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“

WebSafe2k16

“66CC00”