

Is It Reliable?

Regarding Bestessays reviews, my opinion is mixed. While the service offers many academic writing options and attractive discounts, the core reliability aspect is questionable. The prevalent negative feedback about paper quality and customer experience cannot be overlooked. Therefore, Bestessays.com does not consistently meet the reliability standards.

Bestessays.com asserts several guarantees to reassure its clients. They promise plagiarism-free content, insisting that all papers are original and tailored to the specific requirements of each order. Additionally, they guarantee confidentiality, ensuring that clients' personal and payment information remains secure.

As you can see, this Bestessays review reflects a service with potential but marred by significant shortcomings. The consistent negative feedback across various platforms suggests a systemic problem that needs addressing. Given these factors, it's difficult to recommend Bestessays.com as a reliable source for academic writing needs.

Why is ScamFighter a trusted source of information?

ScamFighter is a safe repository of facts. Formulated by a team of intellectuals and former ghostwriters who have a comprehensive grasp of the industry, ScamFighter is marked with an insider's point of view on academic writing services. Our writing services reviews are detailed and based on an exhaustive list of pre-determined criteria, enabling us to objectively evaluate service quality, reliability, and value. The skill and expertise of our team allow us to spot and highlight hidden details and subtleties that might be overlooked by an untrained eye, thus making our reviews thoughtful and informative. More than that, ScamFighter is guided by fairness and affordability so you can trust us!

BestEssays.com Review

bestessays review

Rating 5.4/10

Table Of Contents

Paper Quality

Bestessays.com has been providing academic writing services for more than 20 years. As with any long-living service, two things can happen to their business – they either grow to take one of the leading roles in the marketplace, or they stagnate and lose quality with clients. Unfortunately for BestEssays, the second scenario has become their reality. By chasing more clients and increasing revenues, they seem to have lost focus on quality. Their writing quality doesn’t satisfy average college paper requirements, which was noticed by me and by many other clients who left their feedback online.

Prices and Fees

bestessays.com prices

Service Review and Online reputation

bestessay reviews

Customer Support

Their customer support service is definitely not the best I have seen. Besides a complex interactive voice response system, which makes it very hard to talk with a real person, they don’t have any live chat option available. Also, they don’t work on weekends and on weekdays are open until 7 am only.

Types of Services

bestessays.com types of services

Ordering Process

bestessays ordering process

Offers and Extra Services

As mentioned, BestEssays is lacking first-order discounts or any customer-retention program, which would encourage returning customers and reward them for their loyalty. The company, though, provides an optional, but free-of-charge plagiarism report. Given some clients’ negative comments regarding paper originality, I don’t believe a plagiarism report is a viable option.

  • A variety of academic services to choose from
  • Over 20 years of operation on the custom essay market
  • Below average paper quality
  • Horrible customer support service
  • No customer-retention program
  • High prices

BestEssays may have a long history of providing custom academic services; however, they seem to have lost their customer focus along with their online reputation on the way. Avoid this service at all costs.

Is BestEssays a scam?

They are not a scam service as far as thousands of user reviews go. It is a real company with a long history of serving clients.

Is BestEssays trustworthy?

You can trust them to deliver an academic paper for you within the formatting and deadline requirements. The tricky part, though, is the quality of their work. I wouldn’t personally trust them with my important college paper and will always check the papers I buy with several plagiarism checking tools online.

Is BestEssays cheap?

They are not a cheap writing service. Their prices are well above the market average. If you want to get cheap custom writing help, you should be looking elsewhere.

Is BestEssays secure?

Multiple users reported issues with handling their personal information and financial transactions. Therefore, the use of extra caution when buying services from this company is advised (just as with any other online service).

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Absolutely terrible writers

Absolutely terrible writers. The writer just used my point sentences by adding a few words and stuck it into 11 slides, all mixed up, one slide didn't stick with the next...and charged 450.00 for it

Date of experience : February 22, 2024

I had an urgent writing requirement that I need and decided to avail their service. The writer perfectly did it that I did not have to worry about anything anymore. I was able to meet my deadline. The customer service was superb, they helped me so much and communicated with me until completion. I recommend this website, it will lessen your worries and provide you with quality work.

Date of experience : November 06, 2023

This company its NOT A LEGIT COMPANY . THEY USE THIS COMPANY FOR MONEY LAUNDERING ETC They use KIDS TO WRITE THEIR PAPERS THEY MADE ME FAIL SUBMITTING MY PAPER AND EVENTUALLY MY COURSE THEY MENTALLY ABUSED ME FOR 3 WEEKS THEN OFFERED ME CREDIT INSTEAD OF REFUND THEY DONT GIVE REFUND BECAUSE ONCE THEY USE YOUR MONEY THATS IT THEY DONT AFFORD REFUNDING IT BEAWARE OF THESE FRAUDERS

Date of experience : June 28, 2021

They helped me but It’s unfortunate they don’t give discounts

I used this assignment help to purchase an admissions paper primarily because I lacked the language skills. David, my author, was really helpful; he gave me plenty of relevant issues and listened closely to what I needed. He later delivered exactly what I was looking for. My only challenge, perhaps what’s preventing me from giving them a full 5 stars, is the fact they don’t give newbies a discount. They don’t even give discounts for large orders.

Date of experience : November 19, 2022

Excellent, even with short deadlines

I'm quite satisfied with the service provided, even though the difficulty of this assignment forced it to cost me a little extra. Kudos; you did a terrific job! What a lovely, expert workmanship! I appreciate you doing this task for me; without your assistance, I couldn't have done it as well! This team succeeded in finishing a superb paper despite a 4-hour constraint that I set! It's incredible.

Date of experience : August 28, 2022

You won't regret hiring them

I just started using their services, having heard about them from an acquaintance. The caliber of the assistance has really amazed me. I've explored other professional services, yet none of them can offer quality intellectual content as well as they could. Basically told, they went above and beyond my requirements and offered me more materials. Simply place your order with this writing service if you want your project completed flawlessly. You won't be sorry doing it.

Date of experience : October 26, 2022

Complex UI but great services

Superb service! I have a lot of difficulty with various topics since I'm a foreigner, which essentially makes me uncomfortable, apprehensive, and much less effective. I figured I could manage it on my own, but it wasn't until I purchased a handful of these papers that I was able to raise my marks. Excellent work and affordable cost. My only complaint is that as a foreign student, I found their website a little complex and complicated to use. I hope that they can improve this going into the future.

Date of experience : October 10, 2022

Beyond my expectations

It is without doubt the best essay writing company I've tried. I used academic writing websites before, and I was a real nightmare. I stumbled upon this website, when I needed a paper about Osama Bin Laden and placed an order here since found a lot of excellent reviews about this company. The team delivered my paper in time and it was even better than I expected.

Date of experience : April 11, 2022

They can handle any task

I am not good in some types of assignments, and Best essays are my life-savers. I had several assignments and didn’t do them correctly, so my girlfriend suggested contacting this team. They completed all my tasks with ease and I got an excellent discount for my first order. I am ordering more now, thanks!

Date of experience : April 29, 2022

Sports betting essay paper!!!!

Thank you for writing a sports betting papers for me. I didn't know that it is illegal in some countries. The content of the paper is unique and meets all quality standards. Nevertheless, the price was too high, since I required the paper by next day.

Date of experience : December 23, 2021

I am glad I landed on their website…

All week leading up to my final assessment, I was in dire need of paper assistance but lacked the funds for a large purchase. I called this service, and they worked with me to find the most reasonable pricing whilst also providing me with a top-notch assignment. I ended up with a perfectly done assignment and this was just at a fraction of the price I would have paid elsewhere. Thank you, fellas!

Date of experience : November 21, 2022

In time task completion

My task contained 5 questions about modern historical theories and I needed to support the point that these theories are fake. I stuck with writing since I don’t like such topics, I am more about facts supporting. This team delivered an excellent piece and completed this task for me.

Date of experience : July 12, 2022

I will be right back soon

I must save time to appreciate how efficient and quick the writing team in Best Essay is. I needed an essay "When is it time to get out of an abusive relationship?" for my psychology class and I had only two days before the due date. These guys delivered it with no issue and it was fantastic. I love the attention they paid to my order and planning to place another one today. Thank you!

Date of experience : April 25, 2022

Got a paper from them

I needed a paper covering how corporations should reward employees, apart from paying money for my business class, and since I was preparing for the interview, I ordered writing from this company. The writer covered the topic and delivered custom paper. There were few amendments, but overall quality was good.

Date of experience : June 26, 2022

Excellent citations

I used your service to get a large number of essays, all of which were of the greatest quality I'd ever seen. Thank you for your assistance. As long as I'm doing well in school, I'll continue to be a client of your company. It's a source of great pride for you that your researchers go out of their way to discover the most trustworthy sources to back up their claims.

Date of experience : January 21, 2022

Genuine writing team

Best essay is a trustworthy team that had never failed to deliver my tasks in time. Yet, I think they should be more creative in writing since some of my papers are really dull. Yet, the quality of writing is excellent and they are 100% original.

Date of experience : December 20, 2021

Surprisingly good paper

I am surprised with my paper about effects of feminism movement from this team. It was well-researched paper without any errors. Moreover, I liked the style of writing. The paper was engaging, written in friendly, yet, professional tone.

Date of experience : February 28, 2022

Exceptional pieces

Due to the fact that I work six days a week, it is quite tough for me to keep up with all of my responsibilities. As a consequence of your aid, I was able to finish a big number of papers on time. Their customer service representatives have been kind and helpful on every occasion. Apart from that, the papers have always been of excellent quality. Aside from that, my purchases were always delivered on time and without any issues on my part.

