Essays

At Macondo Pharmacy,” The Nation, June 14/21, 2021

The Grammar of Oppression,” The New Republic, December 2020

“A House Filled With Women,” afterword to Fault Lines by Meena Alexander (Feminist Press, November 2020)

In 1953, Britain openly removed an elected government, with tragic consequences,” The Guardian, October 30, 2020

Coming Home,” The Nation, February 11, 2020

The United States’ Debt to Immigrants,” The New Republic, June 25, 2019

The Jonestown We Don’t Know,” The New York Review of Books (Daily), December 21, 2018

The Soul as a Picture Gallery,” The New York Review of Books (Daily), September 22, 2018

Conjure Women and Coolie Women,” Small Axe (Duke University Press), Volume 22 Number 2 (56), July 2018

Songs of Themselves,” Prospect Magazine, July 2018

Masters and Servants,” The Boston Review, May 8, 2018

“Edifices of Empire,” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2018

Rescued From the Footnotes of History,” The Los Angeles Review of Books, March 20, 2018. Reprinted as afterword to I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press, 2019).

“Tales of the Sea,” in The Griffith Review  59: Commonwealth Now (January 2018)

“Of Islands and Other Mothers,” in Nonstop Metropolis (University of California Press, October 2016)

A Good Story, If I Can Remember It,” Lapham’s Quarterly, August 16, 2016

Paperback Writer,” The Guardian, June 15, 2016

Wine Dark Sea,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, April 18, 2016

Risker, Risk,” The Caribbean Review of Books, July 2015

“Postcards from Empire,” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2015

India’s Missing Women,” The Nation, July 7-14, 2014

“The Overseer of British Guiana,” History Today, January 2014.

“I am Your Mirror,” The Margins (Asian American Writers Workshop), November 2012.

“Writing a Life, Living a Writer’s Life,” Nieman Reports, Winter 2011

Coolie Women Are in Demand Here,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2011

“Ogling the Statue of Liberty,” in Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2007)