As we emerge from the year that was — and look cautiously ahead to whatever awaits us on the other side — I’m struck by what an outstanding twelve months in literature we were fortunate to have, despite it all. There was very little in our lives this year, and what was left in them was often shitty and dismal, but at least not the books.
There were times in 2020 I found myself unable to read much at all, which is how I knew things were bad. During those stretches I was unable to focus, or find remnants of pleasure in every day acts, or set aside pain and fear for long enough to feel something else in the pages of a book. I know many of us experienced this, in different ways, and to different degrees — and, obviously, that many people suffered tremendously worse than I did. My own paltry struggling manifested itself in shutting myself away and isolating, even when I knew what would help was to reach outward, to be in the world, to seek out reminders of our shared humanity. But in the moments when I wandered out from that fog, I was voracious for words that helped me do just that.
My annual reading list is never ranked or ordered, and I exempted straightforward journalism but left room for culture stories in 2020. There was simply too much vital and groundbreaking reporting from organizations like ProPublica in 2020, and this list is a separate kind of thing, anyway. Another disclaimer: while I read quite a bit, there are many people who read far more than me. This is just a collection of new-in-2020 books, essays, poems, and short stories I encountered that struck me and stayed with me, and that I hope might do the same for you.
1. The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans: Danielle Evans can Write. With a capital W. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” which begins when a college student’s Confederate flag bikini sets off a firestorm on campus, is the kind of short story that will linger with me forever. But there is not a character or page or sentence wasted in this outstanding collection.
2. Eartheater by Dolores Reyes: This book, about a young woman who communes with the dead, absorbed me from the start. It’s part magical realism, part mystery novel, and part coming-of-age story, and the meticulous, brutal language Reyes uses to tell it will slice you to the core.
3. “The Feminist” by Tony Tulathimutte, n+1: OK, this came out toward the end of 2019, but this is my list and I can DO WHAT I WANT! Tulathimutte’s insidious little story about the making of an incel picks up speed and sneaks up on you before you quite realize what’s happening. Also, if you do not follow Tony on Twitter, you must.
4. For Now by Eileen Myles: This speech Myles gave at Yale is an exquisite reflection on the splendor and mundanity of the writing life. If you love Myles’s poems like I do, this is one of those books you’ll keep cracking open over and over again, just to spend a little more time inside their brain.
5. “Running For Your Life: A Community Poem for Ahmaud Arbery” by Kwame Alexander, NPR: As a runner, I witnessed how Ahmaud Arbery’s killing sparked a long-overdue realization of how racism and hatred seeps into every human experience — even an act like running, which so many privileged people assume is the ultimate expression of freedom and ease. This beautiful shared tribute to a young man who deserved that very freedom and ease was spearheaded by NPR poet in residence Kwame Alexander. I recommend reading and listening to it to experience it fully.
6. “Our Shared Unsharing” by Stella Bugbee, The Cut: Bugbee’s essay spoke to so many of the reasons my own personal Instagram was dormant for much of 2020. What are the right parts of ourselves to share online, and when, and exactly how? These questions felt murkier than ever in a year when life often felt overwhelming and ugly and, yes, so much bigger than our selfies.
7. "Why We Can't Stop Thinking About George Floyd's Neck" by Soraya Nadia McDonald, The Undefeated: McDonald was a Pulitzer finalist his year and is one of the definitive culture writers of our generation. This astonishing piece, written in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, is a prime example of her power. In it, she reflects on the human neck as a historical site of vulnerability, intimacy, violence, and exposure. But, as she writes, “of all the associations it carries along with it, for Black Americans, a boot on the neck remains an enduring metonym for state-sanctioned and extrajudicial violence.”
8. What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez: No one writes about death and dying with more lifeforce than Sigrid Nunez. In this follow-up to The Friend, a woman grapples with joining a terminally ill acquaintance on her mission to end her life, pondering the point of pain and friendship as she does.
9. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson: Wilkerson’s book opens with an anecdote about anthrax and Donald Trump that may be the most compelling analysis of his presidency I’ve read to date. As the book continues, she traces the caste systems in India, Nazi Germany, and America; while there are plenty of worthy critiques of her selection of caste as the dominant determinant in each of these cultures or historical moments, I found this book to be a powerful and valuable reading experience. Wilkerson’s stellar writing and ability to draw throughlines across borders and time will help any reader gain a broader perspective on how systems of inequality are emulated and propped up.
10. "The Winged Thing" by Patricia Lockwood, The New Yorker: Patricia Lockwood is one of the strangest, funniest, and most visceral writers you’ll encounter these days. (If you haven’t read Priestdaddy, get on it.) In this heartcrushing story for The New Yorker, about a family coping with a precarious pregnancy, she once again made me cackle and cry like a maniac, often at the same time.
