‘Oh, so that’s what it was like!’: The Personal Essay in Hard Times

Abstract

This article explores characteristics of personal essays, primarily written by American essayists, that appeared in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice that erupted around the U.S. It does so against the historical backdrop of essays that were written during other global hard times, particularly the second wave of the bubonic plague epidemic in the 1500s, when Montaigne wrote The Essays, and the 1918 flu pandemic. It notes significant differences in the contemporary responses – for one, an extraordinary level of detail about life in a pandemic – many of which unite around a communal despair over pandemic losses, outrage at racism, and hope for a better future. One of the challenges faced by essayists in public hard times is how to position their personal experiences amid a public calamity. Writers of colour, the author contends, face additional challenges as they navigate the complexities and pressures of representational narratives.