Parul Sehgal

New York

Critic-at-Large at The New York Times

Staff writer, @newyorker. Formerly, book critic @nytimesbooks

Articles

Solidarity Among Progressives Could Give New Life to Their Cause

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Parul Sehgal

In conversation with Page, Schulman explained that the speech was approved by Kelly’s partner and friends and delivered in the spirit of the political funerals during the thick of the AIDS pandemic; she wanted to dispel the fantasy of suicide as any kind of solution. She took questions from those in the audience who had feltwounded or angered.
Solidarity Among Progressives Could Give New Life to Their Cause

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Parul Sehgal

The Trump administration has declared a war on words - some 200 of them and counting. Reporting by The Times found that words like "inclusion" and "identity" have been flagged by agencies, with instruction to avoid them or even remove them from government websites and curriculums, part of the wider initiative to scrub diversity and inclusion initiatives from public life. Some words under scrutiny are so neutral they invite surprise ("belong," "women").
Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative

Oct 14, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

It is a truth only fitfully acknowledged that whom the gods wish to destroy, they first give an opinion column. “A live coffin,” a former newspaper colleague of mine once called hers. (She quit.) Such a space seems an impossible remit, created to coax out vague, vatic pronouncements as the writer, mind wrung dry of ideas, sets about a weary pantomime of thinking and feeling, outrage and offense. Few writers have seemed as aware of the hazards of professional opinion-mongering as Ta-Nehisi Coates.
An Anatomist of Pleasure Gives Voice to the Body in Pain

Sep 9, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

Pain, it has been said, is the great censor, the eater of words. Pain shatters language; it remains untranslatable—not just anti-narrative but pre-narrative, calling us back to our first sounds.
Is the End of Marriage the Beginning of Self-Knowledge?

Aug 5, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

Why do you stay? a neighbor asks, listening to her litany. After a screaming fight, after John admits that he cannot contribute to the joint bank account that month, after Jane cries “from the deepest part of the pain tank,” she admits, “I understood why people divorce.” The reader’s heart lifts—see Jane run?—but then drops, realizing that there are more than two hundred pages to go. Eventually, it’s John who will leave, for another woman, and Jane who will beg him to stay.
“Consent,” by Jill Ciment, and “Change,” by Édouard Louis, Reviewed

Jul 1, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

On time, as anticipated, they have returned, tunnelling into view, leaving their sooty signature. Pale in the sudden light, they fan and flutter their wings. It’s time to sing. Me, they sing. Me, again. Cicada season has come and gone; it is another class of organism I refer to, in the throes of a parallel drama of ceremonial unwrapping and full-throated song of the self.
“Consent,” by Jill Ciment, and “Change,” by Édouard Louis, Reviewed

Jul 1, 2024 | shorturl.at | Parul Sehgal

Cicada season has come and gone; it is another class of organism I refer to, in the throes of a parallel drama of ceremonial unwrapping and full-throated song of the self. As if compelled by biological imperatives of their own, these writers—serial memoirists, they’re sometimes called—burst forth with regularly timed tales of tribulation, of molting, of transformation. And each time they tell us they have it figured out.
Amy Herzog Wants You to Enter Into the Strangeness of Caregiving

May 12, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

A child we cannot see is in danger. We hear the beeping of medical monitors. We hear his nurse say, with sudden sharpness, “I don’t like this.” We hear his mother’s voice, threading through the noise, rising above it, as she tries to rouse him, asks him to stay with her. Someone—a visitor—runs to find a phone to call an ambulance. She cannot find the phone, she almost drops the phone—what’s the address again? It was at this point that the woman sitting next to me, in the audience, covered her eyes.
Who’s Afraid of Judith Butler?

Apr 29, 2024 | newyorker.com | Parul Sehgal

In January, the American philosopher Judith Butler and the South African artist William Kentridge took part in a public conversation in Paris about atrocity and its representations. Before an audience at the École Normale Supérieure, they spoke for nearly two hours, in lulling abstraction and murmured mutual regard: Can we give the image the benefit of the doubt? What is the role of the object in thinking? After the event, a woman—a philosopher herself—approached Butler.
In Tommy Orange’s Latest, a Family Tree Grows from Severed Roots

Feb 19, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Parul Sehgal

By signing up for our newsletter, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy