A chorus; voices arguing, overlapping, contradicting, sharpening each other.

How We Speak to One Another gathers short essays from writers including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Maggie Nelson, Ander Monson, and Elisa Gabbert, each approaching the act of reading from a different angle. Inside are a myriad of interpretations that explore how we consume is always shaped by power, taste, context, and the reader’s own position in the world.

The pieces move across criticism, memoir, and theory, touching on topics like race and readership, the politics of attention, how we assign value to books, and what it means to “misread.” Some essays are tightly analytical, others more personal or wandering, but all circle the same uneasy idea: that reading is a conversation we’re never fully in control of. It’s less a handbook than a record of that conversation happening in real time. Edited by Ander Monson and Craig Reinbold, the project comes out of the Essay Daily archive. 

Coffee House Press paperback, 2017. Clean copy with light shelf wear; no major markings or damage.