Critical Literary Consumption

Anna Nguyen
  • 4.9 (13)
  • BOOKS

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 use? Find me on Instagram and Twitter @anannadroid .

  1. 11/29/2025

    "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.

    34 min

  2. 09/19/2025

    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.

    51 min

  3. 08/14/2025

    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.

    48 min

  4. 06/30/2025

    "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.

    1h 13m

  5. 05/28/2025

    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/.

    38 min

  6. 04/03/2025

    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.

    46 min

  7. 03/07/2025

    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.

    49 min

  8. 12/03/2024

    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.

    1h 4m
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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

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 use? Find me on Instagram and Twitter @anannadroid .

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