Cover by Reagan Freeman on Unsplash
Robert Atwan, a man I had never heard of til I decided to write and compile these, once said the essay is an undervalued genre that has resulted in a “sharply skewed canon, [and] the neglect of many important works. Robert might as well have sent a text straight to my DMs. I have never intentionally read essays in all my life, despite the fact that one could argue I write many personal essays on my blog. I decided it would not be the worse thing in the world to read a few more essays. Of course, I am using essay loosely here to mean shortform non-fiction works about a particular subject – be it blogposts, articles, editorials, personal essays etc. Here’s a few I’ve read and liked:
- I knew my father in glimpses — Tolu Daniel
- Start/Continue – Rémy Ngamije
- The Third Thing by Donald Hall
- Soon/Come – Rémy Ngamije
- I did not want to change, so I tried to save everyone else instead – Xaralately
