Criticism
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“This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life” by Deborah Lutz
This Dark Night effectively refutes the lasting image of the Brontës as isolated sad girls, stuck in the sticks with their abusive reverend father, which originated with Elizabeth Gaskell’s now-classic hagiography of her close friend, Charlotte Brontë. Lutz sketches a…
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The One Who Loved Is Not the One Who Betrayed: On “Severance,” Identity, and the Shifting Selves of Love
You remember your younger self’s devotion the way you remember a book you once loved: vivid, moving, but no longer yours.
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Born to Run: The American Road Trip Myth & Lauren Groff’s “The Wind”
There is a sinister breeze blowing throughout the story, like the big bad wolf that is always stalking the piggies and the sheep. It’s often lingering right outside the gates or behind the wall, sometimes breaking through, breaking ribs, bruising…
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Normalcy? In This Economy?
Perverts is full of squirting, fingering, vibrators, life-changing kisses, and of course, meaningful lesbian glances. Yet intimacy, if it ever arrives, does so as a terrifying and delightful surprise.
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Form as Historical Memory: On D. M. Aderibigbe’s “82nd Division”
Are elegies fundamentally love poems? Or are love poems always tinged with elegy, knowing they contain their own ending?
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Consider the Rooster
Aren’t we complicit if we eat the chicken stew? I can’t help but ask myself this. I want the answer to be no, but the collection points to maybe, even towards yes. We are also complicit as we dig in…
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Under Surveillance: Benjamin H. Snyder’s Spy Plane
Righteous Black rage spilled over the borders into the downtown Inner Harbor. The cover of TIME magazine showed a mob of cops in riot gear chasing a young Black person down the street in front of Oriole Park. It was…
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Kafka in Kashmir: Zahid Rafiq’s “The World With Its Mouth Open”
Picture this: You awake to get ready for a cricket tournament. You have been excited for this particular cricket tournament, it’s a special event, a star-studded one. You are going to be on the field and play against sports stars…
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On Natalie Shapero’s “Stay Dead”
In Shapero’s words, “everyone is a worker.” If many of life’s actions are performances done for payment, so that even oxygenation is “a service / the woods provide,” then art forms like acting, painting, and writing are also determined by…
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Now More than Ever, We Need “The Happiest Band on Earth”
It’s a sentiment at the core of The 502s’ origin story. In 2015, Isola and a pair of cousins founded the band, and while they were searching for a name, Isola and one of the cousins (who happened to live…
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O’ Frankenstein: A Resurrection of Manman and Tifi in Catherine-Esther Cowie’s “Heirloom
We begin to wonder how this past might become vivified in our hands. An heirloom might serve this purpose. Or it should. Is an heirloom not typically an item of great value, cherished and preserved to be passed on to…
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The Taxonomy of Girlhood: Review of Susan L. Leary’s “More Flowers”
More Flowers interrogates how patriarchal authority persists even in its absence, transmitted through maternal caretaking rather than overt dominance. While an authoritative male figure is not present, the mother still governs by his rule, passing down restrictive and traditional expectations…