Radar is committed to all forms of art and entertainment and as such, will pick one book as a reading recommendation every week. This week, Radar’s “Lit” pick is “Against Innocence” by Jackie Wang.

Courtesy of Semiotext(e)

Jackie Wang’s essay, “Against Innocence,” is a critical interrogation of the uses of innocence.

Pulling from an array of academic disciplines like Black studies as well as feminist and queer theory, Wang’s short essay powerfully interrogates innocence as a tool of state violence. Her constellation of cases like Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin to the Clinton administration’s effects on Black womanhood call for a reinterpretation of the effects of innocence. The language in the essay isn’t reliant on jargon or buzzwords but rather a palpability to keep you afloat with Wang. As a writer, poet and academic, Wang is inspiring to watch and relate to; as Wang’s writing on Tumblr for “ill-will-editions,” a zine collective, landed on Semiotext(e)’s publishing desk. “Tumblr writing,” or digestible writing for people invested in social change, is writing for the undercommons: Tumblr, you and me.