Critical Essays Archive
The Overlooked Mistranslations in Blood and Guts in High School
Kathy Acker’s infamous novel includes a section titled “The Persian Poems,” which pairs words written in Farsi alongside their translations in English. What has largely gone unrecognized is that Acker has deliberately mistranslated specific words, bringing an entirely new meaning to this passage, Acker’s craft, and the reader’s internalization
Zaina Alsous’s De-Extinction
Alsous’s poetics is politically radical not just nominally, or because of its allegiances or her biography. The poems in her prizewinning debut collection are at work chronicling and postulating a reordering of things, or a world dreamed into decolonial being, an abolition in language on the level of affect
In Through the Out Door
Jason Diamond’s cataloging of suburban cultural touchstones is a crucial first step towards having a healthy conversation about the suburbs today because, without this consideration, there can be no reconsideration.
Reading World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
Through her celebration of nature—and herself—Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores how it connects her to family and has played a role in building her own. Ultimately, she urges, we should wonder while we can, and do better to protect that which we can wonder at before we lose it completely.
Summer’s True Fictions
It is the subjective “us,” that most basic of true fictions that we use to explain our existence in the present, and, more generally, in time, that interests Ali Smith.
Truth, Beauty, and The Lying Life of Adults
As she listens to the stories the adults around her tell to explain their lives, Giovanna, the protagonist of Elena Ferrante’s new novel, navigates the crisis of her adolescence, arriving at her own understanding of how to become an adult—and how beauty and truth figure into that journey.
Nature Prevails in Ruthie Fear
Maxim Loskutoff’s new novel, out tomorrow, is an exploration of man’s complicated relationship with the highest form of authority—nature.
Womanhood in Breasts and Eggs
Mieko Kawakami’s 2008 novel addresses the multifaceted nature of what it means to move through the world as a woman, which means presenting womanhood in a variety of ways, ages, and life experiences.
Reading Flights in a Time of Isolation
Olga Tokarczuk’s most recent book is filled with themes for this stationary time—the longing not just for travel, but for immortality through movement, through time or space, accompanied by a fascination with our fellow travelers.
Jewtopia
As she got older, anytime someone was thinking of leaving town, my grandmother would implore them to stay, reciting the refrain that has now become a family catchphrase: “Don’t go no place,” she’d say. Family is the place. Nobody understands this interpretation of the utopian ideal better than immigrant