Reviews

Amy Berkowitz on her new book Gravitas, the graduate school gauntlet, and collective poetry experiments.

In Mattie Lubchansky’s new graphic novel, Boys Weekend, the stag celebration achieves its final, and fatal, form.

Gangs of Lagos, Amazon Prime Video’s debut African original film, delivers compelling action, illustrating the present by reawakening the past and gazing into the future

Acree Macam reflects on the murder of Tortuguita, activist parents and children, and Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts

In his column, Jonathan Russell Clark re-examines the work of Ted Chiang, using it as a lens through which to understand today’s AI discourse.

Michael Kolawole writes about the spectacular use of music in Philippe Lâcote’s prison drama Night of the Kings.

Columnist Jonathan Russell Clark proves that sometimes, the best biographers can’t stand their subjects.

Columnist Alejandro Herredia meditates on the democratic power of perreo.

In Jonathan Russell Clark’s latest column, he writes about Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York and tries to summon some love for Colombus, Ohio.

Donald Earl Collins critiques Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, calling on producers and writers to deepen their apocalyptic imaginations by thinking racially.

Miah Jeffra reviews Cheryl Klein's fertility and cancer memoir "Crybaby", an exploration of cancer, fertility, eating disorder, queer desire, and the self.

In 1954 Sylvia Wright, an editor at Harper’s Magazine, wrote a piece for the magazine in which she recalls her childhood. Her mother would read the Scottish ballad “The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray” to her. Here is how young Wright heard the opening lyric: Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh, where hae ye been? They […]

The Telugu film RRR is an incredible mixture of genres, influences, and ideas: a historical epic with obvious ahistorical qualities, a combat-heavy actioner with exuberant song-and-dance numbers, a homosocial friendship drama with recognizably romantic montages. Strong notes of melodrama accent its potent blend. These notes appear not just literally—in musical form—but also within the film’s […]

Jonathan Russell Clark debuts a monthly column for Tasteful Rude detailing the choicest selections from his book-obsessed life. His current apartment resembles a used bookstore almost more than it does an ordinary living space, and he plans to write about whatever he finds on those shelves that tickles his fancy.

A few weekends ago I drove to the teeny beach town of Oceano. I had received a tip that, somewhere on California’s Central Coast, someone was performing live melodramas.