recent,
Review: Emancipation, The Yale Review.
“The Rock Goes Back to Black,” NewYorker.com.
“Tessa Thompson Takes Her Time,” Harper’s Bazaar.
Review: Passing, 4Columns.
essays,
- “Josephine Baker Was the Star France Wanted—and the Spy It Needed,” The New Yorker, 2022.
- “Alice Walker’s Journals Depict an Artist Restless on Her Laurels,” The New Yorker, 2022.
- “How Louie Simmons Defined the Extreme Sport of Power Lifting,” NewYorker.com, 2022.
- “The Matter of Who’s Who,” Jewish Currents, 2022.
- “Aside Affects,” The Believer, 2021.
- “The Void That Critical Race Theory Was Created to Fill,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “How “Bridgerton” and “The Bachelor” Coupled Romance with Race,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Dave Chappelle, Netflix, and the Illusions of Corporate Identity Politics,” NewYorker.om, 2021.
- “How ‘Bridgerton‘ and ‘The Bachelor‘ Coupled Romance with Race,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Paul Mooney, Comedy’s Maestro of White America,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Daunte Wright and the Grammar of Kim Potter’s Resignation,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Kim Kardashian and the Year of Unchecked Privilege-Checking,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “The Racial Politics of Kamala Harris’s Performance Style,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “The United States of Dolly Parton,” The New Yorker, 2020.
- “When Black People Appear on Seinfeld,” New York magazine, 2020.
- “The Messy Politics of Black Voices—and ‘Black Voice’—in American Animation,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?” New York magazine, 2020.
- “You should watch everything with subtitles on,” Washington Post, 2020.
- Baby Yoda and the cuteness of capitalism, Washington Post, 2019.
- “Justin Trudeau’s Blackface Scandal Shouldn’t Have Surprised Us,” Washington Post, 2019.
- “What Should a Slavery Epic Do?” Vulture, 2019.
- “The Racial Wonderland of Aladdin’s Genie,” Vulture, 2019.
- “What’s Missing From ‘White Fragility’,” Slate, 2019.
- “Pretending to Be Famous in The Sims,” NewYorker.com, 2019.
- “Who Really Owns the ‘Blaccent’?” Vulture, 2018.
- “The Alluring Melancholy of Ambrose Spellman on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” Vulture, 2018.
- “The Haunting of Hill House and the Madness of Family,” Vulture 2018.
- “To Whom Does Ariana Grande’s ‘7 Rings’ Owe Its Sound?” Vulture, 2019.
- “A Deep Dive Into Ariana Grande’s ‘Breathin’’ Video,” Vulture, 2018.
- “10 Years Later, Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ Still Slaps,” Rolling Stone, 2018.
- “On Beyoncé, Beychella, and Hairography,” The Paris Review Daily, 2018.
- “Digital Jukeboxes Are Eroding the Dive-Bar Experience,” TheAtlantic.com, 2018.
- “National Geographic Replaces Racist Fictions With Post-racial Fantasies,” Daily Intelligencer, 2018.
- “How Did SpongeBob SquarePants Become the Most Meme-able TV Show?,” Vulture, 2018.
- “Squidward, SpongeBob, and the Complex Emotions of FOMO,” Select/all (nymag.com) 2018.
- “Shudu Gram Is a White Man’s Digital Projection of Real-Life Black Womanhood,” NewYorker.com, 2018.
- “How Today’s Most Daring, Weird Cartoons Transform the Minstrel Aesthetic,” Vulture, 2017.
- “A Unified Theory of Meme Death,” TheAtlantic.com, 2017.
- “Touched by the Sacred,” The Point magazine, 2017.
- “Why Lana Del Rey and Hip Hop Make for a Natural Pairing,” Complex, 2017.
- “Jay-Z’s 4:44 Reveals the Limits of Decoding Art As Fact,” Complex, 2017.
- “The White Lies of Craft Culture,” Eater, 2017.
- “Why A New Mixed Race Generation Will Not Solve Racism,” Buzzfeed, 2017.
- “Blackness + America,” The Point magazine, 2017.“E•MO•JIS,” Real Life magazine, 2016.
- “The Blackness of Meme Movement,” Modelview Culture, 2016.
- “The Not-Always-Politics of Black Hair,” The Awl, 2016.
- “The Raw Romanticism of Vulgar Pop Ballads,” Complex, 2016
- “Kanye West, Black Art, and the Great Escape From Wokeness,” Complex, 2016.
- “Drake’s Playground,” 2016.
- “We Real Cool,” The New Inquiry, 2015.
- “A Deluxe Apartment in the Sky,” The New Inquiry, 2015.
- “The Hypocrisy of Revitalization: Universities in Black Communities,” The Atlantic, 2014.
- “Memes and Misogynoir,” The Awl, 2014.
reviews,
- “In Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” the Easter Eggs Aren’t the Point,” NewYorker.com, 2022.
- “Namwali Serpell’s New Novel Reinvents the Elegy,” The New Yorker, 2022.
- “The Zora Neale Hurston We Don’t Talk About,” NewYorker.com, 2022.
- “The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Sally Rooney Gets Outside of People’s Heads,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “What We Want from Richard Wright,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Obama and Springsteen’s Podcast Is Here to Lull America,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- Review: The Prophets, NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “The ‘Animaniacs’ Reboot Revives the Zany and Regurgitates the Meta,” NewYorker.com, 2021.
- “Ariana Grande Talks Dirty on ‘Positions’,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “Don DeLillo’s Event Horizon,” SSENSE, 2020.
- Review: Time (dir. Garrett Bradley), 4Columns, 2020.
- “The Missing Melodrama of ‘Lovecraft Country’,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “Beyoncé’s Knowing Ethnic Splendor in ‘Black Is King’” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “What Can a Filmed Version of “Hamilton” Offer Us Now?” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “Dave Chappelle’s Rough-Cut Humorlessness in ‘8:46’,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “Blackness Is Mythical in Netflix’s BlackAF,” Vulture, 2020.
- Review: “Sorry to Bother You,” In These Times magazine, 2018.
reporting, profiles & interviews,
- Interview with Sam Richardson, NewYorker.com, 2022.
- “The Queen of Christmas’s Next Act,” Harper’s Bazaar, 2021.
- “The Importance of Being Megan Thee Stallion,” Harper’s Bazaar, 2021.
- “The Layered Deceptions of Jessica Krug, The Black-Studies Professor Who Hid That She Was White,” NewYorker.com, 2020.
- “What’s Missing From ‘White Fragility’,” Slate, 2019.
- “The Reality of Teen-Run Stan Accounts,” FADER, 2016.
personal,
- On Notes, The Oxonian Review, 2022.
- “Out of Cite,” The Awl, 2016.
- “How Do We Live With Our Elders,” Hazlitt, 2016.
- “I Can Tell You All About Lemonade,” Complex, 2016.
- “Program Recruitment From the Margins,” 2016.
- “Texting Fever,” The Awl, 2015.
poems, etc.
The Journal
“blue” (Issue 41.2)
Spoon River Poetry Review
“Something strange happens to the body when an afro is born” (Issue 42.2)
Water~Stone Review
“Lisa Simpson, the yellow sister“
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