Date of experience : January 10, 2022

Can improve on writing quality

I gave this agency an acceptable score since they were on time and provided me with a well-written dissertation. Nonetheless, I believe they have to step up their game in terms of content excellence.

Date of experience : February 23, 2022

Knowledgeable authors

All in all, it was a terrific learning experience. While I was making my order, both the writer and the customer service agent went out of their way to assist me in every manner they could think of. The author was kind and responsive in his responses to my emails and messages. Ultimately, the job performed above and above my expectations, and I appreciate all of your efforts in this respect. Thank you very much for all of your assistance!

Date of experience : January 14, 2022

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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra, writing tips from the essay:, 2. charles d’ambrosio – documents, 3. e. b. white – once more to the lake, 4. zadie smith – fail better, 5. virginia woolf – death of the moth, 6. meghan daum – my misspent youth.

Many of us, at some point or another, dream about living in New York. Meghan Daum’s take on the subject differs slightly from what you might expect. There’s no glamour, no Broadway shows, and no fancy restaurants. Instead, there’s the sullen reality of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. You’ll get all the juicy details about credit cards, overdue payments, and scrambling for survival. It’s a word of warning. But it’s also a great story about shattered fantasies of living in a big city. Word on the street is: “You ain’t promised mañana in the rotten manzana.”

7. Roger Ebert – Go Gentle Into That Good Night

8. george orwell – shooting an elephant.

Even after one reading, you’ll remember this one for years. The story, set in British Burma, is about shooting an elephant (it’s not for the squeamish). It’s also the most powerful denunciation of colonialism ever put into writing. Orwell, apparently a free representative of British rule, feels to be nothing more than a puppet succumbing to the whim of the mob.

9. George Orwell – A Hanging

10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind.

In one of the greatest essays written in defense of free speech, Christopher Hitchens shares many examples of how modern media kneel to the explicit threats of violence posed by Islamic extremists. He recounts the story of his friend, Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses who, for many years, had to watch over his shoulder because of the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini. With his usual wit, Hitchens shares various examples of people who died because of their opinions and of editors who refuse to publish anything related to Islam because of fear (and it was written long before the Charlie Hebdo massacre). After reading the essay, you realize that freedom of expression is one of the most precious things we have and that we have to fight for it. I highly recommend all essay collections penned by Hitchens, especially the ones written for Vanity Fair.

11. Christopher Hitchens – The New Commandments

12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre.

While reading this fantastic essay, this quote from Slavoj Žižek kept coming back to me: “I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves”. I can bear the onus of happiness or joie de vivre for some time. But this force enables me to get free and wallow in the sweet feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. By reading this work of Lopate, you’ll enter into the world of an intelligent man who finds most social rituals a drag. It’s worth exploring.

13. Philip Larkin – The Pleasure Principle

14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death.

This essay reveals Freud’s disillusionment with the whole project of Western civilization. How the peaceful European countries could engage in a war that would eventually cost over 17 million lives? What stirs people to kill each other? Is it their nature, or are they puppets of imperial forces with agendas of their own? From the perspective of time, this work by Freud doesn’t seem to be fully accurate. Even so, it’s well worth your time.

15. Zadie Smith – Some Notes on Attunement

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

My imagination was always stirred by the scene of the solar eclipse in Pharaoh, by Boleslaw Prus. I wondered about the shock of the disoriented crowd when they saw how their ruler could switch off the light. Getting immersed in this essay by Annie Dillard has a similar effect. It produces amazement and some kind of primeval fear. It’s not only the environment that changes; it’s your mind and the perception of the world. After the eclipse, nothing is going to be the same again.

17. Édouard Levé – When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue

This suicidally beautiful essay will teach you a lot about the appreciation of life and the struggle with mental illness. It’s a collection of personal, apparently unrelated thoughts that show us the rich interior of the author. You look at the real-time thoughts of another person, and then recognize the same patterns within yourself… It sounds like a confession of a person who’s about to take their life, and it’s striking in its originality.

18. Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue

19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country.

In terms of style, this essay is flawless. It’s simple, conversational, humorous, and yet, full of wisdom. And when Vonnegut becomes a teacher and draws an axis of “beginning – end”, and, “good fortune – bad fortune” to explain literature, it becomes outright hilarious. It’s hard to find an author with such a down-to-earth approach. He doesn’t need to get intellectual to prove a point. And the point could be summed up by the quote from Great Expectations – “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip – such is Life!”

20. Mary Ruefle – On Fear

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

In this highly intellectual essay, Sontag fights for art and its interpretation. It’s a great lesson, especially for critics and interpreters who endlessly chew on works that simply defy interpretation. Why don’t we just leave the art alone? I always hated it when at school they asked me: “What did the author have in mind when he did X or Y?” Iēsous Pantocrator! Hell if I know! I will judge it through my subjective experience!

