criticism
-
“Three Initiates”: On Jeanne Thornton’s A/S/L
When Thornton’s characters’ lives on and off screen drastically diverge, A/S/L not only satisfies nostalgia, but catapults the narrative to a whole new level.
-
Sacred Mire and the Cutting Edge of Anti-: Tawahum Bige’s Cut to Fortress
Bige as an in-your-face activist-poet resists the colonizer through a poetry they themselves appropriate and transform mainly via language play and voice into an indigenous poetry of personal redemption.
-
Little by Little: Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia
…disability will likely affect everyone in one way or another as they age—which is why regressive policies, revoked support, and limited accessibility are personal issues for us all.
-
We Must All Transition: Paul B. Preciado’s Dysphoria Mundi
Here we see dysphoria’s root: not an internal mental imbalance but external injustice and material harm caused by systems of hierarchy and domination.
-
Echoes in the Gallery: Andy Young’s Museum of the Soon to Depart
…Young transforms these cities into an enigmatic museum, with galleries that reach back through time to the very essence of dust.
-
“It’d Be the Last Great Punk Song”: On ¡PÓNK! by Marcus Clayton
Punk is not safe, but neither is the world if you are Black or brown.
-
Writing in the Aftermath: Paul Rousseau’s Friendly Fire
It wasn’t until I was older and started hunting with my father that I began to understand the implications of proximity to gunfire.
-
One Can Be Alive Again: Madeleine Cravens’s Pleasure Principle
Cravens’s reliance on and loyalty to the image become a propulsive, vibrating force—this is a poetics of presence, of that which is tangible….
-
“Why Are You Still Resisting?”: On M.M. Olivas’s Sundown in San Ojuela
Olivas’s novel is a gross-as-hell ghost story and a razor-sharp vision of the present moment, a multi-narrator rollercoaster you’ll binge like your favorite television show.
-
Getting the Last Laugh: Alexei Navalny’s Patriot
Navalny’s tragicomic memoir, which one might also categorize as his last call to action, accomplishes the feat of keeping the reader so ensconced that they forget the person capturing every ounce of their attention, intellect, and sympathy is no longer…
-
Moving the Dialogue Forward: Jerald Walker’s Magically Black and Other Essays
Idiosyncratic and smart, MAGICALLY BLACK moves the dialog forward.
-
Life with a Rabbit in the Shadow of Death: A Review of Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow
Though the pandemic may now feel relatively distant, its reminder of how quickly catastrophe can become an everyday fact of life persists.