Patricia J. Williams

Nov 14, 2024 | nybooks.com | Patricia J. Williams

Kidnapping children to punish parents is a mythic kind of barbarity. A witch places a curse on a family’s favorite daughter. An evil dragon devours the firstborn babe of the king. It’s biblical: damning the son for the sins of the father. It’s what crime syndicates do: threatening the bodily integrity of a beloved as “incentive” for a debtor to cough up ransom. We view such bargaining as criminal when extracted by humans—and even when the threat is issued by the gods.

Oct 29, 2024 | nybooks.com | Patricia J. Williams |Jacqueline Rose |Hari Kunzru

In the third installment of The New York Review of Books’s series of online events on the 2024 presidential election, held on October 17, 2024, award-winning writers and scholars Hari Kunzru, Jacqueline Rose, and Patricia Williams discussed race, gender, the psyche, and how the identity of the next president reflects the state of the nation. You may view all available recordings in this series on this page.

Oct 17, 2024 | nybooks.com | Patricia J. Williams

“I am not running to be Black history professor,” said Kamala Harris in 2019. “I am running to be president.” Then as now, some were questioning whether she was “Black enough” or whether she was “too Black” or whether the American republic was ready for a woman president, much less a Black South Asian one. “I know who I am,” she announced with refreshing simplicity.

Jun 25, 2024 | nybooks.com | Patricia J. Williams

Some years ago, a student brought me an image of a painting in the style of the Italian Renaissance. He had no knowledge of its provenance, but thought it would intrigue me, given my work on the history of racial representations. It depicts two men with halos—saints? holy men?