essays

“When Joan makes certain statements about herself in her early essays, she’s not actually describing herself,” says Anolik, who considers the contrast between the two writers fascinating.

Didion would go on to write “The White Album,” her classic 1979 collection of essays, and move to New York before publishing two memoirs — 2005’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” and 2011’s “Blue Nights” — that became mammoth bestsellers.

I’m often paid very little for the work that takes the most out of me: my personal essays.

“It’s a bunch of essays that are built around three Ps — performance, purpose and power — and how all of that has led me to be able to self-master,” Palmer says, as if reciting a press release.

The Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977, several of whose contributors would also have their essays and other writing featured in “This Bridge Called My Back,” offered this still much-needed intervention: