Authority

A critic for right now–and for the ages. Authority is, all at once, a dizzyingly smart challenge, a call to action, and a pure joy to read. * Claire Dederer, author of Monsters *Andrea Long Chu is one of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today. These essays made me want to call a friend and get into an argument—about literature, about culture, about life. * Brandon Taylor, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Real Life *Provocative, beautiful and addictive… I couldn’t stop reading. – Angela Saini, author of The PatriarchsZadie Smith once said that what is admirable about Didion isn’t the style, but ‘the authority. The authority of tone.’ I feel the same about Andrea Long Chu. So much authority, precision and originality - what a motivational, and joyful read, from start to finish. * Lou Stoppard *In an era of ethical infantilization, shitty cynicisms, and limpid rhetorical hygienics, Chu names exactly, irreducibly, what she sees and feels and believes… Like all truly great works of criticism, Authority makes remaining alive feel not just possible but worthwhile. It reminds us we haven’t yet felt all there is to feel. * Kaveh Akbar, author of the New York Times bestseller Martyr! *Reading Andrea Long Chu is always an exhortation to dismantle some authority–outer, inner, or usually both. The writing is triggering, exhilarating, and illuminating. She demands we think counterintuitively, radically, and exactingly, with paradoxical precision and irreverent urgency. This collection coalesces around the dialectic of freedom and authority—and shows us that challenging this binary is vital to us as thinkers, readers and citizens. * Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn *One of the most exciting critics working today. * New York Magazine *[Females] is always smart, sometimes sincere, and unpredictable about when it will pinch your arm or clutch its nails around your heart. * VICE on Females *Among our most original thinkers on gender. * The Week *At the level of the sentence?one of my favorite levels?Chu is hard to match. She can be biting, and she can be beautiful. She can make language do anything she wants without even breaking a sweat * Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post *

Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and critic at New York magazine. Her book Females was published by Verso in 2019 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction. Her writing has also appeared in n+1, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artforum, Bookforum, Boston Review and Jewish Currents.