by Gardiner Brown
When I first opened Eula Biss’s book, Notes from No Man’s Land, I was confused. I had been told that this was a collection of essays about race in the United States, but the first several pages were about the history of the telephone pole and Bell Telephone Company’s attempts to stop the so-called “War on Telephone Poles.” Then, with as much seriousness as she grants all her subjects, Biss transitioned to the history of lynchings on telephone poles. What seemed like a lighthearted essay at first could no longer be seen as such, in much the same way that the essay’s subject, the telephone pole, could no longer be seen as a neutral bystander in our world.
One of the goals of Biss’s book is to upend things, to reexamine that which one might take for granted or assume lies outside racism. Her essays approach their topics from unexpected directions, and, in doing so, emphasize the ubiquity of racial issues today. These essays prove nothing is untouched by racism, yet insist that not all hope is lost. Biss’ book examines everything from court cases to children’s dolls to the primarily white students in the first college course she ever taught. A white woman herself, Biss uses this position to call out the racism that she sees in the many places she lives throughout the years the book covers.
Biss’s unique talent for blending the personal and the analytical is one of the book’s greatest strengths. She takes narratives, both her own and borrowed, and uses them to vivify her thoughts on race. These narratives lend grounding and immediacy to her essays, which is especially helpful considering Biss writes during a time that some have called “post-racial”. Biss’s essays make such a statement unthinkable.
Biss’s status of privilege as a white woman made me concerned about her ability to write a book which makes race and racism its primary focus, particularly a book where the personal is treated as so essential. I had so loved the last book I read by her, The Balloonists, that I decided to give it a go nonetheless. I was not disappointed. Biss acknowledges throughout the essays that she, as a white person, has had an utterly different experience of race and racism than that of many people who end up in her narratives. Her approach to these narratives is smart, apologetic, angry, and deeply concerned with both history and the future.
Notes from No Man’s Land is a clever and powerful book and an excellent example of what a collection of essays can be. I recommend it to anyone who is curious about creative nonfiction or who wants to learn more about the insidiousness of racism in the United States. If you’re interested, check out the titular essay (one of my personal favorites from the collection) at The Believer.