Overview

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 we go to curate our personal ephemera, and why we 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.

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9781324035237

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Reviews

A funny, incisive, humane dispatch from a brilliant new voice in nonfiction. American Bulk had me cringing, laughing, and yes, even tearing up as it drew the contours of my own, and our national, appetites. I remain amazed that a book so clear-eyed in its scrutiny of our capitalistic perversity left me with so much hope.--Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

Author Information

Emily Mester is a writer from the suburban Midwest, where her family went to Costco every Sunday. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was the winner of the Prairie Lights Nonfiction Prize. She lives in New York.

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