Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays

by Eula Biss

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

814.6

Genres

All Topics

Nonfiction

Publication

Graywolf Press (2009), Edition: Original, Paperback, 208 pages

Description

"Acclaimed for its frank and fascinating investigation of racial identity, and reissued on its ten-year anniversary, Notes from No Man's Land begins with a series of lynchings, ends with a list of apologies, and in an unsettling new coda revisits a litany of murders that no one seems capable of solving. Eula Biss explores race in America through the experiences chronicled in these essays--teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting from an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and rereading Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. What she reveals is how families, schools, communities, and our country participate in preserving white privilege. Notes from No Man's Land is an essential portrait of America that established Biss as one of the most distinctive and inventive essayists of our time."--Back cover.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member kylljoi

Eula Biss claimed during a reading at New Mexico State University that she did not write poetry. She's wrong. The way these Americana essays read make them lyrical. Should you have the chance to see her read or lecture I would encourage you to attend. She is mesmerizing in person.

8 more

LibraryThing member twonickels

These essays pack a punch, particularly the first one that starts as a straightforward essay about telephone poles - until you hit a list of black men who were lynched off of telephone poles. It’s like hitting a wall. I think it’s really hard for most white people to look at their own life

through the lens of racism in America, and most, quite frankly, choose not to. To make it public like this - Ms. Biss is a brave woman and a wonderful writer.

Show Less

LibraryThing member jellyfishjones

I picked up this book because it was selected as the University of Kansas's inaugural "Common Book" read. I was also encouraged by the enthusiastic review from Sherman Alexie, whose writing I also enjoy. This is definitely an insightful, thought-provoking, and well-crafted collection of essays, but

also bit uneven. I believe this stems from Biss's use of two distinct essay styles: one, a more traditional narrative approach in which the ideas are fleshed out and woven into a larger cohesive point, and another format which I call verbal montage. Here Biss simply presents small prose snippets, each creating a specific image, one after the other. It is up to the reader try to process this chain of images into a more cohesive narrative. While I admire her willingness to stretch beyond the traditional style, I unfortunately found the effect to be, at best, disjointed or unclear, and at worst, ham-handed. At times it was like the literary equivalent of watching someone's travel slides out of order with limited or no commentary. However, highlights like "Goodbye to All That", "Black News", and "Is this Kansas" more than make up for the one-offs. Overall, a worthwhile read.

Show Less

LibraryThing member rivkat

Essays about whiteness, and the precarious ways in which white Americans play out their guilt and denial. Some great moments in here, although some of the essays are too short to work up a real head of steam. Also some real shockers, as when Biss talks about starting out to write an essay about

telephone poles and then changing when so many of the newspaper stories she found using the words in the first few decades of the twentieth century were about lynchings.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Maiasaura

This is a heartbreaking, necessary book. I rarely cry when reading, but Eula Biss had me bawling. Her writing is gorgeous; her topics, wrenching. A must-read on the topic of racism in America.

LibraryThing member gregorybrown

I kinda seesawed on this one, largely depending on how fractured her storytelling was. The best essays cover race in a deeply personal yet informed way, but without a strong subject to animate an essay, she kinda lapses back into pointillist storytelling that tries to coax deeper meaning out of a

mishmash of anecdotes. There's (rightly) a backlash against the myth of a singular MFA style, but goddamn, Biss doesn't help matters by going into classic University of Iowa lyrical-realist style at every opportunity she gets. Though her prose is almost always great, sometimes it just disguises meaningless nonsense. When she's good, she's GOOD—but that's not the case far too often.

Show Less

LibraryThing member b.masonjudy

Notes from No Man's Land is an elegant collection of essays. Biss has a sharp intellectual insight that she applies to her experiences intertwined with issues of race in America. The book is divided into parts by location and I found this construction to be helpful in following Biss through her own

discoveries. Her use of form is particularly striking as all the threads in each piece cohere and support the idea of the essay, this is particularly striking in "Relations."

Show Less

LibraryThing member jshttnbm

One of the best books of essays I've ever read. Really stunning. "Is This Kansas" and others manage at once to be one of the most lucid and insightful essays I've read maybe ever. I understand Sherman Alexie's judgment, that it manages to be "so wildly wrong and right" at the same time, but found

myself agreeing more than disagreeing with Biss.

This is the kind of book that I see myself returning to again and again.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Smokler

As beautiful as you can possibly imagine an essay collection about race, crime and our collective responsibility to one another as Americans can be. When you think Baldwin or Didion or Fadiman, now also think Biss. I will be giving copies of this magical book to everyone.

Fewer