Category: On Books and Publishing

Book reviews and author interviews, as well essays on the state of publishing.

Working Skin: Joseph Hankins Writes about Leather, Japan’s Buraku People, and Global Circuits of Identity Formation

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date April 1, 2015

“This is an attempt to trace the conditions that reproduce the logic of the suffering/savage slot, even as I position my own work within those conditions.”

On Books and Publishing

Harper Lee Announces a Second Book, And Conspiracy Theories Break Loose

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 5, 2015

It makes sense that Lee never produced another book. Who could, with such a weight on their shoulders?

On Books and Publishing Prison industrial complex Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Review of Naomi Murakawa’s The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date October 4, 2014

The center of the carceral state is not, it turns out, the cold, frozen heart of the conservative dominated by an openly racist animus, but the warm, bleeding heart of liberalism, throbbing with feelings of goodness and tolerance.

Film, Art, Television, and Media On Books and Publishing

Is Your Reading Material Ethically Sourced?

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date May 29, 2014

On Books and Publishing

My Review of Jo Becker’s Controversial New Book on Gay Marriage

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date May 7, 2014

An epic tale of a band of brave heroes and the foolish combatants who dared to try to vanquish them, a kind of gay “Lord of the Rings,” but with men in dark bespoke suits instead of magic armor and cloaks. …

Film, Art, Television, and Media On Books and Publishing

Scabs and the Seduction of Neoliberalism

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 19, 2014

If you’re going to be a working writer or any kind of “creative professional,” demand the same kind of respect you would give to someone who fixes your plumbing.

Machinery Painting - Detroit Industry North Wall by Diego Rivera

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Feminism On Books and Publishing Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

My Review of Sex Workers Unite!

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 16, 2014

The history of urban centers is, in palpable ways, the history of their sex workers.

Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk by [Chateauvert, Melinda]

Immigration On Books and Publishing

Jacobinned: The Story Behind the Story Jacobin Refused to Publish

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 15, 2014

Our work and analyses face the greatest obstacles not from the familiar bogey-man, the Right, but from a Left which is terrified of being called racist because it has painted itself into the corner of identitarianism, where politics is judged solely by the history of oppressions that can be claimed.