Notes From No Man's Land

I first became aware of Eula Biss, and Notes From No Man's Land (2009) through the essay from which this collection is named, which originally appeared in The Best Non-Required Reading series. This collection was a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is divided into several sections. The first serves as a sort of introduction is called Before and contains a single essay, "Time and Distance Overcome," which is something like a prose poem. This is followed by a section of essay by the author's experiences living in New York, with that as the title. "Relations" discussed the cultural and racial differences between the author and her half-black cousin whom lives with her in New York. "Three Songs of Salvage" are a mediation of the author's experience living in Harlem, New York. While, "Landmines" is about the author's brief and challenging foray into public education. Biss sums up her New York experience by writing a mediation on Joan Didion's classic essay about leaving New York, but borrow the same title for her essay: "Goodbye to All That." Thus, her collection moves to California. In the first essay in this section, "Black News" chronicles her experience and opinions about working on a black newspaper in San Diego, California. Biss decides to reside in Mexico to learn Spanish and looks at the differences between the cultures near the border in and out of Mexico in"Letter to Mexico." Next she goes onto to talk about how race relates to government housing policies in Oakland in "Babylon." The location shifts again, to the Midwest section, as Biss moves onto to the University of Iowa for the MFA Writing Program. She discusses the utopia of black and whites living to together peacefully in equality in the past in Buxton, Iowa in "Back to Buxton." Next she compares the minor disaster in Iowa with the larger one that befell New Orleans and again sees that race plays a significant factor in "Is This Kansas." The namesake of this collection follows as she does a powerful and thought-provoking piece on race in Chicago in "Notes from No man's Land." There's more on Chicago and identity in "Nobody Knows Your Name." In After, the closing piece looks at meaning of apologies from regular people and world leaders and arrives at no easy conclusion, in "All Apologies." There is a lot to think about and chew on in this collection, which is relevant today as it was when it came out in 2009-if not more so, given the number of police killing blacks in America in recent times and The Black Lives Matter movement bursting into the media consciousness.