selected essays
work, leisure, & the good life
careerism: the writing life and its discontents, on ambition, disenchantment, and craft (the point [print #26], 2021)
- featured on bookforum's "paper trail" / one of the magazine's top reads of 2021 / listen on curio
- notable mention best american essays 2020 / one of the magazine's top reads of 2019 / listen on curio
self-help in the age of digital reproduction: walter benjamin and bullet journal (real life, 2018)
an ode to bad employees and the world of work in charles bukowski and hunter thompson (la review of books, 2018)
the cure to burnout may be more work: pleasure is serious business (the atlantic, 2024)
the big secret in our small routines: pandemic reflections on what we can control (the atlantic, 2022)
we're bad at dealing with loneliness: social isolation is extremely common but easily maligned (the atlantic, 2021)
the paradox of caring about bullshit jobs, on office novels and enchantment in a life of work (the atlantic, 2021)
quiet, radical defiance, on 1950s feminism and well-behaved women's material/intellectual liberation (the rumpus, 2020)
waiting mode, on mutual aid and prayer journaling (the point, 2021)
in defense of idleness, on performance of productivity (new republic, 2021)
- featured on dense discovery and creativerly
literature
syllabus for the internet: the arcades project, walter benjamin in the 21st century (real life, 2019)
on shopping, desire, and modernity, and annie erneaux's and walter benjamin's shoppers (la review of books, 2023)
elizabeth hardwick's unique feminism, on marriage and caretaking (yale review, 2022)
edna st. vincent millay's wondrous and mundane diaries: rapture and melancholy (the nation, 2022)
dream city: drifting through paris, bombay, and new york with patrick modiano and the situationists (strange matters, 2023)
on simone de beauvoir's inseparable: freedom, earthly pleasure, & unrequited love (the atlantic, 2021)
on bombay monsoon (indian quarterly, april-june 2021)
notes of a (young woman of color's inner) dirty old man: victimhood/agency in sex & colonialism (soft punk, 2020)
on social and aesthetic experience in mary mccarthy's fiction (the point [print #23], 2020)
- reprinted in grove atlantic's literary hub as "what the elites got wrong about mary mccarthy's the group"
fighting fascism through literature, on arundhati roy's outrage & natalia ginzburg's joy (in these times [print] nov. 2020)
in the "low," on bombay and hedonism in jeet thayil's fiction (guernica, 2020)
we need to read the forgotten geniuses, not rescue them: on reissued books and engaging with history (ny times, 2024)
- introduction to my guest essay in the NYT newsletter
book reviews
beppe fenoglio's a private affair: the resistance novel that foregrounds subjective experience over ideology (full stop, 2023)
on india's (and hinduism's) identity crisis and fiction after modi (the baffler, 2024)
the myth of american idealism: the pointlessness and pettiness of US foreign policy (la review of books, 2024)
on affinity: brian dillon's images that impinge and do not resolve (artforum, 2023)
difficult people: victims, villains, caretakers, brats, abusers, mothers, daughters, lovers (the baffler, 2022)
the failed promise of 'having it all': on rona jaffe's the best of everything (the atlantic, 2023)
fruit without taste: on marguerite duras's the easy life (la review of books, 2023)
"can you be a good citizen if you make the world worse?" (washington post, 2023)
between information and experience: walter benjamin's the storyteller essays (la review of books, 2019)
it's not easy being seen, on halle butler and disillusionment in contemporary fiction (bookforum, 2020)
roxane gay's hunger (electric lit, 2017)
consider the cop show, on glorification of the nypd (la review of books, 2018)
cities + architecture
all eyes, no skin: how quarantine & modernity impacted our physical experience of the city (n+1, 2020)
verticals, on how bombay escapes the skyline fetish (helter skelter, 2018)
reading maeve brennan alone at the bar, on the value of loitering and being interrupted by men (electric lit, 2018)
ordinary people: lauren elkin's notes on a parisian commute & the importance of the mundane in urban life (guernica, 2021)
- selected for the longreads newsletter
colonial cartography, on the legacy of imperial, corporate, & social media mapping to manufacture identity (real life, 2019)
- presented as a talk for mixed taste [museum of contemporary art, DCPA] / excerpted on e-flux
- translated to portuguese for moostro mag
a collection of hours: ana kinsella's look here: on the pleasures of observing the city (the rumpus, 2022)
cut to the chase: speed, technology, urban life in the interwar years, told through linocut art (bookforum, dec 2022)
what would a 'feminist city' look like? (in these times [print] sept. 2020)
late life urbanism, on making a city for its least profitable users (los angeles review of books, 2019)
"scaffolding" at the center for architecture, nyc, on impermanence as anti-capitalist (untapped cities, 2017)
paul rudolph's modulightor building (untapped cities, 2017)
housing
is yimbyism the answer to america's housing crisis? (tl;dr: no) (new republic, 2020)
take back our cities, on protest encampments, the history of squatting, and urban belonging (new republic, 2020)
the rhetorical weapons of liberal nimbyism, on using the language of 'safety' to justify anti-homelessness (new republic, 2020)
small business jobs survival act in nyc, its history and context, and its city council hearing (the indypendent, 2018)
history
narrative essays for nearpod: eqbal ahmad / patsy mink / thich quang duc & vietnam war
iranian revolution / chinese american railroad laborers / marshall islands
biographies for curated LQ series on history: machiavelli / etsu inagaki sugimoto / al-biruni
biographies for curated LQ series on advice: chrétien de troyes / nizam al-mulk / giovanni della casa
déjà vu: royal cats / bee swarms / picket line romances / dance floor protests
interviews + profiles
an anarchist in the courtroom: activist criminal defense attorney martin stolar (RIP) (the indypendent, 2018)
you cannot liberate people by force: germaine greer on western and indian feminism (culture trip, 2015)
naveen shakil: brooklyn/karachi-based street artist (j'ai-pur journal, 2017)