Podcast · Arts & Books

Critical Literary Consumption

Join Anna Nguyen for a podcast that asks us to reflect on our reading and analyzing practices. Interviewing writers, authors, and academics, we'll discuss: what does it mean when we cite a text or when we activate the text? Are we giving authors the agency or do we take for granted the concepts we u

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest: 29 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

29 Sep 2026 · 59 min

Why Race Still Matters (with Dr. Alana Lentin)

Dr. Alana Lentin, the author of Why Race Still Matters and The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy , discusses how she situates herself and experiences to understand race as a global project that has national and local particularities. She summarizes why she views race as a technology of rules that produces and maintains human differences, which is important for the continuation of white supremacy, and why critical racial literacy is important.

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

14 Aug 2026 · 37 min
On Writing an Immersive, Propulsive Romance-Beach Read (with Soon Wiley)
Four years after appearing on Critical Literary Consumption to discuss his debut, When We Fell Apart , Soon Wiley returns with CeCe Downing’s Start Over Summer , a complex beach read. Wiley considers, again, the fluidity of genre, books he thought of while writing CeCe’s story and the question of class that emerges when asking what makes a good partner or relationship. We also talk about the idealization of New England town halls and summers, both of which were subverted in Wiley’s second novel. He also shares stories about his research rabbit holes for his secondary story, on bureaucracy,…
26 Jun 2026 · 54 min
Queer Friendship & Queer Poetics (with Chen Chen & Sam Herschel Wein)
Best friends Chen Chen and Sam Herschel Wein discuss their collaborative chapbook, Love That For Us , published by & Change Poetry. They share how their friendship and poetics formed, that fateful residency in Portland, Oregon, pop culture as critical history, and silliness and queer joy. As they are long-distance friends, Chen and Sam also reflect on spatial and physical revising for emotional impact, and how co-editing Underblong has helped them co-create, co-write, and co-revise, and disagree.
29 May 2026 · 40 min
Poetics, Prose, Place, and Persona (with Saeed Jones)
Saeed Jones traces his poetic roots through his sense of place and placemaking, identity, education, and his experiences writing in multiple genres. Considering how freeing the poetic form can be, Jones talks about the fictional element and the many personas embedded in his poems. Because we grew up in the south, he also reflects on the prominence of the south in his work and how “the south” is its own character (a persona!) and his attempt to correct the Southern canon.
14 Apr 2026 · 42 min
Testimonies Are a Form of Data (with Dr. Jessica Hernandez)
In discussing her books, Fresh Banana Leaves and Growing Papaya Plants , Indigenous scientist Dr. Jessica Hernandez talks about turning her attention from a non-native but displaced relative (banana trees) to a native plant relative (papaya trees) to discuss climate displacement and migration. She also shares her thoughts on the binary of Western science and Indigenous science, writing scientifically and what counts as empirical data, defining the work of an Indigenous scientist, the purpose of a positionality statement, and her general experiences in academia.
16 Mar 2026 · 50 min
On Writing the Dual Roles of Mother and Wife (with Thammika Songkaeo)
A character who is dissatisfied in her own marriage will likely struggle to be a mother, says Thammika Songkaeo. Discussing her debut novel, Stamford Hospital, Thammika explores the complexity of womanhood, intimacy and relationships, the limitations of intersectionality as a framework, class analysis, colorism in Asia, and the international novel. We also bonded over our experiences in our respective MFA and PhD programs.
29 Nov 2025 · 34 min
"Fetishized": A Reckoning/Reawakening (with Kaila Yu)
Kaila Yu's Fetishized: A Reckoning With Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty is written as memoir-in-essays that serves as media and cultural analysis. We discussed how she situated her personal experiences as part of her research process, analyzing the broader Asian American landscape and history, revisiting her own media, the import scene, and representation.
19 Sep 2025 · 51 min
The Cat-Centered Novel (with Tanya Guerrero)
Tanya Guerrero shares how her love of animals and her volunteer experiences with Trap/Neuter/Return (TNR) shaped her first adult novel, Cat’s People . We discussed the popular trend of cat-centered novels and the porous genre question for stories that straddle literary fiction, popular fiction, and speculative fiction. The conversation ends with Tanya’s upcoming project, about a real-life dog figure set in historical times.
14 Aug 2025 · 48 min
The Many Biopedagogies of Sugar (with Dr. Karen Throsby)
Dr. Karen Throsby, author of Sugar Rush: Science, politics and the demonisation of fatness , discusses how the public and scientific framings of sugar and health are focused on the nutritional gaze of a single nutrient which obscures the more institutional analyses of race and class. Analyzing 20+ years of datasets about sugar in the media, Throsby uses the sugar to discourse to examine politics in the U.K., the pandemic, the austerity campaign, scientism, expertise, bodies, and the future of the sugar discourse.
30 Jun 2025 · 1 hr 13 min
"Shakespeare Will Not Save Us" (with Dr. Matthieu Chapman)
