Noah Berlatsky

Can a popular author also be celebrated for literary quality? Not if that author is a woman like Austen.

Last year there was much excitement at the announcement that Lupita Nyong'o was going to play a major role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens — the first Black woman to star in the franchise.

It's not the gender that's the problem: It's the oppression.

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

Fifth Harmony is nobody's idea of a roots band.

Sex and bodies don't clarify gender; they confuse the issue.

A recent controversy at the Calgary Expo suggests MRAs care more about making opponents look bad than they do about discrimination.

Some love stories don't end happily. So why do so many romance novels insist they do?

The founder of the brilliant fyeahblackrockmusic Tumblr talks racial politics, Kelis, and . . . the Doobie Brothers?

Art without politics actually results in a sweeping Puritanism. For art to have power, it needs to engage with power, with politics.