Arts in Society
Boston Review’s Arts in Society section publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism. It focuses on how the arts loosen the hold of convention, bear witness to injustice, provoke new ways of seeing the world, and speak to the most pressing political and civic concerns of our time.
Browse by Genre
Criticism, Poem, Memoir, Short Story
Browse Criticism by Topic
The Sounds of Struggle
The pathbreaking jazz album from Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, and Oscar Brown, Jr., that fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation.
How It Was
“Aunt Steph got ugly after Gammy died, although people were often ugly to her first.” In this short story, a woman reflects on a series of charmed summers before loss descended.
Three Sisters
“Her sister was only visiting for as long as it took the mother to die.” A family reunion takes a surreal turn in this short story.
Bringing Abolition to the Museum
Artist-activist Shellyne Rodriguez speaks with Billy Anania about museum labor practices and how Strike MoMA imagines a future of art for the people.
Loudspeaker
A woman, menaced late at night by catcalling men, tries a novel approach to self-defense. Translated from the Spanish by the author and Arthur M. Dixon.
Mike Nichols and the American Century
The director’s life reflected both the feats and the failures of the postwar U.S. experience.
Working on Our Primal Scream
Amidst a boys’ club of ’70s-era comics, Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie was unique for its feminist depiction of the political and sexual awakening of young women.
Adrienne Rich’s Solitudes
Critics tend to discount Rich’s later poems, fundamentally misunderstanding how they engage her radical vision of community.
‘Ancestors’ Contributors Reading
A recording of our digital reading of poetry, fiction, and essays from our annual literary anthology, with ASL interpreting.
Autofiction’s First Boom Was in Turn-of-the-Century Japan
Newly translated into English, Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel is a vivid portrait of immigrant displacement and the ironies of our global cultural ecosystem.
Poetry in the Critical Zone
In a new book of lyric essays, poet Cole Swensen answers a call issued by theorists Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel: to reimagine the globe in terms of the fragile surface ecosystems that support all life.
Celebrating Binyavanga Wainaina’s Fiction
A recording of our discussion about the recovery of one of Wainaina’s lost stories and his continued importance to the African literary landscape.
Night Picnic
The last humans on a planet attempt a nice family outing—except that they can’t remember how. A short story from Japanese counterculture icon Izumi Suzuki, available for the first time in English in a new translation by Sam Bett.
Women Who Fly: Nona Hendryx and Afrofuturist Histories
A Sun Ra tribute concert by a member of the pathbreaking pop group Labelle leads to reflections on how Black women artists and scientists have often been at the vanguard of their disciplines—though most are still awaiting due recognition.
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