Dr. Matthieu Chapman previews his forthcoming book, Shakespeare and Antiblack World-making , in which reflects on the fields of Pre-Modern Critical Race Studies and Early Modern Studies. He discusses why he portrays Shakespeare as the ultimate colonizer, his sentiments about the ideal of ‘reading generously” and its connection to universality, and how the field of Early Modern Studies was built on the denials of the very concept of race.
28 May 2025 · 38 min
The Story and Method of Slow Noodles (with Chantha Nguon)
Calling Slow Noodles her one story, Chantha Nguon recounts being hesitant to write about her life until her collaborator, Kim Green, suggested that she write a recipe book. When she began reviving these food-related memories, she didn’t realize they would lead to her telling her life story. Here, she talks about Year Zero, food and hunger, and her work experience in NGOs, the creation of Stung Treng Women’s Development Center, and the significance of ‘slow noodles’. To support Chantha’s work, please donate to: https://mekongblue.com/donate/ .
3 Apr 2025 · 46 min
Ubiquitous Marriages and Sociological Analysis in Rental House (with Weike Wang)
Following Chemistry and Joan Is Okay , Weike Wang again reflects on labor, home, place, and identity in Rental House , a novel that follows an interracial couples’ two vacations. She describes how Keru and Nate’s marriage is one that is ubiquitous in America but is hardly written about in the literary world. We also discuss race and class analysis, DINK (double income, no kids), politics as a source of inspiration, and our writing preferences and challenges.
7 Mar 2025 · 49 min
Form and Feelings (with Brandon Shimoda)
Brandon Shimoda discusses his pursuit of similar questions during his writing and research for his two longer books, The Grave on the Wall and The Afterlife is Letting Go , which are about Japanese American history, incarceration, violence, colonialism, ancestors, and family history. Both works are a blend of poetry and prose, which are woven as interviews, verse, and personal stories, and reflect Shimoda’s sentiment that his understanding of form relates to feelings.
3 Dec 2024 · 1 hr 4 min
Poetry As a Genre, a Form, a Method (with Chen Chen)
Chen Chen talks about genre, creative writing pedagogy, race, and politics as he reflects on his two full-length poetry collections, When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency (BOA Editions). On the topic of contextual and cultural references, we discussed our displeasure of the general tendency to reference Wong Kar-wai purely for aesthetic reasons without critiquing the politics of nostalgia.
29 Oct 2024 · 46 min
On Completing the Mythic Triptych and Making Metaphors Literal (with K-Ming Chang)
To celebrate Halloween and the season of extremes, K-Ming Chang returns to discuss Organ Meats , which is the final story in her mythic triptych (or what she calls the “fecal trio”). She extends her thoughts on experimenting with maximalist language first and making metaphors literal. She also reflects on her process writing the tonally different novella Cecilia , which features her usual meditations on matriarchal storytelling, intimacies, and relationships, and her focus on labor.
30 Sep 2024 · 40 min
Troubling the Human + Material Witness/ing(with Aditi Machado)
Aditi Machado previews her upcoming poetry collection, Material Witness (Nightboat Books), and reflects on the concept and act of "witnessing". Witnessing then makes its poetic way into her questions of human/non-human relationality, plurality of subjects, language and etymology, and how we experience the world.
29 Aug 2024 · 47 min
Legal Fictions & Blood Quantum (with Morgan Talty)
Morgan Talty shares his thoughts on this peculiar thing called genre and his experiences writing short stories ( Night of the Living Rez ) and a novel (his debut, Fire Exit ). We talk about his reasons for writing from the perspective of a white character, and the bigger questions of colonization, the limitations of blood quantum, law, and the legal fictions associated with race and ideology.
31 Jul 2024 · 52 min
The Manicurist’s Daughter: On Nail Salons, On Revenge, On Justice, On Performing (with Susan Lieu)
My diaCritics book review focused and critiqued this ever recurring topic of nostalgia in diasporic memoirs, and Lieu shares her own thoughts on critical nostalgia, its connection to the tragedy of the living, and her desire to excavate her family memories. In capturing life as a Vietnamese American daughter in California during the 1990s, Lieu reflects on writing The Manicurist’s Daughter , which originally began as a tale of vengeance, her cultural-specific references, dialogue in Vietnamese, and her knowingly othering the reader.
29 May 2024 · 46 min
"To Think About Sex Work Differently, We Need to Think About Sex Differently" (with Dr. Juana María Rodríguez)
To think about sex work differently, Dr. Juana María Rodríguez (University of California, Berkeley) argues that we too will need to think about sex differently. Specifically, her project argues against merely ending the discussion at decriminalization, which essentializes sex work as stigma turned into law. In Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex , she connects state surveillance and the visual archives with the racialized discourses of sex work while highlighting queer and trans communities, care, and intimacies.
29 Mar 2024 · 37 min
Art Criticism and the Black Imagination (with Erica N. Cardwell)
Erica N. Cardwell reflects on writing Wrong Is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art , a possible anti-memoir that features essays on the importance of art criticism, visuality, grief, and radical Black imagination. Because the visual aspects of Cardwell's stories and analysis are so striking, she also shares stories of the art featured on the book cover and accompanying essays.
29 Feb 2024 · 56 min
Afropessimism and Writing Shattered (with Dr. Matthieu Chapman)
