Books
John Pham's ​J​&K​​ - It's a Matter of Perspective
In J&K, John Pham explores perspectives in the psychological sense. Like Picasso, he views things from more than one angle.
31 Mar 2020
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You Become the Watcher in Eric Haven's 'Cryptoid'
In his latest work, Cryptoid, Eric Haven takes an idiosyncratically weird approach to the horror genre of the Weird to produce a hybrid graphic novella that belongs to no genre but his own.
27 Mar 2020
Books
When You Discover Your Father Had an Affair with Frida Kahlo...
The story of one of Frida Kahlo's short affairs, captured in Marc Petitjean's excellent book, The Heart, offers an inspired glimpse into the surreal Parisian art scene of 1939.
26 Mar 2020
Books
'Egress' Mourns and Celebrates the Life and Work of Theorist Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher's insights are often obscured in Matt Colquhoun's personal/academic hybrid, Egress, which ranges far and wide over philosophy and pop culture.
25 Mar 2020
Books
The Kids Might Be Alright: Progress as Virtue in Contemporary Children's Literature
Dave Eggers and Colin Meloy take on the antagonistic and nativist rhetoric in American politics and culture with children's books intent on generating empathy.
25 Mar 2020
Books
Finding Harmony Amidst Discord: 'The Mountains Sing'
A Vietnamese family's song resounds over the effects of decades of tumult in Nguyen Phan Que Mai's excellent novel, The Mountains Sing.
23 Mar 2020
Books
Blues Everywhere She Goes: Odetta
Ian Zack's biography gives the often-overlooked Odetta a chance to keeping shining that little light of hers.
23 Mar 2020
Books
Queer Love and Art in the Time of Nazis: 'Never Anyone But You'
Never Anyone But You is an inspiring tale of surrealists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who defied homophobia, Nazis, and gender norms while pushing the boundaries of art and love.
20 Mar 2020
Books
'Represented': Black Buying Power and the American Dream
The unheralded and underappreciated PR exec. Moss Kendrix is the de facto hero in Brenna Wynn Greer's enlightening history of Black marketers and the evolving depiction of Black people in mass media.
19 Mar 2020
Books
Nazism Repackaged? A Closer Look at the "Fascist Subtext" of 'Attack on Titan'
Many fantasy writers have incorporated the visual footprint of the Third Reich into their fictional worlds. Few, however, have done so as extensively as the creator of Attack on Titan, who revisited this terrible chapter of history not to find inspiration for a fearsome antagonist, but to excavate the divisive ideas that lay buried there.
18 Mar 2020
Books
#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (Excerpt)
#Powertothepeople! The humble hashtag has given power to the powerless, thus helping to engage citizenship and cultural belonging. Enjoy this excerpt of #HashtagActivism, courtesy of MIT Press, written by influential members of hashtag activism networks.
Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey, Brooke Foucault Welles
17 Mar 2020
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Love in the Time of Coronavirus: the Series, the Call for Papers
#Coronafirus #COVID19 #Pandemic: Love in the Time of Corona Virus is a new and hopefully short-run PopMatters series of art and life and the art of living in these times of global health crisis.
18 Mar 2020
Books
'Miss Iceland' Is a Brilliant Novel of Sexism, Homophobia, and the Writing Life
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir's Miss Iceland Is at once a poetic, light-hearted narrative and a sharply edged social critique that is caustic and righteous in its portrayal of the enduring nature of sexism, misogyny and homophobia.
12 Mar 2020
Music
What the Sirens Taught Us: An Elegy for Mermaidens
There's something not-quite-right, something distinctly off-kilter, about the Mermaidens' feminine voice in New Zealand's music scene.
12 Mar 2020
Books
The Two Worlds of Graphic Novel Umma's Table
Where fiction typically emphasizes plot, Yeon-Sik Hong's Umma's Table emphasizes a rich layering of events that creates the artful impression of memoir-like fiction.
11 Mar 2020
Books
Joan Didion's Crystal-Clear Vision Only Got Better with Age
Reading the Library of America's comprehensive anthology, Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s, is like walking out of the rain and into a time warp.
11 Mar 2020
Books
'Serenade for Nadia' Is a Beautifully Wrought Tale of Political Crimes Past and Present
Serenade for Nadia's complex plot allows Turkish author Zülfü Livaneli to sermonize on topics as varied as anti-Semitism, secularism and modernity, the role of faith in the modern world, diversity and multiculturalism, media and journalism, and more.
10 Mar 2020
Books
Television and Women's History through the Lens of Soap Operas
Media critic Elana Levine's Her Stories explores television history and the conflicts of generation, gender, and race in the heyday of "women's" soap operas.
