Sasha Ann Panaram
@sashapanaram.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University | Former Cheryl Wall Postdoctoral Fellow and Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University | African American and Caribbean Literature
The American Studies Association Annual Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico was fantastic. I participated in an ”Author Meets Critics” session for @jessagoldberg.bsky.social book “Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice.“ What a gift to be in conversation with such brilliant scholars.
November 24, 2025 at 2:22 PM
The American Studies Association Annual Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico was fantastic. I participated in an ”Author Meets Critics” session for @jessagoldberg.bsky.social book “Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice.“ What a gift to be in conversation with such brilliant scholars.
"[Toni] Morrison’s skill as an editor surely made her a better writer, but it undeniably took time and energy away from her own work, and it was never fully appreciated as an intellectual endeavor in itself." -- Marina Magloire via @thenation.com
“To Free Someone Else”: Toni Morrison the Book Editor
A recent book on her career in publishing makes the case that the great American novelist should also be seen as a pathbreaking editor.
www.thenation.com
October 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
"[Toni] Morrison’s skill as an editor surely made her a better writer, but it undeniably took time and energy away from her own work, and it was never fully appreciated as an intellectual endeavor in itself." -- Marina Magloire via @thenation.com
Reposted by Sasha Ann Panaram
The Alchemy Lecture 2025
Sound—at the Interregnum
Glen Coulthard
Canisia Lubrin
Madeleine Thien
Immanuel Wilkins
Date: October 30, 2025
Time: 5 - 8 p.m. (Reception: 5 - 6 p.m.)
Venue: Tribute Communities Recital Hall, CIBC Lobby (Location) YorkU
Event type: Hybrid – in person and online
Sound—at the Interregnum
Glen Coulthard
Canisia Lubrin
Madeleine Thien
Immanuel Wilkins
Date: October 30, 2025
Time: 5 - 8 p.m. (Reception: 5 - 6 p.m.)
Venue: Tribute Communities Recital Hall, CIBC Lobby (Location) YorkU
Event type: Hybrid – in person and online
September 14, 2025 at 8:25 AM
The Alchemy Lecture 2025
Sound—at the Interregnum
Glen Coulthard
Canisia Lubrin
Madeleine Thien
Immanuel Wilkins
Date: October 30, 2025
Time: 5 - 8 p.m. (Reception: 5 - 6 p.m.)
Venue: Tribute Communities Recital Hall, CIBC Lobby (Location) YorkU
Event type: Hybrid – in person and online
Sound—at the Interregnum
Glen Coulthard
Canisia Lubrin
Madeleine Thien
Immanuel Wilkins
Date: October 30, 2025
Time: 5 - 8 p.m. (Reception: 5 - 6 p.m.)
Venue: Tribute Communities Recital Hall, CIBC Lobby (Location) YorkU
Event type: Hybrid – in person and online
I recently participated in the Toni Morrison Symposium @cornelluniversity.bsky.social as part of the “Toni Morrison and the Word Work of Her Nonfiction” panel. Sharing a few photos from the event including a mural of Toni Morrison painted by students from Ithaca High School.
September 23, 2025 at 12:40 PM
I recently participated in the Toni Morrison Symposium @cornelluniversity.bsky.social as part of the “Toni Morrison and the Word Work of Her Nonfiction” panel. Sharing a few photos from the event including a mural of Toni Morrison painted by students from Ithaca High School.
Had a chance to talk about why I like teaching A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand. There has yet to be a class @fordham.edu where I haven't had this book on the syllabus. Great to see what my colleagues are teaching, too!
The Book I Love to Teach: Fordham Professors Share Their Syllabus Standouts
From a history of the deadly poisons to a Pulitzer Prize-winner by Toni Morrison, Fordham faculty shared the books they love to teach.
now.fordham.edu
September 12, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Had a chance to talk about why I like teaching A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand. There has yet to be a class @fordham.edu where I haven't had this book on the syllabus. Great to see what my colleagues are teaching, too!
