Day 6: "Proxemics"

Jonathan Gleason (Colorado Review, Spring 2023)

In this twenty-two-day series, we are counting 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.

“A friend once asked me how I could live with a correctional officer while being anti-prison. Didn’t those two things negate each other? Didn’t I live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance? As if we all don’t live with our hypocrisies, our compromises.”

—Jonathan Gleason, “Proxemics,” Colorado Review, Spring 2023.