09 Mar 2020
Books
Is Solipsism Art? On 'The Exhibition of Persephone Q'
Jessi Jezewska Stevens' debut novel, The Exhibition of Persephone Q, is filled with exciting ideas and quirky characters, but the book's surfeit of style can't make up for a lack of personality or perspective.
06 Mar 2020
Books
'Going Stealth': Trans Politics and Surveillance Practices
When activists cooperate with a repressive state, who gets left behind?
05 Mar 2020
Books
Harold Bloom's 'The American Literary Canon'
The authors included in Harold Bloom's The American Literary Canon conform to a singular American aesthetic that, in Bloom's world, makes them superior to the spectrum of the American experience.
04 Mar 2020
Books
Optimism and the Inquisition: The Extraordinary Life of Girolamo Cardano
Polymath Girolamo Cardano was beaten, imprisoned, survived a plague, and was banned by the church. Yet his work in medicine, engineering, mathematics and more is present in our lives today.
03 Mar 2020
Books
'Goblin Girl' and the Fiction/ Nonfiction Dichotomy
Moa Romanova's "semi-auto-bio" graphic fiction, Goblin Girl, explores the dating world with a mysterious mix of art and influences.
04 Mar 2020
Books
'Year of the Rabbit': How Quickly Cruelty and Genocide Can Become the Norm
Tian Veasna's superb yet harrowing graphic portrayal of the Khmer Rouge regime, Year of the Rabbit, conveys what damage a living nightmare can do to a country and its people in a mere four years.
02 Mar 2020
Books
Why Everyone Should Read Samra Habib's Queer Muslim Memoir
Matter of fact in its presentation of difficult material -- sexism, child marriage, emotional and sexual abuse -- what's most striking about Samra Habib's memoir, We Have Always Been Here, is the sense of compassion with which she writes.
28 Feb 2020
Books
Racism's Trauma Reverberates Across Generations in 'Your House Will Pay'
Steph Cha's depiction of systematic racism in Your House Will Pay is compelling, attesting to the complicated social structures at play.
27 Feb 2020
Books
The New World Will Be Built by Refugees: On Two New Japanese Novellas
The latest two Red Circle Minis, by Takuji Ichikawak and Kanji Hanawa, deal in archetypes; one set in the distant past, the other in the all too near future.
26 Feb 2020
Books
Ted Templeman Biography Casts a Wide, Deep Net
Producer Ted Templeman and biographer Greg Renoff successfully capture a wide-ranging career in Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer's Life in Music.
26 Feb 2020
Books
Are You, Too, a Walking Manifesto?
We are living in a season of manifestos and Breanne Fahs is our queen. Our guidebook: Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution.
25 Feb 2020
Books
On the Socially Conscious Filmmaker, Sidney Lumet
Maura Spiegel's biography provides a thorough and compelling look at the life and films of the progressive New York icon filmmaker, Sidney Lumet.
24 Feb 2020
Books
Striking for Its Art, 'New World' Is a Magic Parable of Resistance, Guilt, ​and Forgiveness
David Jesus Vignolli's graphic novel, New World, chronicles Indigenous resistance to European monsters in gorgeous art and mythic undertones.
24 Feb 2020
Books
Do We Already Know the Answer to the Question, 'Are Men Animals?'
Matthew Gutmann's Are Men Animals is and interesting but flawed, rushed look at masculinity that suffers from digressions and an unwillingness to be as political as it could have been.
20 Feb 2020
Books
On 'Blueschild Baby', George Cain's Searing Novel of Addiction: An Interview
George Cain's 1970 semi-autobiographical novel Blueschild Baby, recently republished by Ecco, is a difficult and unapologetic work about the life of a functioning drug addict. In this interview Imran Khan discusses Cain's work and life with his ex-wife, Jo Lynne, and son, Malik.
20 Feb 2020
Books
Black. Queer. Southern. Women.
Conveyed with urgency and mindfulness, Johnson's Black. Queer. Southern. Women. creates a space for revisioning critical race and sexual ideologies while affirming the voices of queer black women.
19 Feb 2020
Books
'Sports Is Hell' Narrows the Field to Identity Politics
Ben Passmore's Sports Is Hell is an apocalyptic parody of racism in US sports and politics.
18 Feb 2020
Books
'American Dirt' Now That the Dust Has Settled
Though the bluster has asserted the opposite, Jeanine Cummins' prose in American Dirt washes away the gore and grime to show the human faces that make up the migrant crisis of the Western Hemisphere.
18 Feb 2020
Books
The 43 Group and the Moral Imperative to Fight Fascists
Anti-fascist militants have played an important role in protecting community and democracy. Daniel Sonabend's We Fight Fascists brings light to that battle against fascism in post-war Britain.
17 Feb 2020
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