Year 2021

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan (FSG) There’s something undeniably satisfying about reading a book that presents a tidy argument, one that arrives at

Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon by Mark McGurl (Verso) How has the rise and unrivaled dominance of Amazon changed not only what and how we

Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?: Essays by Jesse McCarthy (Liveright) The title of Jesse McCarthy’s debut essay collection, Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?, reads as both

Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told? by Jenny Diski (Bloomsbury) Critics who wrote about the prolific English novelist and essayist Jenny Diski (1947-2016) during her lifetime often

Girlhood by Melissa Febos (Bloomsbury) A Melissa Febos essay is the pedagogical equivalent of umami—it adds so much flavor to the classroom that it feels like cheating. Febos teaches emerging

Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes by Albert Samaha (Riverhead)  “The empire tells the stories,” Albert Samaha says early on in his compelling memoir, Concepcion, which traces the immigration of his

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Biblioasis) Before I start this review I have to go downstairs and move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.

A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir by Rodrigo Garcia (HarperVia) In A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes, Rodrigo Garcia, the eldest son of Nobel Prize winning-novelist Gabriel

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Little, Brown) “Gay bars are sites of genuine artifice,” Jeremy Atherton Lin writes in his memoir, Gay Bar: Why We

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House) Hanif Abdurraqib’s hybrid book, A Little Devil in America, reflects on a life and