22. Nora Ephron – A Few Words About Breasts

This is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story about a young girl who waits in vain for her breasts to grow. It’s simply a humorous and pleasurable read. The size of breasts is a big deal for women. If you’re a man, you may peek into the mind of a woman and learn many interesting things. If you’re a woman, maybe you’ll be able to relate and at last, be at peace with your bosom.

23. Carl Sagan – Does Truth Matter – Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization

24. paul graham – how to do what you love.

How To Do What You Love should be read by every college student and young adult. The Internet is flooded with a large number of articles and videos that are supposed to tell you what to do with your life. Most of them are worthless, but this one is different. It’s sincere, and there’s no hidden agenda behind it. There’s so much we take for granted – what we study, where we work, what we do in our free time… Surely we have another two hundred years to figure it out, right? Life’s too short to be so naïve. Please, read the essay and let it help you gain fulfillment from your work.

25. John Jeremiah Sullivan – Mister Lytle

A young, aspiring writer is about to become a nurse of a fading writer – Mister Lytle (Andrew Nelson Lytle), and there will be trouble. This essay by Sullivan is probably my favorite one from the whole list. The amount of beautiful sentences it contains is just overwhelming. But that’s just a part of its charm. It also takes you to the Old South which has an incredible atmosphere. It’s grim and tawny but you want to stay there for a while.

26. Joan Didion – On Self Respect

Normally, with that title, you would expect some straightforward advice about how to improve your character and get on with your goddamn life – but not from Joan Didion. From the very beginning, you can feel the depth of her thinking, and the unmistakable style of a true woman who’s been hurt. You can learn more from this essay than from whole books about self-improvement . It reminds me of the scene from True Detective, where Frank Semyon tells Ray Velcoro to “own it” after he realizes he killed the wrong man all these years ago. I guess we all have to “own it”, recognize our mistakes, and move forward sometimes.

27. Susan Sontag – Notes on Camp

I’ve never read anything so thorough and lucid about an artistic current. After reading this essay, you will know what camp is. But not only that – you will learn about so many artists you’ve never heard of. You will follow their traces and go to places where you’ve never been before. You will vastly increase your appreciation of art. It’s interesting how something written as a list could be so amazing. All the listicles we usually see on the web simply cannot compare with it.

28. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance

29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster.

When you want simple field notes about a food festival, you needn’t send there the formidable David Foster Wallace. He sees right through the hypocrisy and cruelty behind killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lobsters – by boiling them alive. This essay uncovers some of the worst traits of modern American people. There are no apologies or hedging one’s bets. There’s just plain truth that stabs you in the eye like a lobster claw. After reading this essay, you may reconsider the whole animal-eating business.

30. David Foster Wallace – The Nature of the Fun

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

This is not an essay per se, but I included it on the list for the sake of variety. It was delivered as a commencement speech at The University of Toronto, and it’s about keeping the right attitude. Soon after leaving university, most graduates have to forget about safety, parties, and travel and start a new life – one filled with a painful routine that will last until they drop. Atwood says that you don’t have to accept that. You can choose how you react to everything that happens to you (and you don’t have to stay in that dead-end job for the rest of your days).

32. Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter

Read that one as soon as possible. It’s one of the most masterful and impactful essays you’ll ever read. It’s like a good horror – a slow build-up, and then your jaw drops to the ground. To summarize the story would be to spoil it, so I recommend that you just dig in and devour this essay in one sitting. It’s a perfect example of “show, don’t tell” writing, where the actions of characters are enough to create the right effect. No need for flowery adjectives here.

33. Terence McKenna – Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness

34. eudora welty – the little store.

By reading this little-known essay, you will be transported into the world of the old American South. It’s a remembrance of trips to the little store in a little town. It’s warm and straightforward, and when you read it, you feel like a child once more. All these beautiful memories live inside of us. They lay somewhere deep in our minds, hidden from sight. The work by Eudora Welty is an attempt to uncover some of them and let you get reacquainted with some smells and tastes of the past.

35. John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

A dead body at the bottom of the well makes for a beautiful literary device. The first line of Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name Is Red delivers it perfectly: “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well”. There’s something creepy about the idea of the well. Just think about the “It puts the lotion in the basket” scene from The Silence of the Lambs. In the first paragraph of Kingston’s essay, we learn about a suicide committed by uncommon means of jumping into the well. But this time it’s a real story. Who was this woman? Why did she do it? Read the essay.

37. Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook

38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries.

One of the greatest contributors to the knowledge about the human mind, Oliver Sacks meditates on the value of libraries and his love of books.

Noam Chomsky – The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile.

The life of Edward Said was a truly fascinating one. Born in Jerusalem, he lived between Palestine and Egypt and finally settled down in the United States, where he completed his most famous work – Orientalism. In this essay, he shares his thoughts about what it means to be in exile.

Richard Feynman – It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three…

Rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain.

I included it as the last one because it’s not really an essay, but I just had to put it somewhere. In this listicle, you’ll find the 21 most original thoughts of the high-profile cook, writer, and TV host, Anthony Bourdain. Some of them are shocking, others are funny, but they’re all worth checking out.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca – On the Shortness of Life

Bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The sense of style – by steven pinker, on writing well – by william zinsser, now immerse yourself in the world of essays, rafal reyzer.

Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

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Friday essay: ‘I know my ache is not your pain’ – disabled writers imagine a healthier world

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Creative Writing Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Andy Jackson received funding from RMIT University under their Writing the Future of Health Fellowship.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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There are many reasons why I shouldn’t be here. If you’d shown my ten-year-old self my life as it is now, he’d have been stunned, mostly because he half-expected an early death. My father, who had Marfan Syndrome , the genetic condition I have, died when he was in his mid-40s, when I was two, and the conventional medical wisdom of the time was that this was normal, almost expected.

Marfan is known as a “disorder of connective tissue”, meaning numerous systems of the body can be affected – the connective tissue of the heart, joints, eyes are liable to strain or tear. In my teens, I had multiple spinal surgeries, but there was always the spectre of sudden aortic dissection: a potentially life-threatening tear in the aorta, the body’s largest blood vessel. Like walking around under a storm cloud, never knowing if or when the lightning would strike.

If you’d shown my 20-year-old self my life now, he’d have said, well, I’m not disabled, not really, I mean, I’m not disadvantaged by my body, there’d be other people who really are. At that age, I felt profoundly stigmatised, faltering under the weight of other people’s intrusive attention, a different kind of lightning, that kept striking.

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My sense back then was that disability was about impairment. They use wheelchairs. They’re blind or deaf. They’re intellectually disabled. Not me. I just had a differently shaped body, which was other people’s problem, not mine. As if I could keep those things discreet.

Back then, in the films, television dramas and books I consumed, there were disabled characters, invariably marginal or two-dimensionally pathetic or tragic. Their existence was functional, a resource to be mined. Their bodies were metaphorically monumental, looming over the narrative, yet somehow hollow, without the fullness of agency. I certainly didn’t know any disabled authors.

This is an edited extract of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Patron’s Lecture, delivered at UniSA Creative’s Finding Australia’s Disabled Authors online symposium on Wednesday 25 September.

Becoming a writer within a community

My 35-year-old self would mostly be surprised at the distance I’ve travelled as a writer. From open mic poetry nights in Fitzroy and Brunswick, via publication in photocopied zines and established literary journals, onto my first book of poems (then more), grants, residencies, a PhD in disability poetics, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry – and now teaching creative writing at the University of Melbourne.

These, of course, are only the outward markers. What’s most potent for me is the sense that, in spite of my ongoing sense of dislocation and marginality, I do belong within a net of support and meaning-making.

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I’m part of a community of poets and writers. A community of disabled people and people with disabilities, people who know chronic illness, the flux of mental health, who know what it’s like to be othered. I also live as a non-Indigenous person on Dja Dja Wurrung country, whose elders have cared for their land, kept culture alive, and resisted colonisation and its brutal extractions.

An awareness of where we are situated, a felt sense of relationship with others like and unlike us, a consciousness of the histories and political forces that shape us, a hunch that our woundedness is not separate from the woundedness of the entire biosphere: none of this just happens automatically, though it emerges from a very subtle inner resonance.

It has to be attended to, nurtured with curiosity and empathy, within a community. Because disability – as a socially-constructed reality, and as an identity that is claimed – is not essentially a category, but a centre of gravity every body is drawn towards.

This may not be the conception of disability you’re used to.

Disability as human experience

The social model of disability is the idea that what makes someone disabled are the social, political, medical, institutional, architectural and cultural forces and structures. Stairs (for people using wheelchairs) and stares (for those who look, or move, or talk in a non-normative way, where normal is a kind of Platonic abstraction of what humans ought to be).

But disability is also a fundamental aspect of human experience, with its own magnetism or impersonal charisma. Disability is an unavoidable bedrock of being alive.

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There is a tension here, of course. Between disability as a dimension of discrimination, which creates barriers we want to dismantle, and disability as an inherent aspect of an embodiment that is precarious, mortal and relational.

I am here because some of the barriers that impeded me have been, if not removed, then softened, weakened. Shame, stigma, an internalised sense of being less-than, abnormal, sub-normal: these things are being slowly eroded. Not, fundamentally, through any great effort on my part, but through the accumulated efforts and energies of communities that have gone before me, and that exist around me.

How can we best flourish?

