Imagine a writer who’s part philosopher, part gossip, part human bruise. Now imagine she writes essays about pain — not just the feeling of it, but the spectacle of it. That’s The Empathy Exams. It’s a book about suffering, performance, and the weird little rituals we build around our wounds. It’s also about how annoying — and necessary — empathy really is.
Leslie Jamison does not come here to comfort you. She comes here to interrogate you. She wants to know how you hurt, why you hurt, and — the worst question of all — what you’re doing with all that hurt.
This collection goes hard on everything from medical acting (yes, that’s a real job where you’re paid to fake diseases) to reality TV confessions to ultramarathon runners absolutely wrecking their bodies for sport. And the whole time, Jamison is circling the same question like a vulture: What do we want from other people’s pain? Sympathy? Validation? Something to gossip about on the group chat?
It’s sharp. It’s uncomfortable. It’s also beautifully written — like if Joan Didion started trauma-dumping on a podcast.
Listen. Jamison loves to overthink. She is in a long-term, possibly codependent relationship with her own introspection. Sometimes I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yell, “Ma’am, it’s okay to just feel things without writing a thesis about it.”
But honestly? That’s the charm. She’s not pretending to be detached or superior. She’s knee-deep in the emotional mess with the rest of us, just with slightly better metaphors.
This is not a breezy Sunday read. This is a pause to highlight a sentence because it hurts read. A sit in silence because you’ve just been personally attacked read.
People who aggressively annotate their books like they’re preparing for a literary street fight.
Readers who love memoirs but want them a little weird, a little feral.
Fans of writing that feels like a brain scan and a punch to the gut.
Anyone who reads Maggie Nelson and thinks, “Yes, but make it messier.”
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino — Internet culture, self-delusion, and late-capitalist dread. Deliciously sharp.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson — Fragmented little heartbreak gems disguised as a meditation on the color blue.
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson — Memoir-meets-theory-meets-queer-love-letter. Fluid and fearless.
The Empathy Exams doesn’t want to hold your hand. It wants to poke your sore spots and see what happens. It’s raw, self-indulgent, occasionally exhausting — but in a way that feels brutally honest about what it means to care, to ache, to want to be seen.
Highly recommend if you like your nonfiction messy, personal, and just slightly unhinged.
Anyway, are you Team Let People Be Messy in Writing or Team Please Just Stick to the Facts? Let me know. I’m ready to argue (with love).
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