Public Books

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Academic criticism for the curious reader. Reviews of new books and arguments across the humanities and social sciences.

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Public Books

Rash Reading, Slow Watching with Virginia Woolf and Chantal Akerman

In the hands of this writer and this filmmaker, “the mother” is someone with whom to have a lifelong conversation, a contested perspective through which to read the world. The post Rash Reading, Slow Watching with Virginia Woolf and Chantal Akerman appeared first on Public Books.

Morgan BarryJun 9, 2026

Public Books

To Reach Beyond Ourselves Is Key to Our Survival

“We wanted to make a book that began to answer the questions Muriel Rukeyser asked. We wanted to make a book that continued to ask the questions she asked, of ourselves, of each other.” The post To Reach Beyond Ourselves Is Key to Our Survival appeared first on Public Books.

Megan CumminsJun 5, 2026

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“A Theory of America”: Mythmaking with Richard Slotkin - Public Books

"I was always working on a theory of America."

Charlotte RosenApr 19, 202422 min read

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Andrew Boryga on “Victim” - Public Books

“It was definitely in demand, this narrative of explain to me your oppression, you know, explain to me how hard you had it.”

Megan CumminsApr 24, 20242 min read

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A Translation the Size of the World - Public Books

“Translators and writers must fight through the “labyrinth of [the] imagination,” find their way through their private language toward a text’s new picture of reality.”

Charlotte RosenApr 30, 202411 min read

Public Books

You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel - Public Books

“I grew up with this very firm sense that there were multiple places that I could consider a home, rather than homes simply.”

Megan CumminsApr 26, 20242 min read

Public Books

Cecilia Márquez on “Making the Latino South” - Public Books

“Using non-Black as opposed to white is acknowledging that Latinos can be both nonwhite and benefit profoundly from white supremacy.”

Megan CumminsMay 8, 20242 min read

Public Books

What Do the PDFs Say about This?: Brandon Taylor and Stephanie Insley Hershinow - Public Books

“What are the systems of power in this fictional context andthe story world I'm making? What are the stakes? What are the values?”

Megan CumminsMay 10, 20242 min read

Public Books

White Mediocrity Empowers White Villainy: A Conversation with Koritha Mitchell - Public Books

“Not only does whiteness empower folk to destroy entire communities; it empowers them to say to your face that the destruction doesn't have reverberating effects in the current moment.”

Charlotte RosenMay 15, 202422 min read

Public Books

Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books

“‘Professing criticism’ is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I’d like to hope that it’s not, that it’s just an innovation, historically.”

Imani RadneyMay 2, 202413 min read

Public Books

It's Not Only Human Stories Worth Telling: Sigrid Nunez's Animal Novels - Public Books

Why are animals so central to Sigrid Nunez’s thinking about the status of fiction?

Charlotte RosenMay 7, 202411 min read

Public Books

B-Sides: George S. Schuyler’s “Black Empire” - Public Books

“Black Empire” ends with an international revolution, led by a heroic Black genius preaching empowerment; it ends with a continental dictator clutching power through unremittent cruelty and cries of racial supremacy. Both statements are true.

Charlotte RosenMay 1, 20246 min read

Public Books

Fallout as a Process: Ryo Morimoto on Fukushima - Public Books

“That’s what my book is really trying to get at: What are the things that we have missed as a result of confronting our own fear of the invisible?”

Imani RadneyMay 9, 202418 min read

Public Books

Melissa Mogollón on “Oye” - Public Books

“There is a fixation on our self worth that is really tied to our physical body. … I [wrote] the extreme, the product of what that does to your psyche.”

Megan CumminsMay 22, 20241 min read

Public Books

The Border Is the Crisis: Reflections on the Centenary of the Immigration Act of 1924 - Public Books

One hundred years have passed since the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act and the creation of the Border Patrol. But the undercurrents that mobilized both never went away and are resurging with renewed fervor.