"A former documentary photographer, [Lorna] Simpson harnessed the medium in her early practice to develop a body of work that explores how meaning is assigned to the body and its images." -- Rachel Hunter Himes via @thenation.com
The Art and Genius of Lorna Simpson
A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tracks what has changed and what has remained the same in the artist’s work.
www.thenation.com
August 21, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"A former documentary photographer, [Lorna] Simpson harnessed the medium in her early practice to develop a body of work that explores how meaning is assigned to the body and its images." -- Rachel Hunter Himes via @thenation.com
“I am so busy. So caught up with living.”
At the Full and Change of the Moon, Dionne Brand
At the Full and Change of the Moon, Dionne Brand
August 20, 2025 at 2:21 PM
“I am so busy. So caught up with living.”
At the Full and Change of the Moon, Dionne Brand
At the Full and Change of the Moon, Dionne Brand
Reposted by Sasha Ann Panaram
Thank you @sashapanaram.bsky.social for your review of *The Sisterhood.* I feel lucky to be in scholarly conversation with your work.
scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/rals/ar...
@columbiaup.bsky.social
scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/rals/ar...
@columbiaup.bsky.social
The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture
On a cold night in February 1977, a group of eight Black women posed for a photograph in Brooklyn. These women who called themselves The Sisterhood gathered under a framed portrait of Bessie Smith. So...
scholarlypublishingcollective.org
August 19, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Thank you @sashapanaram.bsky.social for your review of *The Sisterhood.* I feel lucky to be in scholarly conversation with your work.
scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/rals/ar...
@columbiaup.bsky.social
scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/rals/ar...
@columbiaup.bsky.social
"She [Octavia E. Butler] wanted freedom and independence—not the responsibility of babies or a husband. She made writing her rebellion, the main refuge from the strictness of her upbringing." -- Susana M. Morris via Literary Hub
Exploring Octavia Butler’s Beginnings as a Sci-Fi Trailblazer
It was Octavia Margaret who gave her daughter the spark to even consider a writing career. She saw her quiet, bookish ten-year-old daughter writing, saw the delight on her face as she created, and …
lithub.com
August 20, 2025 at 12:48 PM
"She [Octavia E. Butler] wanted freedom and independence—not the responsibility of babies or a husband. She made writing her rebellion, the main refuge from the strictness of her upbringing." -- Susana M. Morris via Literary Hub
"The vague impression that Bronxites burned down their own borough endures, while the vast fortunes made were forgotten." -- @benchansfield.bsky.social via @newyorker.com
Did Racial Capitalism Set the Bronx on Fire?
To some, the fires lit in New York in the late seventies signalled rampant criminality; to others, rebellion. But maybe they were signs of something else entirely.
www.newyorker.com
August 19, 2025 at 12:19 PM
"The vague impression that Bronxites burned down their own borough endures, while the vast fortunes made were forgotten." -- @benchansfield.bsky.social via @newyorker.com
"You see me in the garden walking around just plundering around thinking of a sentence. Sometimes it takes me a week to finish a sentence just to get it right." -- Jamaica Kincaid via @nytimes.com
After 50 Years of Writing, Jamaica Kincaid Insists She’s Still an Amateur
www.nytimes.com
August 6, 2025 at 1:45 PM
"You see me in the garden walking around just plundering around thinking of a sentence. Sometimes it takes me a week to finish a sentence just to get it right." -- Jamaica Kincaid via @nytimes.com
"One might say that her [Jamaica Kincaid] work is self-consciously modest, that her fiction never grandstands. It gets to the marrow of how motherhood, childhood, and femininity are dented by colonialism, certainly, but it does so by illuminating the struggle simply to become a human being."
Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American ...
www.nybooks.com
July 31, 2025 at 1:05 PM
"One might say that her [Jamaica Kincaid] work is self-consciously modest, that her fiction never grandstands. It gets to the marrow of how motherhood, childhood, and femininity are dented by colonialism, certainly, but it does so by illuminating the struggle simply to become a human being."
"Amy Sherald has withdrawn her upcoming solo show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery because she said she had been told the museum was considering removing her painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid provoking President Trump."
Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship
www.nytimes.com
July 24, 2025 at 6:22 PM
"Amy Sherald has withdrawn her upcoming solo show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery because she said she had been told the museum was considering removing her painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid provoking President Trump."
