Review by Angela L. Eckhart
When one of his students asks how much one can “make up” when writing an essay, writer Paul Crenshaw replies, “Nothing. But you can leave parts out.” He shares this exchange in his own essay, “Choke,” in which he explains, “I also tell my students the personal essay is always about the person, no matter the subject, which means this is about me. It’s about stories, and how we tell them. But it’s also about memory, and what we might have done.” 
Crenshaw’s eighteen essays, compiled in a book titled This One Will Hurt You (Mad Creek Books, 2019), portray exceptional examples of the essay form. His themes range from death and religion to animals and storm cellars, and most of them are relatable to a majority of readers. He reveals his personal thoughts and experiences, as well as historical facts, like those found in school-age history books. Often, while reading his ruminations on a topic, such as his grandmother’s cooking, one may suddenly entertain thoughts of one’s own grandmother. His subject matter not only reminds us of the personal, one-of-a-kind stories we all have, but they also serve to educate and entertain.
In his essay, “A Brief and Selected History of Man, Defined By A Few Walls He Has Built,” Crenshaw explores the concept of walls, both physically and metaphorically, including historical facts and his own generalizations. This essay centers on a topic that is so broad, yet he manages to succinctly tackle it within twelve pages of his book, leaving the reader with even more to contemplate. As a former teacher, this essay could serve as a valuable teaching assignment, in both history and literature classes.
Without explicitly naming it (readers should know from the title alone), Crenshaw writes about his favorite childhood book in “The Wild Thing With People Feet Was My Favorite.” While we all have our own favorite childhood books, how many of us speculate upon the deeper meanings embedded within these stories? He notices—and points out to his daughters—how the drawings of the monsters “have some human characteristic…but I never asked my daughters if the wild things were human turning into monster, or monster becoming human.” What begins as a simple story of a boy with a big imagination turns into a more complex story broadening the idea behind the theme of monsters and wildness. He suggests further:
It is easy to forget the story is imagination when we can see the wildness of ourselves everywhere, in cities where the dead lie in the streets while bombs go off in the distance, or in elementary schools where gunshots ring out and children scream in terror, and some nights I wonder which we are, which way we are turning, if we are coming out of the darkness or sailing straight for it.
Another essay offers a somber telling about the death of a boy in “After the Ice,” where Crenshaw’s details create images in our minds. Of the boy, he writes, “He had only a few teeth in the picture, and his blonde hair was combed so fine you could hardly see it, like the way a baby’s hair will disappear in the bathtub.” We have all “seen” this image, somewhere. In “The Night Before Christmas,” we learn about the history of meth, with astonishing statistics. Beyond these solemn and disheartened stories, Crenshaw retreats into a humorous telling about a wild animal lurking in his backyard in another essay, “My Possum Problem, And How It Finally Ended.” This is a simple, entertaining story in which he observes a possum in his back yard. He points it out to his wife and daughters, but his family do not exhibit the same curiosity. In this essay, his musings and interactions with his daughters is uplifting.
From the wide variety of topics offered in this essay collection, readers may be enticed to write their own essays, perhaps focusing on something obscure or something concrete, but challenging ourselves to look further and perhaps discover deeper meanings. Crenshaw’s personal epiphanies create an opportunity for each of us to ask more questions…to look further into our truths. “Is it enough to not do the bad things, or does one have to do some of the good? Can we walk through the world in our own way or do we need to reach out for others?” His questions are questions for all of humanity.
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