Opinions
Review: Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukasonga, trans. Mark Polizzotti
The novella moves between storytellers and versions of history, delivering a story that could never fit into a single truth or archive box.
Review: The Last to the Party by Chuqiao Yang
With this promise and its dubious comparison, Yang opens up her world of cultural memory, her geographic and emotional landmarks, and uncertain-yet-loving family relations.
Review: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang
Ultimately, this is the merit of Babel: its timelessness and applicability in modern-day politics.
Review: All This and More
The grim implications of All This and More have a lot of room to build on, and Shepherd committing to the sinister endings makes for very entertaining reading regardless of which one a reader lands on.
Review: Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience
When you pick up this book, keep your wits about you, you will need them.
Self-mortification: Why I just can’t stop embarrassing myself
Mortification is the defining emotion of my childhood. I don’t mean to say I was unhappy, but I think it’s true that the psychological impact of mortification (by which I mean a kind of lingering, self-inflicted embarrassment) is uniquely acute.
Review: The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok
The Leftover Woman embraces a range of topics with great emotional weight, including motherhood, adoption, abuse, and the hostility of the United States to undocumented immigrants, all of which together do make a reader truly hope for a kind resolution…
A Brief Critique in Comparison: Lahiri’s Whereabouts vs Ghosh’s Gun Island
Even though Whereabouts validated my pessimism around the impact of these diasporas in recent works of Indian fiction, Ghosh’s Gun Island, in an intrinsically antonymous manner, enthralled me with adoration for works set in India.
