Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator

Category: On Books and Publishing

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

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

Room: From Novel to Film

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 18, 2016

Call me a classicist, but years of reading novels tells me when something is off.

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

All Those Mad, Mag Feels

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 17, 2016

Excerpt: Even as a kid, I loved that first, heady rush of anticipation I experienced with every one of them.

Feminism On Books and Publishing Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

The Feminist Utopia Project Isn’t Utopian Just Yet

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 8, 2016

The problem here is that greed is situated as an emotional and cultural value, rather than as what it is: a structural component of capitalism.

Capitalism, Class, Inequality On Books and Publishing

I’m a Freelance Writer. I Refuse to Work for Free.

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 26, 2016

You’re not doing it for the money, but you’re making it impossible for me to earn a living.

Typewriting Machine Patent Vintage Illustrations Industrial image 0

Capitalism, Class, Inequality On Books and Publishing

The Irony of Writing About Poverty On Medium

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 24, 2016

Excerpt: What is it about writing that we don’t see it as something that deserves compensation as labour? And why do we think that it’s okay to pay millionaires and billionaires with our labor instead of demanding that they pay us?

On Books and Publishing Politics

Review of Steven Salaita’s Uncivil Rites

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date November 4, 2015

“We ought to complicate academic freedom even as we vigorously defend it.”

On Books and Publishing Politics

My Review of Joseph Massad’s Islam in Liberalism in Electronic Intifdad

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date August 21, 2015

This is a dense and densely argued book, in the best way.

Academia Animals Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour On Books and Publishing Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

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.