Day 22: "A Rewilding"

Christienne L. Hinz (Terrain, November 7, 2023)

This is the final post of a twenty-two-day series that counted down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“African American trauma might be unique, but trauma is not unique to African Americans. Despite America’s cultural myth of individualism, all of us are crushed, in some manner—let’s say oppressed—by toxic social norms. Too fat, too thin, too young, too old, too brown, too queer, too foreign, too poor, too disabled, too smart, too ignorant, too religious, too heathen, too liberal, too conservative. We are a traumatized people living in a traumatized eco-system. Our history and culture have profoundly alienated us from nature, from our own natures, from each other’s natures.”

—Christienne L. Hinz, “A Rewilding,” Terrain, November 7, 2023.