Megan CumminsMay 27, 20247 min read

Public Books

Not Prophecy but Inversion: Omar El Akkad and Min Hyoung Song - Public Books

“What matters to me is fidelity to something else entirely, which is how human beings are and how human beings should be and the chasm between those two things, which I think is what literature is for.”

Megan CumminsMay 24, 20242 min read

Public Books

Eating Out in the Apocalypse - Public Books

Can pleasure take place against the backdrop of climate crisis?

Charlotte RosenMay 21, 20249 min read

Public Books

“We Were Not That Band”—But What Was Sonic Youth? - Public Books

Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore's memoir may tell us about his life. But he doesn’t give us much insight into the band they were.

Charlotte RosenMay 17, 202412 min read

Public Books

An Open Letter to Harvard: Concerning Protest & Palestine - Public Books

A group of disciplined students implore Harvard to demonstrate ethical forbearance and drop all of the dubious charges leveled against students who nonviolently protested for Palestine.

Charlotte RosenMay 16, 202416 min read

Public Books

“Things Happen, As They Do in War”: From Chaucer’s Siege of Troy to the Siege of Gaza - Public Books

“Troilus and Criseyde” is not often regarded as war poetry. But in 2024, it's impossible not to see the truth at the poem's core: it’s a work about a city under siege.

Imani RadneyMay 23, 202417 min read

Public Books

Containment and Care in the Sonoran Desert - Public Books

Prevention through deterrence did not prevent or deter migration. Instead, it corralled migration, hid it from view, and made it deadly.

Charlotte RosenJun 4, 202411 min read

Public Books

From Suspect to Perpetrator: How History Shaped the Modern U.S. Border Patrol Agent - Public Books

For the next six months, I was a modern agent of the state who participated in a form of “counterinsurgency against refugees.”

Charlotte RosenJun 5, 202412 min read

Public Books

America’s Medicalized Borders: Past, Present, and Possible Future - Public Books

“Only by building new models of collective health that are driven by solidarity, rather than fear, do we stand a chance of defeating today’s medical nativists.”

Charlotte RosenMay 29, 20248 min read

Public Books

The 100-Year-Old Racist Law that Broke America’s Immigration System - Public Books

The Chinese and Asiatic exclusion laws of the 19th and early 20th century paved the way for the Immigration Act of 1924.

Megan CumminsMay 28, 20249 min read

Public Books

“This Is Not for the Policy People”: Ninaj Raoul on Making Change for Migrant Lives - Public Books

“I’d never imagine that in 2024 we would have tents of refugees in Brooklyn. … We’ve totally gone backward.”

Megan CumminsMay 31, 202415 min read

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The Border Patrol and Asylum Exclusion - Public Books

Border Patrol has regularly abused its authority and mistreated immigrants and asylum seekers in countless ways. Yet its role as the frontline force in asylum exclusion has only grown.

Charlotte RosenMay 30, 20248 min read

Public Books

On the Edges of Fascism and Other Unsettling Possibilities - Public Books

“Borders generate more human possibilities: citizens standing for the rights of noncitizens, finding them refuge, seeking them sanctuary, pushing at the margins of the state and its sovereignty.”

Megan CumminsJun 3, 20249 min read

Public Books

The Encyclopedia Project, or How to Know in the Age of AI - Public Books

In an age when AI regurgitates the blather of meaningless content, seeking its audience in the attention marketplace, it's a small wonder that it is hard to tell what is really real anymore.

Megan CumminsJun 13, 202414 min read

Public Books

Machine, System, Code: Masande Ntshanga and Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra - Public Books

“Literature has this remarkable, almost miraculous, ability to distill human experience.”

Megan CumminsJun 7, 20242 min read

Public Books

Finding Sanctuary in Art - Public Books

A single mural in San Francisco’s Mission District honors Latinx victims of police violence both at the US border and in US cities.

Megan CumminsJun 6, 20249 min read