Fiction

Control Negro

By Jocelyn Nicole Johnson July 29, 2017

I aimed to painstakingly mark the route of this black child, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.

Family & RelationshipsRace

Interview

Roxane Gay: Hunger Is a State of Being

By Carmen Maria Machado June 26, 2017

The genre-spanning writer on oppressed and unruly bodies, and her new memoir, Hunger.

Bodies & NatureGenderRace

Essay

Notes from the Lower Level

By Camille Dungy June 16, 2017

"Black isn't a skin tone. It's a condition."

PoliticsRace

Interview

Julia Fierro: Only People Can Let Us Down

By Jane Ratcliffe June 7, 2017

The novelist on her struggle with mental health, the limits of empathy, and the necessity of suffering.

Arts & CultureClassRace

Review

A Cross-generational Curse

By Kyle Paoletta May 30, 2017

Exploring the Ugandan imagination in Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s debut novel.

AfricaArts & CultureRace

Interview

Michael Eric Dyson: Challenging Lethal Ignorance

By Mychal Denzel Smith April 24, 2017

The author and public intellectual on his sermon to white America.

Race

Essay

Nothing to See Here

By Yxta Maya Murray March 20, 2017

On Robert Barry's "Untitled."

Arts & CultureRace

Interview

Kameelah Rasheed: Who Will Survive in America?

By Imani Roach March 6, 2017

The visual artist on “the stutter” in history, strategic opacity, and Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter.

Arts & CulturePoliticsRace

Interview

Dr. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee: Toward a More Precise Genetics

By Lynette Chiu February 27, 2017

The medical anthropologist on the imperative to move beyond race in genetic research and the explanatory power of life experience and inequality.

The Future of the Body Bodies & NatureRace

Review

Who Is You, Man?

By Sasha Bonét February 24, 2017

The black masks of Frank Ocean, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and W.E.B. Du Bois in Barry Jenkins' Moonlight.

Oscars 2017 Bodies & NatureGenderRace

Review

Against La La Land

By Jess Goldschmidt February 23, 2017

Damien Chazelle’s so-called homage to movie musicals carelessly pillages a fraught form, reifying the tradition’s latent racism, classism, and sexism.

Oscars 2017 Arts & CultureHistoryRaceUSA