Perumal Murugan, a Literary Suicide
"The trend in India of writers being harassed and stigmatized for their work is troubling. It is imperative that writers from both inside and outside India support these voices,… More
Releasing Roots: On Translating Vaan Nguyen
Truffles are notoriously difficult to domesticate, and I have taken this to heart as I translate Nguyen’s poems and their unexpected, unpredictable movements and juxtapositions. More
Don’t Pity the Subject Being Smashed, Rage at the Object Doing the Smashing
"That is why The Bluest Eye is dangerous and always situated on a banned books list. It exposes the violence that besets the human condition as a result of… More
Cold War Dress Code: Remembering Inna Lisnyanskaya
Paradoxically, the Metropole affair both silenced Lisnyanskaya as a poet in the USSR and liberated her from the restrictions imposed by publishing (self-censorship being an obligatory tool in the… More
Gutted: How Kathy Acker’s “Blood and Guts in High School” Saved My Life
This book, this author, this girl body said: Make art. A girl is born and we make a story of her. Daughter. Lover. Wife. Mother. In Kathy Acker’s… More
Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” Trilogy and the Preemptive Censorship of Writers of Color
What if the preemptive banning of marginalized writers is just as much a cause of trauma as racist story-telling by powerful white writers? More
Sacrifice and Self-Censorship before Russia’s “Gay Propaganda” Law
For those of us outside Russia, it’s hard to convey the kind of risk Wilke and her publisher were contemplating. The Putin presidency has committed serious violence—only some of… More
Eyes, Exile, and Opportunity: Banning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
"The capital and complex imagination of black people has always been banned, unless it is supportive in the service of the privileged body’s desire to view itself as superior." More
The World Migrating: On Translating Song Lin
Permeated with themes of politics and exile, the poems of Chinese "exiled poet" Song Lin are a sensitive anthropology of our migratory world. More
Absurdity ad Absurdum: On Translating Gaston de Pawlowski
Written amidst the depths of World War I and society's growing faith in science, Pawlowski's absurdities are an elegant, far-sighted critique of the church of innovation. More