The Best American Essays 2011

by Edwidge Danticat

  Afterward, I hug each of the body-washers and thank them deeply for their help. Although Dadee is not exactly my relative, I feel as though these women have done me a huge personal favor, expecting nothing in return. When I ask Marfani why she has participated in this custom more than thirty times in her fifty years, she replies: “It’s our obligation. And there is so much reward from God . . . One day I will also be lying there, and somebody will do this for me.” She started as a teenager in Pakistan, assisting when her grandmother and aunt passed away. She encourages younger women to volunteer or just watch, because this knowledge needs to be passed on.

  We all then raise our hands and pray, asking God to forgive Dadee’s sins, to give her the best in the next life. I inwardly alternate between speaking to God and speaking to Dadee. I ask God to welcome her; I wish Dadee good luck on this ultimate pilgrimage. Islam teaches us that after the soul is removed from the body, it briefly faces God to learn its fate, then is returned to the body while on its way to the grave. There it awaits its full reckoning on the Day of Judgment. Though Dadee is no longer of this world, she can continue to earn blessings based on what she has left behind—through righteous offspring who pray for her forgiveness, through knowledge that she has spread to others, or through charitable work whose effects outlast her.

  I pray for Dadee, and I also apologize to her for a mistake she doesn’t know I nearly made. In today’s mail, after the funeral, Dadee’s family will receive my hand-addressed invitation to her for a wedding reception hosted by my parents. Earlier this week, I had argued with my brother over the unnecessary expense of mailing separate invitations to multiple family members at the same address. I had considered just sending a joint one. In the end, how grateful I am that I did it his way. Of course you deserve your own invitation, Dadee, after flying across the world to witness your granddaughter’s wedding.

  I ask God one last time to have mercy on her soul. As I pick up my purse and turn to leave the room, I address my final words to both of them: “Innaa lillaahi wa-innaa ilaihi raje’oon.” To God we belong, and to God we return.

  Contributors’ Notes

  HILTON ALS is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He also writes for the New York Review of Books.

  MISCHA BERLINSKI is the author of Fieldwork: A Novel.

  KATY BUTLER, a 2004 finalist for a National Magazine Award, has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, Mother Jones, Salon, Tricycle, and other magazines. She was born in South Africa and raised in England, and came to the United States with her family at the age of eight. “Everything Is Holy,” her essay about nature worship, Buddhism, and ecology, was selected for Best Buddhist Writing 2006. In 2009 she won a literary award from the Elizabeth George Foundation, administered by Hedgebrook, a colony for women writers where she was a resident. “What Broke My Father’s Heart” was named a “notable narrative” by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, won a first-place award from the Association of Health Care Journalists, and was named one of the 100 Best Magazine Articles of All Time. Butler has taught narrative nonfiction at Nieman Foundation conferences and memoir writing at Esalen Institute. Her current book project is Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A Journey Through Old Age and New Medicine to be published in 2013. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  STEVEN CHURCH is the author of The Day After the Day After: My Atomic Angst, Theoretical Killings: Essays and Accidents, and The Guinness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record (winner of the 2006 Colorado Book Award). His stories and essays have been published in Agni, Fourth Genre, Brevity, The Pinch, Wag’s Revue, Colorado Review, North American Review, Waccamaw, The Pedestrian, and many other places. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State and is a founding editor of the literary magazine The Normal School.

  PAUL CRENSHAW’S stories and essays have appeared in The Best American Essays 2005, Shenandoah, North American Review, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and South Dakota Review, among others. He teaches writing and literature at Elon University. “After the Ice” is one of a collection of essays set mainly in the writer’s hometown in Arkansas.

  TOI DERRICOTTE, a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, has published four books of poems, The Empress of the Death House, Natural Birth, Captivity, and Tender, winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, as well as a memoir, The Black Notebooks, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. She is the cofounder of Cave Canem, the workshop/retreat for African American poets. Her most recent book of poetry, The Undertaker’s Daughter, will be out in October.

  MEENAKSHI GIGI DURHAM’S short stories, essays, and scholarly articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. She is the author of The Lolita Effect and coeditor of Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works. She is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, where she has taught since 2000. She is currently at work on an academic book, a variety of essays and short stories, and a novel.

  BERNADETTE ESPOSITO learned to investigate air disasters at the NTSB Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia. Her essays have been winners of or finalists for a Pushcart Prize, the University of New Orleans Writing Contest, the Plonsker Prize, and a Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. She is finishing a collection of essays on plane crashes and teaching math in Laramie, Wyoming.

  CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his international bestseller and National Book Award nominee, God Is Not Great. His most recent book is a memoir, Hitch-22.

  PICO IYER is the author of two novels and seven works of nonfiction, including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, and, most recently, The Open Road. An essayist for Time magazine since 1986, he also writes frequently for the New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and many others. His next book, an extended essay on fathers, Graham Greene, and hauntedness, The Man Within My Head, comes out in the spring of 2012.

