3 Keys for Writing Cultural Essays That Resonate

Writing about culture isn’t just about spotting what’s trending. It’s about understanding why it matters—and finding the perspective only you can bring.

Next week at Narratively Academy, we’re so excited for our very first cultural essay class: Writing the Zeitgeist: Weaving Pop Culture and Politics Into Timely Essays, taught by cultural critic, journalist and editor Alizah Salario. Today, Alizah is generously sharing this StoryCraft piece about the essentials of cultural essays.

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In high school, I belonged to Culture Shock, a club with a mandate to organize artsy excursions in Chicago. We scoured the Chicago Reader for the next big thing, and as long as our English teacher chaperone was game (which he always was), we orchestrated group trips to see cult improv shows like Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and ImprovOlympics. We tried out new Ethiopian and Indian restaurants, and walked along Clark Avenue like the city was ours. Honestly, I didn’t care what we did. I just wanted to do something.

Many years and excursions later, I’m still drawn to that intimate swirl of energy around what’s new, innovative or trending. There’s momentum. There’s a vibe. Sometimes, there’s a sense that an artist has bottled up whatever forces are simmering beneath the surface, and tossed the message directly upon my shore.

I realize now that my interest all those years ago in hot shows, films, music and books wasn’t really about a secret. It was about figuring out the world, and sometimes, myself. And that’s what writing the zeitgeist is all about.

Translated from the German, zeitgeist means “the spirit of the times.” Writing about the times is easy enough. Think Taylor and Travis’s wedding, Olivia Rodriogo’s new album, the the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the Knicks epic championship, etc. But the spirit? That’s tricky. Like mercury, the spirit or essence of a thing slips away when you attempt to pin it down.

You might be reading this because you’re sensitive, vigilant and empathetic. You too sense vibe shifts and spot patterns before others do. You are deeply moved by what you see, hear and taste, and you feel compelled to distill an emotional response in images or words. In other words, you’re a storyteller. And your mission — should you choose to accept it, and I hope you do — is to use your superpowers of nuance and subtlety to define the moment. Not to capture it, but to reveal it.

Writing the zeitgeist is vast and genre-bending. Personal essays, cultural criticism, literary reportage and reviews can all be classified as zeitgeisty forms. I hesitate to be prescriptive, but there are three attributes that define robust, insightful writing about the zeitgeist. This isn’t so much a formula as a framework for organizing ideas.

1. Find Your Coordinates

In journalism school, I became familiar with “the view from nowhere,” a concept that underlies the value of objectivity in reporting. The idea is that in order to reconcile our differing and competing perspectives, journalists should approach their work like blank slates, letting empirical evidence alone drive the story. In doing so, journalists maintain standards akin to science. That means you and I, as rational, fact-driven people, would produce approximately the same story with the same set of evidence. Aiming for objectivity solved for bias.

We can debate the merits of this concept, and I found it useful as a local reporter covering key community issues. But when I began writing cultural criticism, it was a relief to bring my whole self to the table. First off, we are not rational beings. Second, I valued work where my identity and experiences were assets, not liabilities. In other words, I wanted to share my views as they actually were: rooted in a specific place and time.

But within such a broad space-time continuum, you need to define your coordinates: the specific attributes of your background that situate you in a culture story. Your identity and experience. Once you’ve figured that out, you have the latitude to explore.

Consider an amazing recent essay ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Is My Kind of Globalism. We know from the outset that writer Euny Hong’s experience gives her an informed perspective. Her bio states she is the author of “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture.” But there’s a sentence further down that really does the work:

As an Asian who sings disturbingly white songs like Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry” at Asian karaoke; who speaks French with a German accent, German with a French accent, and Korean with an American accent, I feel seen.

Here, Hong is finding an in that’s truly unique to her. Keep in mind that Hong didn’t write about Kpop Demon Hunters writ large, but about the specific fandom, or “fandustry” that Kpop had spawned. Remember that identity doesn’t need to cover every ascribed trait, and in fact it shouldn’t. It’s the one or two attributes that serve as a portal into a specific piece with a sharp angle.

2. Know Your Canon

You’re probably familiar with the literary canon, seminal works that critics and scholars determine most influential or important. Historically, the canon was white and male, but your canon will include key works that contextualize whatever you’re writing about.

For example, I recently wrote about The Devil Wears Prada 2. Here’s my lede:

There’s a certain type of early aughts plucky heroine who will always have my heart. Bridget Jones, Carrie Bradshaw, and yes, Andy Sachs. Not because I like them, mind you, but because I worry about them. I know these dreamy try-hards elicit Gen Z stares and eye rolls, but I would defend them in a fight. With a very sharp stiletto!

Maybe mentioning Bridget Jones Diary and Sex and the City doesn’t seem important, but whatever film, book or work of art you’re covering didn’t emerge from a vacuum. Going back to our coordinates, these cultural touchstones also conjure a specific moment in millennial nostalgia. By situating the movie in this ouvre, I’m contextualizing the film for the reader.

Your canon doesn’t need to be high art. It might be the influencers that inspired a bestseller, like this piece about tradwives influencer and Yesteryear by Claire Cario Burke. Consider this brilliant piece of criticism by Wesley Morris, which draws on a multitude of sources and historical events to explore Black culture and gay identity through a single trait: a Covid facial hair experiment, aka a moustache. His canon is vast, but a very specific entryway (back to those coordinates again) draw the reader in.

3. Aim for Disclosure

When I began writing for a living, nothing triggered panic more than the pressure to have something to say. Ideas weren’t the issue. Striving for a grand revelation or big important truth always led to paralysis. I thought I was supposed to have a deep point, and while yes, essays do need a point, depth is what happens though your process. It’s not a shiny revelation waiting at the end.

I’m going to drop another foreign word as shorthand for this process. In Greek, Alethia means truth, but not merely factual truth. It’s more like disclosure, or the act of bringing what is hidden to light. Alethia. The vibe is stripped down, no pretence, getting to the heart of it all. When you are writing the zeitgeist, you are aiming for Alethia. If you set your sights on the details, you’ll hit it. If you aim for a big reveal, you’ll swing and miss.

Some of our most iconic essays capture Alethia. In Joan Didion’s iconic essay “Slouching towards Bethlehem“, she defines the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene as “social hemorrhaging.” In Tom Junod’s seminal essay “The Falling Man”, his analysis of a chilling moment and what it reveals about 9/11’s lasting impact tells us more than countless news reports. They both deal with capital T truth, but they’re not looking right at it. Alethia.

Instead of driving toward a singular point, think of your essay as a spiral. Each concentric circle is your analysis, examples, and lived experience. The writing process itself strips away layer after layer until you tunnel though, revealing and disclosing. When you do this, you’ll capture the specifics that makes others nod vigorously in recognition. They’ll feel seen and heard, or part of something larger than themselves. In an era of fragmentation and partisanship, that’s a laudable goal. Perhaps in this day and age, finding a middle road is the zeitgeist.

Ready to Write?

Wednesday July 15 brings this brand new workshop with Alizah Salario. you’ll learn how to identify compelling cultural entry points, develop your own perspective, and craft essays that engage with the conversations happening around us right now. If you’ve ever read an essay about a current cultural trend or moment and thought, I wish I’d written that, this class may be for you.