American Bulk: Essays on Excess

Mester, Emily

ISBN 10: 1324035234 / ISBN 13: 9781324035237

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2024

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Synopsis:

A tender, critical and curious window into the American ethos of quantity over quality

To be American is to hoard, to collect. But what if that wasn’t a bad thing? Emily Mester’s American Bulk asks readers to see our national consumer obsession as more than a modern scourge―to consider consumption a complex character in a larger story of capitalism, imperialism and technology. In sharply witty prose, Mester details how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty reveals the insidious performance of retail sales, how Yelp reviews highlight the lengths Americans go to curate their personal ephemera, and why they can’t help but find joy at Costco. In a stark reexamination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the liberatory body neutrality that surrounded her. And in Storm Lake, Iowa, Mester excavates her grandmother’s abandoned hoard, among other discoveries about her own family’s history. American Bulk asks us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.

About the Author: Emily Mester is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the winner of the Prairie Lights Nonfiction Prize. Her work has been published by BuzzFeed, and in Longreads and elsewhere. At her day job, she writes standardised-test questions.

Bibliographic Details

Title: American Bulk: Essays on Excess
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: 2024
Binding: paperback
Condition: Very Good