  VICTOR LAVALLE is the author of a collection of stories, Slapboxing with Jesus, and two novels, The Ecstatic and Big Machine, for which he won the Shirley Jackson Award, the American Book Award, and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He is a 2010 Guggenheim Award winner and an assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. About “Long Distance” he says: “This essay actually came about when I was asked to write about my life after having lost a great deal of weight. And yet, when I sat down to work, all I could do was return to that time when I was much heavier and deeply unhappy. Why? I sure didn’t miss those days. And yet, I felt I couldn’t write about my present without touching on that past. But, of course, I never reach the true present in the essay. Maybe I still don’t know how to talk about a life with greater happiness. Or I’m still trying to break free from the romance of misery. That has destroyed better writers than me.”

  CHARLIE LEDUFF was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his contributions to a New York Times series, “How Race Is Lived in America.” The author of two books, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts and US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man, he has written and hosted shows for the Discovery Channel and the BBC. His upcoming memoir is titled Detroit: An American Autopsy.

  CHANG-RAE LEE is the author of four novels: Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and most recently, The Surrendered, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Princeton University.

  MADGE MCKEITHEN has written essays that have been published in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and online. Her first book, Blue Peninsula: Esse
ntial Words for a Life of Loss and Change, was published in 2006. Born and raised in North Carolina, she moved to New York City in 2003 and began teaching in the Writing Program at the New School, work she will continue online while teaching in person in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

  CARYL PHILLIPS is the author of nine novels (The Final Passage, A State of Independence, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, The Nature of Blood, A Distant Shore, Dancing in the Dark, and In the Falling Snow), four books of nonfiction (The European Tribe, The Atlantic Sound, A New World Order, and Foreigners), and four stage plays (Strange Fruit, Where There Is Darkness, The Shelter, and Rough Crossings). Besides several screenplays, he has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he currently is a professor of English at Yale University. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Colour Me English.

  BRIDGET POTTER was born in Brompton-on-Swale, Yorkshire, and came to the United States as a teenager in 1958. She spent the first forty years of her career in television, beginning as a secretary, then as a producer and an executive, including fifteen years as senior vice president of original programming at HBO. In 2007 she earned a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University. This year she will complete an MFA in nonfiction, also from Columbia, where she has been an instructor in the University Writing Program. She is currently working on her first book, a memoir/social history of the 1960s, from which her essay “Lucky Girl” is adapted. She has two grown daughters and lives in Manhattan and Wassaic, New York.

  LIA PURPURA’S recent books include On Looking a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction, and King Baby (poems), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award. Her awards include NEA and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart Prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and the Ohio State University Press Award in Poetry, among others. Recent poems and essays appear in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, and The New Yorker, and her new collection of essays, Rough Likeness, will be out in January 2012. She is writer in residence at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.

  RACHEL RIEDERER has written for The Nation, Science, and The Rumpus, among other publications. She holds a BA from Harvard and an MFA from Columbia, where she taught academic writing. She is currently at work on a book of travel narrative and environmental reportage about Lake Victoria.

  PATRICIA SMITH is the author of five books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and The Best American Poetry 2011. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. Currently she is a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island and is on the faculty of both Cave Canem and the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.

  ZADIE SMITH is the author of three novels, White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), and On Beauty (2005), which won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009) and the editor of a story collection, The Book of Other People (2007).

  SUSAN STRAIGHT has published seven novels, including Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the companion novels A Million Nightingales and Take One Candle Light a Room, which follow a family from slavery in Louisiana to contemporary life in California. Her new novel, Between Heaven and Here, is forthcoming. She has written essays for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Believer, The Oxford American, Harper’s Magazine, Salon, and other publications.

  CHRISTY VANNOY writes an ongoing column of stories for McSweeneys. net and is currently working on her first book. She lives in New York City.

  JERALD WALKER is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L. L. Win-ship Award for Nonfiction and named a Best Memoir of the Year by Kirkus Reviews. His essays have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Creative Nonfiction, The Harvard Review, Mother Jones, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, The Best African American Essays, and twice before in The Best American Essays. Walker is an associate professor of creative writing at Emerson College. “Unprepared” is from a collection of essays in progress.

