The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.
-Aldous Huxley
We continue our blog series on Denver Public Library’s Essay Core Collection with a celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AA.NH/PI). DPL’s Core Collections are essential essay collections that represent the breadth and diversity of our contemporary world. Let’s take a look at some titles by a few preeminent AA.NH/PI writers and editors in our Essays Core Collection, which is also available on Overdrive.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong
An important reckoning is explored in this vulnerable, slyly humorous, and devastating book. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, Hong exposes truths about America’s racialized consciousness. Minor Feelings is a major work.
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, by Esmé Weijun Wang
The Collected Schizophrenias was the winner of the 2016 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Honest and courageous, Wang reveals different parts of her diagnosis: schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. Through personal experience and research, she provides insight into how we understand and misunderstand schizophrenic disorders.
The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, asked 17 fellow refugee writers to tell their stories. Powerful and insightful, these essays give voice to what it means to experience loss, uncertainty and reimagine identity.
This Is One Way to Dance: Essays, by Sejal Shah
Wise and vulnerable, Shah examines what it means to be Indian in non-Indian places. Written over two decades, these twenty-five linked essays examine hypervisibility and invisibility of South Asian Americans.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling
Kaling’s conversational approach to writing is entertaining and fun, especially when she tackles her experiences in show biz. Witty, endearing and downright funny.
May is also Older Americans Month, check out this essential title!
Essays After Eighty, by Donald Hall
Poignant and amusing, Hall’s autobiography in verse and prose explores aging, debility and death. Yet, it is not all grim. Donald Hall was a former Poet Laureate of the United States.
Check out these titles and more from the Core Collections. You can see the other blog in the Essay Core Collection Series Almost Anything About Almost Everything below:
Essays In Remembrance: Almost Everything About Almost Anything
Essays by Women: Almost Everything About Almost Anything
This blog was written by guest contributor Gina W.
