J.R. Ramakrishnan

Writer/Curator

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As empress of elsewhere, Distrito Federal, 2019. Rikki Matsumoto In personal family heirloom Kashmiri shawl of decades. Mandarin collar jumpsuit acquired in New Orleans. Obsidian cuff, Oaxaca. Diamanté hoops, vintage sale, Kuala Lumpur. Star clip from photographer's mago box, Mexico City.

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Infatuated? Check out my essay on what to read to be chill in the face of a new crush. Featuring the delightful Every Kiss a War by Leesa Cross-Smith plus Simone de Beauvoir’s letters to Chicago writer, Nelson Algren. She was super into him as the above photograph shows. 

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JRR: Would you talk about the research that went into this novel? During this process, was there a piece of information or moment that really solidified for you that you had to write this narrative?

AHA: I wanted the family story, so I asked anyone who would indulge me for information on my ancestor. All that they knew was that she could have been Fulani, a people spread all over northern West and Central Africa; that her home could have been in Mali, Burkina Faso, or Niger; and that she was beautiful. The second part of research was going up to Salaga, to get a sense of the infamous slave market where my great-great grandmother ended up. And the third was scouring primary and secondary sources. I read through travelers’ accounts of Salaga in the 19th century, and gems such as J. A. Braimah’s Salaga: The Struggle For Power, which outlined the political activity taking shape within and outside of Salaga. There was one line in this book that cemented my resolve to write this novel. It said that princesses in Salaga could choose their lovers, even if they were already betrothed to another. It was perfect dramatic material for a novel.

Full interview with my J-School brilliant fellow alum, Ayesha Harruna Attah, about her third novel and much else here. More about her U.S. book tour here.

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The exacting poetry of Urrea’s descriptions makes for hypnotic old-school storytelling. He compares the border of the past, where the first immigrants to be “hunted down in Desolation by the earliest form of the Border Patrol were Chinese” to the present. He notes: “And today? Sinful frontier towns with bad reputations. Untamed mountain ranges, bears, lions, and wolves. Indians. A dangerous border. Inhabitants speak with a cowpoke twang, listen to country music, dance the two-step, favor cowboy hats, big belt buckles, and pickup trucks. That ain’t Texas, it’s Sonora.” Terrific, saddening, but humane and extremely essential even close to two decades after the book’s inciting incident

https://electricliterature.com/7-books-that-illuminate-the-people-and-places-on-the-u-s-mexico-border-f808d7a44b6a

From a list I did on books about the US-Mexico border. Reading these seven novels, which take on the borderlands’ many faces and places, deepened my perspective on today’s politics. 

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For those days when the world feels like it’s spinning off its axis into the abyss, I recommended Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days as an antidote in a column for Electric Literature. More here. 

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7 International Novels for Food Lovers – Electric Literature

From an Indonesian foodie road trip to the rhapsodies of a Parisian food critic, gorge yourself on these literary delicacies

Here’s a list of yummy prose with generous sides of dysfunction and lavish sprinklings of hilarity to get you through the season. With zero sugar, gluten, cholesterol, and no animals hurt in its making (we hope), this reading list should easily and seriously indulge your literary appetite.

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A list in honor of Día de los Muertos: Books (including James Agee’s stunning novel above) that truly became huge once their authors transitioned to the other side here. 

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Seven books including Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, to feast on this holidays, even if you feel discomfort about settler colonial roots of it all. My list over at Electric Literature. 

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I spoke to debut author Neel Patel for Electric Literature about Radha Krishna, Brown people in the Midwest, and double diasporas. The collection is pretty excellent and our interview can be found here. 

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Former Sex in the City protagonist Sarah Jessica Parker as publisher! I interviewed the first debut novelist of her SJP for Hogarth Books, Fatima Farheen Mirza for Electric Literature.

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Oaxaqueñas, Guelaguetza, July 2018. 

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A Reading List for People Who Need Their Alone Time

7 books to suit every variety of solitude

I wrote about solitude and books to read for all variations of it (wanted and unwanted) for Electric Literature. 

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My interview with New York-based Igbo-Tamil writer and artist Akwaeke Emezi from Harper’s Bazaar Malaysia’s print issue. Their novel is a revelation and tears open ideas of being in the world. 

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7 Short Story Collections To Read This Year – Electric Literature

If you love reading but struggle to find the time, these short story collections will make you binge-read again

My reading attention threshold is low but these seven new and forthcoming titles totally snared me. Full list above. 

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I’ve avoided the first person POV a lot but I finally attempted a short personal essay (in the images above for the March print edition of Harper’s Bazaar MY) about dueling minimalist and maximalist tendencies. And a lot of moving across worlds with and without stuff. 

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I interviewed Indonesia poet and activist Khairani Barokka for Electric Literature. Full text here: https://electricliterature.com/an-indonesian-poet-on-writing-a-narrator-who-is-a-colonizer-and-a-colonist-59a2cf4abd13

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Curvature somewhere outside San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca, 2018