In late 2021, the Health Transformation Lab at RMIT University announced their Writing the Future of Health Fellowship . The successful writer would be paid for six months to work on a project of their choice. The call for applications emphasised innovation, creativity and collaboration. It invited a Melbourne writer to address the question: what does the future of health look like?

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I proposed a collaboration: an anthology of poems, essays and hybrid pieces by disabled writers. It will be published next week, as Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out on Disability .

I applied for the fellowship less than a year after the devastations of Australia’s Black Summer bushfires of 2019. Loss of lives, homes and livelihoods. Billions of animals dead or displaced. Smoke blanketed the sky and the trauma of it blanketed our lives. Then came COVID-19, which would kill millions worldwide. Its overwhelming burden was on poor and disabled bodies.

In Australia, 2020 was the year of lockdowns, social distancing and mask mandates, then vaccination, hope, resentment, disinformation, fear, fatigue. Quite quickly, it seems in retrospect, the talk was of “opening up”, “learning to live with it”. “The new normal” switched to “back to normal”. Everything felt scorched, fraught, ready to ignite again.

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Those of us with experience of disability, neurodivergent people, those who live with chronic illness, depression, anxiety, trauma (I could go on) – we have unique and profound expertise on what health actually is, in the deepest sense, and what kind of environments allow us to survive and flourish.

The future of health, for all of us, I felt, depended on the health systems and the wider society being diagnosed by disabled people. It depended on us being integrally involved in imagining genuinely therapeutic futures.

‘An almost utopian daydream’

My fellowship pitch was an almost utopian daydream: collective empowerment and imagination in an era of crisis, precarity and isolation. What the project required was a community: diverse and open to each other.

I wanted a range of personal and bodily experiences, places of residence, cultural backgrounds, genders, sexualities and ages. In the end, a collective of 23 writers coalesced – poets, essayists, memoirists, thinkers, activists and community workers, but, above all, writers.

All of us in this project have first-hand experience of disability, neurodivergence, chronic pain and/or mental illness. The labels mean something, but we’re much larger than them. Men, women, non-binary folk; people of varying ages and cultural backgrounds, some First Nations, most not; queer, straight, cis, not; shy, vociferous, uncertain, confident, tired, in flux. People from many different corners of this continent.

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Throughout 2022, we met in person and online. I called these meetings “workshops”. We looked at poems and essays together, thinking through the music and the bodily energies of the language. But these were really conversations: minimally guided, intensely honest and free-flowing conversations about what we have experienced, and what we know about how society creates and exacerbates disability.

We diagnosed the systems (health, bureaucratic, economic), and daydreamed utopian and practical therapeutic futures. In the process, across our diverse experiences, resonances and affinities sparked. Two people (or sometimes three or more) would begin to wonder what it might be like to write together with another particular person, around a certain theme or idea.

We wrote about the wild liberation of wheelchairs, the claustrophobia of shopping centres, the dehumanising tendencies of hospitals. We riffed on shame, ambivalence, love and sensitivity. We speculated about a future where consultancies run by people with autism and disability would help non-disabled people amplify their otherness, rather than the other way round. We interrogated the history and future of medical research. We thought together about racism, misogyny and eugenics. We sat beneath trees.

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Sensitive listening and speaking

Every collaboration, for us, was a painstaking exercise in listening and speaking. This unpredictable, uncontrollable, expansive process determined both the process and the outcome. It was shaped by the energies each writer brought to the encounter, which were in turn shaped by preoccupations, traumas, aspirations, sensitivities, aesthetic inclinations and curiosities.

The most subtle, unforced collaborations sometimes resulted in poems in one coherent voice. The most intense, difficult collaborations sometimes led to two-column poems, with stark white space between them. This is as it should be. In any conversation, a burgeoning intimacy often makes our differences both more apparent, more significant, and yet also a little less obstructive.

I know my ache is not your pain, which is not their suffering. Why do I think myself alone? I am trying to quieten this murmur in my bones, so I can listen. – Gemma Mahadeo & Andy Jackson, from the poem Awry

In one collaboration, thinking of a spine that is not straight and a sexuality that is not straight, thinking of how we navigate public spaces differently and yet similarly, we each wrote a few lines of poetry each, until we had what felt like an entire poem. We then embarked on a process of editing, each time removing those elements of the piece that made it seem like two distinct voices. Our voices almost merged.

I extend my hand-cane hybrid towards the ground in front of me like a diviner – this path, this body, not the only crooked things… We yearn for the possibilities of another city, another body as we fall, knee-first onto the blunt fact of queer promise. – Bron Bateman & Andy Jackson from the poem Betrayal

In another collaboration, I was aware the other writer had experienced traumatic abuse, so I soon felt that when writing together – in a way that would not just be respectful but useful, for us both and for the poem – our voices would have to be distinct.

