criticism

…Young transforms these cities into an enigmatic museum, with galleries that reach back through time to the very essence of dust.

Punk is not safe, but neither is the world if you are Black or brown.

It wasn’t until I was older and started hunting with my father that I began to understand the implications of proximity to gunfire.

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….

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.

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…

Idiosyncratic and smart, MAGICALLY BLACK moves the dialog forward.

Though the pandemic may now feel relatively distant, its reminder of how quickly catastrophe can become an everyday fact of life persists.

Salvatierra’s poems embody the spirit of reclamation, reminding us to ask the wind and water to carry us, to remember our potential for flight.

Power is the end in itself, not a means to justice.

Kashyap’s stories, told through the accounts of the Assamese student, writer, researcher, and villager, made me see Assam on its own terms, and the rest of the world through the eyes of Assam.

Whether “It’s a [family] story we don’t like / to tell” or the shifting of roles and a meditation on death “In the book we are reading together,” wisdom closes its hand over sentiment.