‘Article 353’ Explores Who Might Mete Out Justice When the Law Fails
Article 353 is Tanguy Viel's politically charged, darkly atmospheric, and cathartic indictment of neoliberal capitalism.
popmatters pick
‘Heaven and Hell’ Offers a Powerful Child’s-eye View of Japanese Colonialism
Japanese poet Toriko Takarabe grew up in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and lived to tell the harrowing tale.
‘Ancestral Night’ Is a Sweeping Space Saga for Intelligent Readers
Mystery and discovery in Hugo Award-winning novelist Elizabeth Bear's latest work, Ancestral Night, initially hooks but it's the speculative and complex world she constructs that's most rewarding.
Summer Brennan’s ‘High Heel’ Combines Memoir and Epic Poetry
The lovely cadences in Summer Brennan's High Heel stack up like so many sand castles that sift iconic examples of high heels into a finely grained pile of pros and cons that each reader will sift through quite differently.
In Two Minds: Robert Altman’s ‘Images’ Essays the Terrors of Schizophrenia
Altman’s Images is a complex, haunting, and always disturbing film about the slow realization that one’s sanity is at stake.
Timuel Black Tells His Remarkable South Side Chicago Story in ‘Sacred Ground’
The esteemed oral historian, Timuel Black, turns the microphone around to capture his amazing journey through 20th Century black America in Sacred Ground.
You Can Feel the Venue’s Heartbeat on Every Page of ‘Showtime at the Apollo’
How do we measure the status of a performer's Holy Grail like the Apollo Theater in 2019? Ted Fox and James Otis Smith's beautifully realized, updated graphic history brings this rich history to life.
Is There Hope for Knowledge? On Robert Pasnau’s ‘After Certainty’
In After Certainty, philosopher Robert Pasnau constructs a history of knowledge and concludes that most theories of knowledge aren’t up to par.
‘Go Ahead in the Rain’ Artfully Melds the Many Parts of a Tribe Called Quest’s Backstory
In Go Ahead in the Rain, Hanif Abdurraqib blends his talents as both culture critic and personal essayist for a meditation on perhaps the most influential hip-hop group from the genre's sample-laden boom-bap era, A Tribe Called Quest.
Paul Crenshaw’s ‘This One Will Hurt You’ Will, Indeed
Paul Crenshaw's This One Will Hurt You, a PopMatters' Pick, is powerful essay collection about life, loss, faith, and natural (and man-made) violence in rural America.
Nora Krug’s ‘Belonging’ Could Serve as a Model for Understanding Collective Responsibility
In graphic novel Belonging, Nora Krug takes a single idea – her family's involvement in the Second World War and Nazi Germany – and pursues it with relentless, forensic determination.
Irresistible Dark Visions and Sentimental Longing in ‘You Know You Want This’
Short story collection You Know You Want This, a PopMatters' Pick, brings forth a dozen brilliant and beautifully unapologetic dark visions from fearless new writer, Kristen Roupenian.