Andrea Long Chu Author Archive
MOST RECENT ARTICLES BY:

Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for New York and Vulture. She is the author of Females and was a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction.

  1. politics
    In Praise of Bad ReadersIn a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
  2. close read
    Hot CommodityIn Sally Rooney’s novels, love is always being bought, sold, or reduced to tropes. But this is also what makes it real.
  3. close read
    Against ‘Women’s Writing’Rachel Cusk’s gender fundamentalism fully surfaces in her latest novel, Parade.
  4. book review
    How Zadie Smith Lost Her TeethSince her audacious debut, she has been moving toward character-driven realism. In the process, she’s become the least interesting version of herself.
  5. tv
    In Taylor Sheridan’s America, the Cowboy Is Colonized TooYellowstone is known for being a red-state show. But its political ideology is lifted from the left.
  6. theater
    Phantom Remade the Musical in Its Own ImageIt was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s manifesto for what musical theater should be and, ultimately, what it would become: a shrine to the power of song.
  7. close read
    The Last of Us Is Not a Video-Game AdaptationHBO turned the story into unmissable television. So why does it feel like something’s missing?
  8. close reads
    Misreading Octavia ButlerThe slavery interpretation the author couldn’t escape.
  9. close reads
    The Velveteen Rabbit Was Always More Than a Children’s BookWritten for her daughter, Margery Williams Bianco’s hundred-year-old story is a memorial to what we all lose in exchange for adulthood.
  10. at home in asian america
    The Mixed MetaphorWhy does the half-Asian, half-white protagonist make us so anxious?
  11. book review
    Ottessa Moshfegh Is Praying for UsThe author has been hailed as a high priestess of filth. Really, she wants to purify her readers.
  12. close reads
    Hanya’s BoysThe novelist tends to torture her gay male characters — but only so she can swoop in to save them.
  13. book review
    You’ve Heard This One BeforeMaggie Nelson believes we react too quickly and think ungenerously. In her new book, she’s guilty of both.
  14. the matrix
    What We Can Learn About Gender From The MatrixTrans women have claimed it as an allegory for gender transition since at least 2012. But allegorically is the least interesting way to read anything.