Critical Essays Archive
Jack London’s Visionary 1912 Pandemic Novel
London’s book is impressive not just for its correctly intuited factual predictions, but also for those related to the way the inequities of his world would only grow exponentially as its population did, and the way those inequities would define the events that took place during and after the
The Personal and The Ecological in Two Trees Make a Forest
Jessica J. Lee’s 2019 book exists in the space between environmental history, cultural history, and memoir. While readers will get a sense of Lee’s exploration of personal identity by the end of the book, they will also gain a deeper understanding of the ties between history and the natural
How Home Lets Jericho Brown Bloom Poems About His Subconscious
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Brown uses physical spaces, homes, to analyze, dissect, and bloom thoughts that are hidden in his subconscious—thoughts of the traumas and terrors of the world around him, which threatens Black and Brown bodies and endangers LGBQTIA+ peoples.
The Revealing Cultural Portrayal of Oligarchy
Scarlett Thomas’s most recent novel, out in the United States this week after initial publication in 2019 in the United Kingdom, is both absurdism and reality pared to its core, just as the girls in the novel pare themselves pound by pound at their no-name, British girls boarding school.
The Relationship Between the Military and Language in Look and Hard Damage
Reading recent poetry collections by Solmaz Sharif and Aria Aber in concert, we see that Sharif’s serves as a project that inscribes the militarization of everyday language and its consequent normalization of violence—groundwork that allows for a radical project like Aber’s to exist.
Finding Shape in an Indifferent Universe
While some critics dismiss fractals as faddish or overly applied, they do offer a compelling vision of a natural world governed by order, pattern, and predictable expansion. And envisioning the world as an organized and predictable place feels mighty tempting.
Who Decides the Mysterious Standard of Beauty?
Daniel Oz’s flash fable “Beauty Sleep” and Yonit Naaman’s prose poem “That’s What I Want” explore the challenge of overcoming the elusive, patriarchal standard of beauty.
William Gardner Smith’s International Solidarity Against Police Violence
While there is much to improve in how we support each other at home and across the globe, Smith’s 1963 novel, which documents the 1961 police massacre of Algerian protestors in Paris, reminds us of the immense power in solidarity and our duty to rise up for justice and
Tending the Shared Garden of Immunity
In trying to understand immunity as concept and metaphor, Eula Biss’s 2014 book reveals the profound ethical dilemma that has always inscribed itself into the vaccination debate, which, at root, is about the relationship between self and other, between individual bodies and the social body.
The Failure of Familial Communication in Happiness, as Such
Natalia Ginzburg presents a family’s dysfunction as an engrossing emotional rollercoaster, yet manages to make her story both haunting and deeply human.