THE EMPATHY EXAMS is a hard to act to follow, but I liked this one just as much.
As with the earlier collection's essay on people who suffer (or believe they do) from Morgellons Disease, the first part of Make It Scream, Make It Burn gives us some intimate, empathetic glimpses at communities that share an unusual but powerful bond: "52 Blue" (about people fascinated by a particular whale), "We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Again" (about parents convinced their son is the reincarnation of a WW II fighter pilot), "Sim Life" (about the online activity Second Life).
As with the earlier collection's deeply affecting personal pieces ("The Empathy Exams," "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain"), the newer book's concluding section has deeply poignant essays on Jamison's relationships with her husband and daughter (although she and her husband divorced last year, I learn from Wikipedia).
Make It Scream, Make It Burn sagged a bit in the middle for me, though, in the extended pieces on James Agee and Annie Appel. The question of how a writer or photographer or any other artist might document the lives of people in much more straitened circumstances than they are in themselves is an interesting one--how does one manage a humane impulse, maybe even a moral imperative, that is so streaked with potential for callousness and exploitation? I'm not sure Jamison had anything particularly illuminating to offer on this question, though.
On the whole, though, there's enough here to keep Jamison in the front rank of American essayists under 40, I would say.
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