To dominate or erase another’s words, even with good intentions or under some pretence of “improving the poem”, would have been precipitous ground. The poem we ended up writing together was composed of two parallel voices, two wings. The air around them, and between us, held us up.

Assure child they are not at fault.   Refuse to be absolved of blame. Find the subliminal rhymes.   Broken as open. Other as wisdom.

– Leah Robertson & Andy Jackson, from the poem Debris

Rigour and care

Each collaboration had its own particular questions and dilemmas. Each one required rigour and care, patience and courage. There were many awkward little stumbles and pauses. Yet the process was also profoundly liberating. It felt like someone had opened a window, so that a stifling room finally had air and outlook.

My sense, too, was that with the windows flung open, those outside our world could see in, might begin to more deeply appreciate the innumerable ways bodies are marginalised. That readers of all kinds would see their own predicaments connected to ours. Disability as one dimension of injustice, a dimension that reminds us of the ground we share, flesh and earth. Disability as gravitational force.

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There is something in the collective political and social atmosphere that suggests collaboration, working together, especially with people outside our usual circle, is either anathema or too difficult.

Think of any of the crises that are front of mind at the moment – the dialogue around the Voice referendum and the fallout from its defeat , the fraught process of ensuring a just transition away from fossil fuels , the long histories and cycles of war and revenge across the globe. You could even include your own intimate cul-de-sacs of unresolved conflict.

Corporate tech algorithms amplify our tribal attachments, assume and encourage our binarism, our quick, unthinking reactions. The blinkers are on, and are being tightened.

This is not, to state the obvious, desirable or in any way sustainable. Perhaps this is why, in the last five to ten years, there has been an increasing number of collaborative writing projects. Against the tide of hesitation and mistrust, a felt need to work together, within and across identities.

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I’m thinking of Woven , the anthology of collaborative poetry by First Nations writers from here and other lands, edited by Anne Marie Te Whiu. John Kinsella’s careful and ethical collaborative experiments with Charmaine Papertalk-Green, Kwame Dawes and Thurston Moore.

Then there’s Audrey Molloy and Anthony Lawrence’s intensely lyrical and sensitive conversation in Ordinary Time . And Ken Bolton and Peter Bakowski’s four recent collaborative books , which contain an array of darkly humorous fictional and fictionalised characters. This is only the poetic tip of the iceberg of recent collaborations.

Writers are one group of people who are tuning in to the need to go beyond the isolation or echo chambers. They know that the stories we are told – the need to be self-reliant and independent, the impetus to be suspicious of the other, or even that sense of inferiority that makes us feel disqualified from contributing – aren’t carved in stone. Or if they are, the persistent drip and flow of water can do its liberatory, erosive (and constructive) work.

We have, after all, only survived as a species and as communities through collaboration and mutual support.

Of course, we know there are countless collaborations currently being orchestrated by malicious agents: fascists, racists, misogynists, cynical corporate shills astroturfing against essential urgent climate action, even (to some degree) the reflexive social-media pile-ons. People are always working together in some way, deeply connected and inter-responsive. Collaboration in itself is not some utopian panacea.

Disabled collaboration

So I want to suggest that only a particular kind of collaboration can be properly transformative, humanising and grounding. It’s a collaboration of deep attentiveness and mutual exposure: a way of being together in which we set our certainties and fears aside, to be present to the other, to allow the other to be themselves, and to be open to the otherness in ourselves, an encounter which sensitises us to the complexities and bodiliness of injustice.

Let’s call it disabled collaboration.

Let me explain. As a disabled person, you are constrained, walled out of important social spaces: there are only steps into the workplace, the performance isn’t translated, or the shop is non-negotiable sensory overload. Even if you do manage to enter these spaces, it is made clear to you that you don’t really belong. They might stare at you, or signal their discomfort with silence or overcompensation. (And, yes, the shift to second-person is deliberate.)

Unless you give up – and which of us would not admit to giving up sometimes, or in some part of ourselves? – you spend a lot of energy proposing, asking, suggesting, pleading, demanding. You know what you need to be able to live a life of nourishment, connection, pleasure. You speak, in your own voice, out of your particular situation, from across the barriers.

Perhaps disability is really essentially about this giving voice. About constantly having to express what is unheard – or perhaps sometimes unhearable – by the broader society.

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This isn’t about transmitting thoughts or ideas. This is essentially a cry for connection, for help. For solidarity, allyship, change. What you’re after is collaboration: two or more people bringing their resources to bear upon a human situation, which may have fallen heavily on one person, but hovers over us all. Disabled people know this territory intimately. We regularly share much-needed information, resources, concern and time with each other.

This kind of collaboration, by definition, cannot assume an equality of voice, mode of operation or capacity. It is predicated on learning about difference and then responding to it: whether through listening, care work, protest or support.

