Weekend Pick for May 17, 2024

Weekend Pick for May 17, 2024

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​Our guest contributor is Roy Edward Jackson, an assistant professor of education at Goshen College where he teaches an array of courses including literacy development and academic voice.

 I’m quite fond of the personal essay. When I picked up David Sedaris’ Holidays On Ice, in 1997, I felt seen as a young, gay man with a peculiar outlook on the world. However, when I taught high school creative writing it wasn’t always the most enjoyable genre for students. Maybe the students were inhibited sharing stories about themselves or felt they didn’t have enough experiences to write about. As the teacher, I struggled finding personal essays that were nuanced for the young adult.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green​

There is a course in the Goshen College first year core program where I teach titled Identity, Culture and Community. The course uses literature to explore questions of personal, social and cultural identities. I very much want to teach this course. Colleagues in my department have taught it and love it. In the course they read John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed which I may or may not have borrowed without permission to read on a flight. I loved it and now bought my own copy.

The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of essays where Green, through the common five-star rating system, reviews various aspects of modern life. Each review is a blend of personal anecdote, historical insight, and philosophical reflection, offering profound observations on the human condition. It’s witty, introspective and pointed. But it’s more than that. It’s honest, requiring himself, and his readers, to face our insecurities.

That’s the joy of The Anthropocene Reviewed. He shares his mind, his thoughts and process that he perceives as peculiar. He shares his experiences with OCD and the impact of illness, love, and travel on his life. The pages turn fast with humor and forthright transparency. It is clear, much of this was written in the time when we had time to ponder and think. If any good came from the pandemic, it was the slowness of life where we simply got to immerse ourselves in our thoughts.

​Green’s essays often start with an experience, an object, or a historical fact. From the Lascaux Cave Paintings to Diet Dr. Pepper, to the QWERTY keyboard, to Monopoly. Green doesn’t just give us the Wikipedia facts of how Monopoly came to be and then provide an anecdote of a fun memory playing it in childhood. No. He forces us to truly examine the complexities of this game where the goal is to force bankruptcy on a fellow player. We are not to help our fellow human who is hemorrhaging money with every roll of the dice. No, we are to put our hand out to take the money and not care that they are going to lose everything. What a strange thing to consider a family friendly game that teaches not to care when someone is down on their luck but to celebrate literally taking their property and last dollar to win. “There are many problems with Monopoly but maybe the reason the game has persisted for so long…is that its problems are our problems.”

John Green with his book

The Monopoly essay is but one of many that turn something so common into something humanly complex that young readers will relate, gravitate to and find connections in. More importantly, it is a model of excellence of the personal essay from a humanist perspective and one that I most enjoyed immersing myself in.