REVIEW: “Something to Cry About” by Nisi Shawl

Review of Nisi Shawl, “Something to Cry About”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 107-111 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This essay was not at all what I expected it would be about. I thought it would be about how to write emotion, to get the reader invested, how to give them “something to cry about”. Instead, I was treated to an excellent essay on depictions of race, especially of people from the Afrodiaspora via a glimpse of a life, and a culture, unlike my own. It was another essay that teaches what to do by showing how to do it, rather than just talking about it.