Earlier this week, Aaron Brady wrote presciently in his column for The New Inquiry about the ethical implications of revealing Elena Ferrante’s identity. He pointed out that in searching for her…
In a world of noise, let the message of Teju Cole’s surreal short story over at The New Inquiry speak for itself: “But it is so weak!” the people shouted. “It is…
For The New Inquiry, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano does a close read of hope—what it is, what it isn’t, and the furtive, metered ways that women and cosmetics companies partake in it: I…
Because borders are so weird, words proliferate. Along with arbitrary, nonsensical violence—and strange, unpredictable exceptions—people talk a lot and lots of papers get filed, even as all of it is,…
What can the medium of the video game tell us about our collective desires as a society? According to Alfie Brown’s essay for The New Inquiry, a lot actually. The…
At The New Inquiry, Christine Baumgarthuber sketches the elitist history of food writing over the centuries before praising digital media’s impact on food culture: In a food blog—or any blog,…
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian on her new book The Cosmopolites, the citizenship market, nearly getting deported in the Comoros, and learning to show up and wait.
At The New Inquiry, Alison Kinney examines the use of orphanhood in literature and what attracts readers to this narrative. She goes on to discuss the similarities and differences between orphans…
Although all-things “African” had been exalted in my house, this was not the case for project kids at P.S. 40, nor the “best of the brightest” at P.S/I.S. 308. It…
At The New Inquiry, a take on Rachel Hills’s new book The Sex Myth, which explores anew the position of sex in our culture and in our personal identities.
The New Inquiry has a smart analysis of fan fiction that examines its workings as a literary genre and as a form of reorienting, affecting, and queering a text: It announces a…