This collaboration acknowledges and resists disadvantage, isolation and enforced voicelessness. It’s the kind of orientation towards another person that, I want to suggest, is exactly what might help us respond properly to the multiple, intersecting crises we find ourselves in.

It’s a listening not only to the concerns and experiences of the other, but an ambition to adapt to their particular way of expressing themselves.

To be clear, I’m not saying disabled people have any special talent for collaboration. We can be as bitter, isolationist, selfish or stubborn as any non-disabled person. In fact, there are aspects to being disabled that can encourage suspicion towards others, a scepticism that at times affords you the space to assess risk.

Can I trust this person with my needs, my life? It’s a caution that is understandable, and useful, but it can also keep us isolated. The cycle of othering depends on those othered doing some of the work, thinking this is all I deserve , or the perpetual doubtful thought of “maybe next time”.

On top of that, there are intersections of injustice that are particularly resistant. They don’t dissolve in the presence of collaboration, but require immense effort to shift.

In facilitating this project, I found that the most stubborn dividing factors were class and race. There are individualist, neoliberal dynamics at the core of funding guidelines and in our lives generally. Writing and publishing remain fields still dominated by white, middle-class connections and aesthetics.

When we sit down to write or work together, these things do not disappear. When writers are paid for their work, it does not mean the same thing for each person.

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Throughout this project, I have asked myself a number of questions. How do I, as a funding recipient, ensure that my collaborators are not exploited or taken for granted? What assumptions do I carry, invisibly, about the merits of particular voices? Should I step back to give more space to Indigenous writers, culturally and linguistically diverse writers, queer writers? How do we speak together within a poem or essay in a way that reaffirms common cause without diminishing the very real differences?

These difficult questions have not been resolved. Still, their intractability really only reinforces my wider point. We need to engage together in a way that is predicated on difference, exposure, vulnerability and mutual support. If disability is the imprint or shadow of bodily injustice, then collaborating in a disabled way, consciously, can radically expand our understanding of our shared predicament.

What happens within the process of disabled collaboration is akin to the words in Sarah Stivens and Jasper Peach’s poem, Crack & Burn:

Different bodies with the same fears, different aches with the same stories Our brains tell us that we’re alone, but we know not to believe them … When we gather in numbers it’s impossible to feel less than because all I see – everywhere I look – is raging grace and powerful repose.

The experience foreshadows, in a small but potent way, the future we wish to live in.

What might disabled collaboration achieve? The poem Coalescent, written by Beau Windon, myself, Michèle Saint-Yves, Robin M Eames and Ruby Hillsmith, suggests a hopeful answer:

overturning the old regime of normalcy for something strange / / something glorious / / something new
  • Collaboration
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The American Abyss

A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.

The police forced the crowd out of the Capitol building after facing off in the Rotunda, Jan. 6, 3:40 p.m. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson/VII, for The New York Times

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By Timothy Snyder

  • Published Jan. 9, 2021 Updated Dec. 28, 2021

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When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell , indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

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BestEssay

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best essay.com

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The Payment Process

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First time here?

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IMAGES

  1. Essay Service

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  3. Bestessays.com Review

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  4. Pay 4 Essay Online: How to Find the Best Essay Writing Services on the

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  5. BestEssays.com Review: Providing Top Academic Papers Since 1997

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  6. BestEssays.com Review 2023: Services, Discounts, Prices, and Benefits

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  13. Finally! Real BestEssays Review (2024)

    Bestessays.com offers a wide array of services catering to various academic needs. This extensive range is a highlight in many Bestessays.com reviews. They provide typical writing services such as essays, term papers, research papers, and more specialized assistance like thesis and dissertation writing. Despite this variety, the site's ...

  14. College Essay Writing Service With Pro Writers

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    BestEssays.com Review . Rating 5.4/10 Visit Site Table Of Contents Paper Quality. Bestessays.com has been providing academic writing services for more than 20 years. As with any long-living service, two things can happen to their business - they either grow to take one of the leading roles in the marketplace, or they stagnate and lose quality ...

  17. Read Customer Service Reviews of bestessay.com

    Their customer service representatives have been kind and helpful on every occasion. Apart from that, the papers have always been of excellent quality. Aside from that, my purchases were always delivered on time and without any issues on my part. Date of experience: January 10, 2022.

  18. 40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

    1. David Sedaris - Laugh, Kookaburra. A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs…. This is one of the top essays of the lot. It's a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what's most important in life.

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  22. Crafting Your Masterpiece: Secrets to a Standout US College Essay

    Listen to this episode from The Find Your Best Future Podcast on Spotify. In this highly anticipated episode of the 'Find Your Best Future' podcast, hosts Neil and Jeremy unveil the secrets to writing a standout US college essay that captures the hearts and minds of admissions officers. Drawing from their wealth of experience in guiding students through the college application process, they ...

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