Michelle Kuo

Michelle Kuo (@kuokuomich) is an associate professor at the American University of Paris. Her award-winning book, Reading with Patrick (Random House, 2017) combines memoir, reportage, and research on racial and economic inequality in rural Arkansas. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Public Books, The Point, and other publications. She has worked as an attorney for undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and incarcerated people. With Albert Wu, she writes a weekly newsletter at ampleroad.substack.com.

Articles

Cobra Kai, the Twilight of American Empire, and the Allure of Paramilitary Violence
Albert Wu and Michelle Kuo explore how Cobra Kai manages to tackle American empire, wealth disparity, and rising fascism without cynicism....
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoJun 8, 2021
- Television
Exploding Clichés: On Éric Chevillard’s Versatile Prose
Michelle Kuo, Jeremy M. Davies, and Daniel Levin Becker discuss Éric Chevillard’s pandemic writing and the challenges of rendering his style into English....
Daniel Levin Becker, Michelle Kuo, Jeremy M. DaviesDec 22, 2020
Letter from Paris
A letter for Paris by Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu....
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoNov 21, 2015
- Memoir
- Translation
I Dare Not: The Muted Style of Writer in Exile Ha Jin
As a new generation of Chinese writer-exiles settles in the West, we wonder whether Jin’s flat, alienating style will come to be regarded as a kind of artifact, a self-preserving fossil of the trauma generated by those who witnessed the mixture of real and manufactured emotion that fueled a collective mania....
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoJan 11, 2015
- Fiction
“Take the Good Life and Be Happy”: On “The Americans”
The joke of “The Americans” is that it’s quintessentially American....
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoApr 24, 2014
Scientology: The Mystery Sandwich
AFTER FINISHING ANNA KARENINA IN 1877, Leo Tolstoy turned his attention away from creating worlds on the page to creating something in real life: he wanted to establish a radically new religion. Distilling Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy ...
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoMay 12, 2013
Imperfect Strollers: Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, W.G. Sebald, and the Alienated Cosmopolitan
The evolution of the flâneur...
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoFeb 2, 2013
In Hell, “We Shall Be Free”: On “Breaking Bad”
Walter White's Rebellion...
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoJul 13, 2012
Marilynne Robinson and the Miraculous Privilege of Existence
"For Robinson, America has declined because of pervasive and corrosive ideologies that ascribe human motivation solely to self-interest."...
Albert Wu, Michelle KuoMay 22, 2012
- Fiction