imperialism

What women really want when women want imperialism: Kushner and Rushdie on Queen Isabella

What women really want when women want imperialism: Kushner and Rushdie on Queen Isabella

In November, after failing to allow a woman to steer our ship of state, watching Netflix’s The Crown seemed punishing. After Hillary Clinton’s close loss, I didn’t know if I could handle watching a woman preside over the United Kingdom. But I capitulated and found myself watching a young Elizabeth II struggle to stand up to…

“Digging out weapons in the arsenal of language” :  An Interview with Meena Kandasamy

“Digging out weapons in the arsenal of language” : An Interview with Meena Kandasamy

Meena Kandasamy is a writer based in India and London. She writes poetry and fiction, translates, and often uses social media to discuss issues of social justice. She describes her own work as maintaining “a focus on caste annihilation, linguistic identity and feminism.” She has published two collections of poetry: Touch and Ms Militancy. Her…

How to Write Indian Literature

If you’re studying a nation’s literature, it’s best to know that nation’s language. English literature finds definition in its mother tongue, despite the linguistic leap from Shakespeare to Zadie Smith. American literature, whose myriad dialects are called upon by Walt Whitman, John Ashbery, and Nikki Giovanni, rests comfortably in its native discourse. Langston Hughes states…