  RESHMA MEMON YAQUB wouldn’t even be fit to write a grocery list were it not for her guardian editors: Michelle Gaps, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Lynda Robinson, Betty Wong, Bonnie Miller Rubin, Stephen Franklin, Carol Kleiman, Diane Debrovner, Laszlo Domjan, John Dowd, Sydney Trent, Sally Lee, Fred Hiatt, John Koten, Dan Ferrara, Tom Nawrocki. Writers she adores to the point of having pretend conversations in her head with them: Christiane Northrup, Brian Doyle, Lisa Kogan, Anne Lamott, Justin Halpern, Iris Krasnow, Michael Pollan, Louise Hay. Her stories owe many glorious plot twists to Zain, eleven, and Zach, seven. Ditto their dad (Amer) and grandparents (Ali, Razia, Muhammad, Nasreen). Costars: Sophie, Sana, Yousef, and Maryam. Miss Yaqub lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Her next project is an investigation into the whereabouts of two missing people: Mr. Right and Ms. Memoir Literary Agent. Sightings may be reported to her via Facebook.

  Notable Essays of 2010

  SELECTED BY ROBERT ATWAN

  MARILYN ABILDSKOV

  The Summer of Barbeques, Hotel Amerika, Spring.

  ANDRÉ ACIMAN

  My Monet Moment, Condé Nast Traveler, September.

  DANIEL AKST

  America: Land of Loners?, Wilson Quarterly, Summer.

  MARCIA ALDRICH

  My Dog Anubis, Northwest Review, vol. 48, no. 2.

  SUE ALLISON

  Dream Work, Harvard Review, no. 38.

  SUSANNE ANTONETTA

  Hosts, Image, Spring.

  JACOB M. APPEL

  Judy & Malcolm: Maybe a Love Story, Lake Effect, Spring.

  CHRIS ARTHUR

  Level Crossing, New Hibernia Review, Summer.

  ALLISON BACKOUS

  Lament, Image, Fall.

  PHYLLIS BARBER

  The Knife Handler, Agni, no. 71.

  WENDY BARKER

  Let’s Party, Cerise Press, Summer.

  KIM BARNES

  On Language: A Short Meditation, Fugue, Winter/Spring.

  RICK BASS

  The Burning Present, Tricycle, Winter.

  GREG BATHON

  An Incident on the Mysore Road, Fifth Wednesday, Spring.

  ELIF BATUMAN

  Kafka’s Last Trial, New York Times Magazine, September 26.

  WILLIAM BAUDE

  Last Chance on Death Row, Wilson Quarterly, Autumn.

  RICHARD BAUSCH

  How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons, Atlantic, October.

  JESSICA BENKO

  Mother of God, Child of Zeus, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall (online).

  ABBIE J. BERGDALE

  Stuck Town, Gargoyle, no. 56.

  AKEEL BILGRAMI

  On Miscellany, Raritan, Spring.

  LUCIENNE S. BLOCH

  365 New Words a Year: October, North American Review, Summer.

  DEIRDRE BONIFAZ

  Letters from Salinger, Massachusetts Review, vol. 51, no. 4.

  JOE BONOMO

  Occasional Prayer, Fourth Genre, Spring.

  BARRIE JEAN BORICH

  Navigating Jazz, Indiana Review, Winter.

  VICTOR BROMBERT

  Virginia Woolf—“Death is the Enemy,” Hudson Review, Autumn.

  JAMES S. BROWN

  Riverboat Pilot, Sewanee Review, Fall.

  JACK BUSHNELL

  The Swallows of Selborne, Gettysburg Review, Spring.

  MARY CAPPELLO

  Squalor, Hotel Amerika, Fall.

  JOY CASTRO

  Hip Joints, Indiana Review, Winter.


  VERONICA CHAMBERS

  Small Wonder, Vogue, May.

  KATHERINE LIEN CHARIOTT Daughters Made of Dust (Collateral Damage), TLR, Spring.

  ALEXANDER CHEE

  I, Reader, Morning News, November 29 (online).

  CAROL CLAASSEN

  Terminal Punctuation, Pinch, Spring.

  MARISA P. CLARK

  Here Come the Brides, Apalachee Review, no. 60.

  TOM COAKLEY

  How to Speak about the Secret Desert Wars, Fourth Genre, Spring.

  TA-NEHISI COATES

  The Littlest Schoolhouse, Atlantic, July/August.

  GARNETT KILBERG COHEN

  Alzheimer’s Daughter, PMS, no. 10.

  MICHAEL COHEN

  On Not Being E. B. White, Kenyon Review, Fall.

  THOMAS J. COTTLE

  Our Thoughts and Our Prayers, Antioch Review, Spring.

  LISA COUTURIER

  Dark Horse, Orion, July/August.

  M. EILEEN CRONIN

  In Annie’s Hands. Third Coast, Spring.

  HAL CROWTHER

  In Defense of Straight-Chuters, Blackbird, Spring.

  J. R. CRUTCHFIELD

  Sirens, Epoch, vol. 59, no. 1.

  JOHN D’AGATA

  What Happens There, Believer, January.

  MICHAEL DANKO

  Red, Tusculum Review, no. 6.

  ED DANTE

  The Shadow Scholar, Chronicle Review, November 19.

  ALAIN DE BOTTON

  Improvable Feasts, Harper’s, August.