11. A Burning by Megha Majumdar: When Jivan, a girl from the slums, is accused of a terror attack, her fate is pinned between a right-wing politician determined to make a name for himself and the outcast who can save her by providing her alibi . . . but only at great personal cost. This book had the pace of a great thriller while deftly tackling themes of class and politics in modern-day India, all through characters you couldn’t help but want to get to know.
12. “I Don’t Want to Be the Strong Female Lead” by Brit Marling, The New York Times: As filmmaker and actor Brit Marling writes, when we think of the cliched “strong female lead” archetype — which is usually meant as high praise — it’s usually because she’s emulating masculine ideals of power. Holding a gun. Kicking ass. Wielding influence as the head of some government or capitalist institution. And, she notes, “what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: ‘Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.’” Marling doesn’t pretend to have the answer to this conundrum — though in admitting it’s what’s driven her increasingly to sci-fi and speculative stories, she makes clear that our art can’t change until we do.
13. Bravey by Alexi Pappas: Runners know Alexi Pappas. Writers know Alexi Pappas. Filmmakers know Alexi Pappas. But few except the closest to her know her full story. While the Olympic Dreams actor and filmmaker, poet, and Olympic athlete has never been reticent to share the broad strokes of her life story, Bravey is the first time she delves so intimately into the first 30 years of her life and the losses and triumphs that shaped her. Whether she is writing about her mother’s death by suicide when she was a young girl, her affection for Jerry Seinfeld, or her own post-Olympic struggle with depression, her affection for each person who has come and gone and stayed in her life — and finally, now, for herself — make this memoir stand apart. (Out Jan. 12)
14. “Guy Fieri is the Last Unproblematic Food Person” by Scaachi Koul, Buzzfeed: Scaachi’s pop-culture writing is a joy to read, but it’s never fluff. This defense of the inventor of Trash Can Nachos and Donkey Sauce spoke to a fulcrum point in the food world this year, and while Fieri might not seem the likeliest of heroes in a time when Bon Appetit, Alison Roman, and countless others were called to the carpet for racism in the industry, Scaachi makes a compelling case for this spiky-haired savant of garbage food. “I do realize by even writing this, I’m effectively inviting some kind of compromising information on Fieri to be released, something that proves the opposite of what’s been proven thus far,” she wrote in conclusion. But guess what? There wasn’t any, as far as I know!
15. Luster by Raven Leilani: As I wrote in my review of this book on POPSUGAR: “Encountering Raven Leilani's one-of-a kind debut jolted me out of my mid-pandemic stasis. Leilani's vibrant language and unflinching willingness to get down into the muck of human behavior make each sentence of this novel feel like a revelation and a discovery." I can’t wait to see what Leilani, who is also a gorgeous personal essayist, puts out into the world next.
16. “For My Friends, in Reply to a Question” by Safia Elhillo, Catapult: Safia Elhillo’s pandemic poem is the best example of successful art created in this time, about this time, that I can think of. (We’ve seen plenty of examples of unsuccessful attempts, amIright?) I read it over and over again when I first came upon it, and it still captures so much of the dreamlinke terror of 2020 in its lines. “I sleep twelve hours each night / & in my dreams I am fleeing a war, in my dreams / I am touching the faces of my friends, we are / each one of us touching, & even in the dream / we are afraid.”
17. The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe: I thought Thorpe’s novel was one of the most underrated of the year. Not that it exactly went under the radar — I got it as a Book of the Month selection — just that I think it deserved big praise. Told from the perspective of a teen boy coming into his sexuality and intrigued by the strange, hyperathletic girl next door, it’s a pageturner about who gets to be violent, who gets to feel safe, and who gets to decide those things.
18. “On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed By a Pandemic,” by Jesmyn Ward, Vanity Fair: I hesitate to try and sum up this remarkable essay in any short little space, because it feels to me like a piece that future generations will turn to again and again to try and understand this moment in time, both in its most intimate specifics and cultural complexities. In writing about losing her husband to COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter reckoning of the Summer, Ward exposes and documents her grief, our grief, a nation’s grief.
19. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: This is one of those books you want to slow down and savor but can’t help devour in no time. Bennett’s novel is about two sisters whose paths diverge — and then come back together thanks to an unexpected run-in. It’s intricate, soapy (I use that word in the most complimentary way possible here), and a layered examination of our power — or lackthereof — to reshape or reject our identities.
20. “I’m the Mother of a Toddler. This is Why I No Longer Life in Fear” by Lindzi Scharf, Los Angeles Times: In this essay, Lindzi — a longtime red-carpet cohort of mine and a warm, witty writer — reflects on raising her daughter, Evan, who has a rare mitochondrial condition. She shared her story this spring as the world came to terms with the threat of coronavirus, and reflects on how existing in a constant state of uncertainty has shifted her perspective on how to live with more joy and presence, even when you are scared.
Let me know what your favorite read of the year was, or what 2020 books are currently on top of your to-be-read pile. For me, that includes Stephanie LaCava’s The Superrationals, Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, Emma Cline’s Daddy and Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to one or two of them by 2021.