Nonfiction

Writing

Unpublished journal entries

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial

The End of Books

What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university's library

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels

Browse

Nonfiction

On Anton Shammas's "Arabesques"

Revisiting the first major book in Hebrew by an Arab writer
February 20, 2023
Books

Wong May's Poetry of Exile

In search of a language of unbelonging
February 6, 2023

Charles Simic

Remembering a great poet and friend
January 13, 2023

White Noise, New and Improved

How Noah Baumbach transformed a classic satire
January 9, 2023

Eliot Among the Ruins

The Waste Land remains prophetic, but what did it foretell?
December 12, 2022

On Emancipation

What Hollywood has done to a much-circulated image of American slavery
December 9, 2022

A Faceless Compass

Johannesburg’s haunted streets
December 6, 2022

Bottle Torches

A fantasia on Nari Ward
December 6, 2022

Case Studies

A critic tracks herself
December 6, 2022

Reclaiming Tituba

The real story behind Arthur Miller's character
December 6, 2022