By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, March 10, 2016 Rushdie wrote that the migrant had to discover new ways to be human. These books recognize what a task that is; they recognize that migration can be, for some, an almost posthumous existence, that it awakens not only the desire to succeed butContinue reading “Ways of Being: New Immigrant Fiction”
Author Archives: parulsehgal
Fighting ‘Erasure’
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2, 2016 EFFORTS TO FORCE collective amnesia are as old as conquest. The Roman decree damnatio memoriae — ‘‘condemnation of memory’’ — punished individuals by destroying every trace of them from the city, down to chiseling faces off statues. It was considered a fate worse than execution.Continue reading “Fighting ‘Erasure’”
Invisible Designs: On Bohumil Hrabal
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, Jan. 12, 2016 BOHUMIL HRABAL DIED only once — in Prague, on Feb. 3, 1997 — but there are at least two versions of the story. Read more
The Profound Emptiness of “Resilience”
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Dec. 1, 2015 In 2015, the Department of Education reported 146 cases of racial harassment on campuses, although studies suggest that only 13 percent of racial incidents are reported. By playing down the racism that the students have faced, it’s easier to frame the protests as tantrums,Continue reading “The Profound Emptiness of “Resilience””
Mary Gaitskill and the Life Unseen
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 2, 2015 Gaitskill has produced a body of work so acutely observant of human behavior that it’s frequently described in the language of violation: a vivisection, a dental drill, a flogging. There is very rough sex in her books, and characters who binge eat and ripContinue reading “Mary Gaitskill and the Life Unseen”
Is Cultural Appropriation Always Wrong?
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 25, 2015 IT’S A TRUTH only selectively acknowledged that all cultures are mongrel. One of the first Indian words to be brought into English was the Hindi ‘‘loot’’ — ‘‘plunder.’’ Some of the Ku Klux Klan’s 19th-century costumes were, of all things, inspired in part by theContinue reading “Is Cultural Appropriation Always Wrong?”
How ‘Privilege’ Became a Provocation
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 2015 Read more
On ‘Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty’
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, June 25, 2015 Francis Bacon said he wanted “to paint the scream more than the horror.” Marilyn Minter’s multivalent mouths manage to be both the scream and the horror, the laughter and the joke. “I’ve always been interested in things that drip, things that sweat, wetContinue reading “On ‘Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty’”
On The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times, June 16, 2015 Read more
Mothers of Invention
By Parul Sehgal, Bookforum JUNE/JULY/AUG 2015 Since its beginnings, family has carried this strain of being bonded—and not just in body but in imagination. “In landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God,” says Ishmael, setting sail in Moby-Dick. On shore, we are to understand, our minds remain manacled, too absorbed with the hearthContinue reading “Mothers of Invention”
Parul Sehgal 