Dr. Matthieu Chapman discusses his experiences with genre shift from academic writing to his beautiful hybrid memoir, Shattered: Fragments of a Black Life . He shares his thoughts on craft, genre, “the canon” in Early Modern Studies, the fallacy that Shakespeare is inclusive, and the importance of Afropessimism.
31 Jan 2024 · 40 min
Essaying ‘The Loneliness Files” (with Athena Dixon)
At the beginning of the new year, I talked to Athena Dixon about the release of her latest book, The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays . She shares how the book came to be and how she interrogated the concept of loneliness in all of its manifestations through research, personal life, fandoms, pop culture, technology, the pandemic, and more.
11 Dec 2023 · 39 min
'To Be An Adult Immigrant is to Lead a Life with 4 Senses, Instead of 5' (with Nishanth Injam)
In Nishanth Injam's stunning debut collection, The Best Possible Experience , examines the social ails of life abroad as an adult immigrant. In the episode, Nishanth discusses how fragments and contours of his personal life weave into his fiction as a way to translate, preserve, and document memories of home and family. He also shares his thoughts on technology and labor, craft decisions, and more.
16 Aug 2023 · 43 min
Reading Trauma in Colonialism and Being Misread (with Dr. Noreen Masud)
In her debut book, A Flat Place: A Memoir , Dr. Noreen Masud traces the longstanding impacts of colonialism in flat places and landscapes while sharing intimate stories of her formative years in Pakistan, her family, trauma and therapy, and her sojourns to Orford Ness, Morecambe Bay, Newcastle Moor, and Orkney. In the interview, we also address the two different subtitles in their respective U.K. and U.S. contexts, the possibility of being misread as reparative, and much more.
27 Jul 2023 · 37 min
Resistance and 'Radical Intimacy' (with Sophie K. Rosa)
What would resistance against capitalism and neoliberalism look like in the intimate sphere is one of the major questions Sophie K. Rosa reflects upon in her debut book, Radical Intimacy . Thinking through many social movements (Black Lives Matter, climate justice, FreeBritney, political scandals in the U.K.), she shares her thoughts on using theoretical language (e.g., Sophie Lewis’s work on abolition in family and Dr. Kim Tallbear’s scholarship on anticolonial perspective on kinship, love, and relationships) while being attuned to their local and global contexts.
29 Jun 2023 · 43 min
The Making of a 'Modern' Thailand (with Mai Nardone)
Mai Nardone talks about his first book, the story collection Welcome Me to the Kingdom , which spans four decades and traces urbanization of the late 1980s, the financial crisis of 1997, and the current landscape in Thailand. He talks about his studies in economics and how this perspective shaped the focus on labor and the many industries (tourism, sex), racialization, travel, religious communities in Thailand, and writing against the global imagination of the country.
8 Jun 2023 · 34 min
Extrapolating Geographies and Intertextuality (with Lamya H.)
Lamya H. speaks about writing an unapologetically queer and Muslim text in her debut work, Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir , which chronicles her formative years in a Middle Eastern country and her continuing education in the United States. She recalls writing “Hajar” as a standalone essay, and how she formed and shaped a narrative arc that shaped the memoir extrapolating foundational texts like the Quran to share stories about her upbringing, relationships, academia, critical nostalgia, geographies, and intertextualities.
18 May 2023 · 49 min
The Pleasure of the Text In the Kitchen, In Domestic Spaces, In Theories of the Body (with Rebecca May Johnson)
Rebecca May Johnson charts her writing and thinking processes in what became her first book, Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen , a text that embodies and challenges notions of language and form, recipe writing, domestic spaces, performativity, and the body and labor, all of which gestures to the possibilities and pleasures of the text. She shares how writing her dissertation on The Odyssey is an allegorical, shadow text to the epic in Small Fires , memoir vs./or epic, her travels in Arkansas, and more.
6 Apr 2023 · 52 min
‘Monetary Authorities’: Racial Capitalism and Unconditional Decolonization (with Dr. Allan E. S. Lumba)
Dr. Allan E.S. Lumba (Concordia University), author of Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines , discusses critically examining the seemingly quotidian object of money to write about the history of the Philippines by engaging questions of racial capitalism and hierarchies, imperialism, unconditional decolonization, and materialism. In the interview, he also shares insights on the evergreen topics of interdisciplinarity, narrativizing the archives, expertise, and more.
15 Mar 2023 · 41 min
Technocapitalism, Nostalgia, and Pop Culture (with Jinwoo Chong)
In anticipation of his debut novel, Jinwoo Chong shares the genealogy of writing Flux , an ambitious novel told through multiple perspectives. Chong talks about being inspired by Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and weaving them into a complex novel that examines multiple discourses, including technocapitalism, overblown promises of technology, nostalgia, pop culture, representation, and much more.

About Critical Literary Consumption

Critical Literary Consumption is a English arts & books podcast from Anna Nguyen. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Anna Nguyen
Language: English
Category: Arts & Books
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest episode: 29 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1534260398
Rights: Anna Nguyen

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