Priyanka Kumar is the author of the widely acclaimed book Conversations with Birds (2022). Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion, and The Rumpus.
Priyanka Kumar
Articles
The Shield That Protects Us: Monarch Butterflies, Biodiversity, and the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act
Priyanka Kumar writes that the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is essential to preserving not only the monarch butterfly but also biodiversity itself.
Messengers from the Past
Priyanka Kumar visits New Mexico's Bosque del Apache.
In Search of Strong Women
Priyanka Kumar considers Manal al-Sharif's "Daring to Drive" and Omar Saif Ghobash's "Letters to a Young Muslim."
What King Learned from Gandhi
Priyanka Kumar tells us what these two 20th-century luminaries shared.
A Painful Truth
Priyanka Kumar on the painful truth of Trump's presidency. - BLARB
Bad Hombres
Priyanka Kumar on Donald Trump and Bad Hombres for BLARB
Turn Left or Get Shot
Priyanka Kumar on Elizabeth Hinton's "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime."
Are We Done Punishing Black Men?
After Michelle Alexander’s measured assessment of mass incarceration in "The New Jim Crow," it is no longer possible to look the other way.
Chasing Particles Is Fun
"A Singularly Unfeminine Profession" is more a blueprint for a fabulous book than a fully realized one, but it sparks discussion.
Who’s That Man?
Wil Haygood gives a dramatic account of Thurgood Marshall's nomination to the Supreme Court in his book "Showdown."
Murder, They Wrote
How can you get your head around 297 homicides in Los Angeles in 2011, with pitifully low clearance rates for black-on-black murders?
Late Start, Spectacular Finish: The Life of Penelope Fitzgerald
For Fitzgerald, who grew up in a literary household and who was a brilliant student at Oxford, barge penury was not supposed to be in the cards.
All the Broken People
Bryan Stevenson wants more justice, more mercy, and more hope for all of them.
The Art of Cultivating Friends
Bob Ames was an American who understood Arab culture, who could befriend Arabs.
Life, Prison, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Here, Love Is Never Free: Priyanka Kumar on Cristina Henríquez’s “Book of Unknown Americans”
Henríquez introduces us to an assortment of migrants from Central and South America who find themselves in a rocky relationship with their new country.
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