Critical Essays Archive
Reading Annihilation
The first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy does not balk at the sheer futility of humanity in the face of natural forces, but it doesn’t wholly destroy all who enter it, either. Instead, it returns readers to the sublime aspect of nature—the understanding that it can be
The Art of Dissent in Abigail
Magda Szabó’s 1970 novel is an unusual coming-of-age story—the willful heroine finds her place in society not by learning to comply with its demands, but by learning the art of dissent.
The Art of Conversation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s 1982 book confounds expectations at every turn. Specifically, there’s something monumental about the text’s extreme lack of metaphor, its striving toward objective observation, that feels to me—in this moment—absolutely poetic.
Visibility as Dissent in the Panopticity
As panopticon-like tactics of controlling certain populations become increasingly widespread, Abdel Aziz’s debut novel gives us a peek into the authoritarian future to which such surveillance could lead. Within the tyrannical panopticity, she insists on the power of visibility as double-edged tool of oppression and revolution.
Isaac Babel’s Powerful Humor
Babel witnessed pogroms in his youth, lived through times of disdain for Jews and intellectuals, and died at the hands of Stalin’s secret police. Nonetheless, this master of the short story accomplished much. Now, with antisemitism on the rise worldwide, reading Babel reinforces the power of wit when challenging
Denise Levertov’s Politics and Poetics
More often than not, Levertov claimed she was not whichever appellation had come to her doorstep. But her objections have more to do with the consequences of public identity than her actual political orientation, which was a lifelong commitment to poetry as but one form of protest.
America and The River Twice
Kathleen Graber’s newest collection asks how much her speaker is to blame for what she sees as troubling in American culture, and how identity might be formed in the crucible of condemnation.
Facing the Jackpot with William Gibson
As we move toward an inevitable-seeming apocalypse, Rachael Nevins turns to three of Gibson’s novels, hoping to assuage her fear and sort through her disorientation.
Reading The Paper Menagerie
Ken Liu’s 2011 collection includes a wide array of stories, ranging in style from speculative to science fiction to magical realism; it’s also a prime example of a work that shifts focus away from genre tropes and allows the reader to see what these stories look like through a
The Mechanization of Violence in Animalia
Through etymological conversion, our minds have come to separate “flesh” from “meat,” sublimating the violent methods necessary to render bodies into food and making us believe we know with certainty what separates our own bodies from the bodies that we destine to be eaten.