“Octavia Butler teaches us,” explains Black playwright Ericka Dickerson-Despenza, “…that we have two options in Apocalypse: adapt or die.”
Essays
Pedagogy of the Depressed
“At a certain point, it seemed like all my students were depressed… This was depressing.”
How Will We Farm?
Farming and child-rearing seem natural, but they’re cultural. And like all cultural activities, generations disagree about how best to do them.
Healing through Ordinary Stories
What Chinese readers consume diverges from what is translated into English. Writers of ordinary life are often left untranslated—until now.
Miguel de Unamuno in Spain’s Memory Battle
As fascist armies conquered much of Spain, a writer publicly and famously denounced high-ranking officers right to their faces. Or did he?
What to Do About Freedom?
Once, radical artists and thinkers shook up conservatives. Now, it’s the right gleefully transgressing a “moralizing” left. What happened?
In Praise of Search Tools
For centuries, book-makers, printers, furniture-makers and, now, programmers have worked to answer: how do you find what you need in a book?
Thelma King and the Call for Revolution
In 1963, a Panamanian assemblywoman took to Cuban radio to condemn the United States and its control of the Americas.
What Is a Book?
The “papers” of Toni Morrison can be accessed through a Princeton computer terminal. But where do these digital drafts end, and Beloved begin?
Tending Orwell’s Garden
Orwell was free from doctrinaire sectarianism. At the same time, he firmly hated the exact bastards who deserve to be hated.
Trapped Inside with Bo Burnham
Autofiction like Burnham’s—or Wallace’s, or Lerner’s—show white men using irony, self-deprecation, and vulnerability. Should we listen?
Hindu Nationalism: A Movement, Not a Mandate
Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians, at the helm of parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that.
Do the Humanities Need Experts or Skeptics?
Why are Anglophone novels more worthy of attention than Ottoman shadow puppetry or the art of knot-tying? Just what are the humanities for?
“When Harlem Was in Vogue” at 40
The Harlem Renaissance continues to serve as a source of pride and dignity as well as ammunition in the ongoing struggle for civil rights.
B-Sides: Agnes Smedley’s “Daughter of Earth”
Very much against the grain of most standard leftist work, “Daughter of Earth” remains unsettled and unsettling throughout.
Did Don Quixote Long for Muslim Spain?
Between the lines, Cervantes critiqued the Catholic church, and lamented over the systematic destruction of Islamic culture in Spain.
Thy Face Tomorrow
What does it take to live without the ability to smile or move half of one’s face? For that matter, what does it take to live at all?
Can Saving Soccer Save the World?
Despite its massive commercialization, the world of football has never been about making a profit.
Subaquatic Homesick Blues
A Taiwanese scifi novel—set under the sea, after the surface becomes unlivable—reveals the remarkable burst of cultural freedom in 1990s Taiwan.
When the Vibe Is Off
Which matters more, intent or interpretation? What if a juxtaposition of images in literature or art is just that—a chance encounter?