"To sustain poetry in the absence of its radical muse—left collective political action—to sustain poetry when there is no inspiration, that was my work." -- Dionne Brand via @jewishcurrents.bsky.social
The Measure of the World
By attending to the vibrant specificity of Black life, poet Dionne Brand contests the cruel mathematics of empire.
jewishcurrents.org
July 22, 2025 at 12:42 PM
"To sustain poetry in the absence of its radical muse—left collective political action—to sustain poetry when there is no inspiration, that was my work." -- Dionne Brand via @jewishcurrents.bsky.social
Had to grab the Canadian version of Dionne Brand’s Salvage while in town. Love the cover!
July 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Had to grab the Canadian version of Dionne Brand’s Salvage while in town. Love the cover!
Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the Whitney Museum
June 27, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the Whitney Museum
Caught a few incredible documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier in June. First time attending and already can’t wait for next year.
June 23, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Caught a few incredible documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier in June. First time attending and already can’t wait for next year.
"With great respect and meticulous research, @danaawilliamsink.bsky.social reveals [Toni] Morrison as a hard worker, a devoted literary citizen and one of the most important book editors of the 20th century." -- Martha Southgate via @nytimes.com
You Know the Novelist. Now Meet Toni Morrison the Editor.
www.nytimes.com
June 18, 2025 at 11:29 AM
"With great respect and meticulous research, @danaawilliamsink.bsky.social reveals [Toni] Morrison as a hard worker, a devoted literary citizen and one of the most important book editors of the 20th century." -- Martha Southgate via @nytimes.com
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 17, 2025 at 3:34 PM
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“If you center Black women in your political work and cultural work, then you’re cooking with gas.” — dream hampton @fordfoundation.org
June 11, 2025 at 2:52 PM
“If you center Black women in your political work and cultural work, then you’re cooking with gas.” — dream hampton @fordfoundation.org
This piece, “Ghost Note,” from the Lorna Simpson: Source Notes exhibit at @metmuseum.org continues to haunt me.
June 2, 2025 at 12:44 AM
This piece, “Ghost Note,” from the Lorna Simpson: Source Notes exhibit at @metmuseum.org continues to haunt me.
Lorna Simpson: Source Notes @metmuseum.org
June 1, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Lorna Simpson: Source Notes @metmuseum.org
Reviewed Oneka LaBennett's latest book Global Guyana for @sxsalon.bsky.social. As I write in the review, "LaBennett reminds readers that we cannot tell the history of Guyana without careful attention to its women and girls." Check it out and go get the book!
smallaxe.net/sxsalon/revi...
smallaxe.net/sxsalon/revi...
May 29, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reviewed Oneka LaBennett's latest book Global Guyana for @sxsalon.bsky.social. As I write in the review, "LaBennett reminds readers that we cannot tell the history of Guyana without careful attention to its women and girls." Check it out and go get the book!
smallaxe.net/sxsalon/revi...
smallaxe.net/sxsalon/revi...
Reposted by Sasha Ann Panaram
Announcing the launch of sx salon 48. The issue includes essays by Amandla Thomas-Johnson and Stéphane Martelly, reviews by Sasha Ann Panaram, Oriana Méjías Martinez, Maddi Chan and Linzey Corridon, poems by Letitia Marie Pratt, and stories by José Darío Martínez Milantchi and Alicia Valasse-Polius.
May 7, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Announcing the launch of sx salon 48. The issue includes essays by Amandla Thomas-Johnson and Stéphane Martelly, reviews by Sasha Ann Panaram, Oriana Méjías Martinez, Maddi Chan and Linzey Corridon, poems by Letitia Marie Pratt, and stories by José Darío Martínez Milantchi and Alicia Valasse-Polius.
"[Lorna] Simpson is contemporary art's astronomer of the archives, always searching for the dark matter that 'documentary' images conceal." -- @jcljules.bsky.social via @newyorker.com
How Lorna Simpson Broke the Frame
Simpson’s wryly evasive photos, films, collages—and now paintings—peel back the layers of our looking.
www.newyorker.com
May 9, 2025 at 1:10 PM
"[Lorna] Simpson is contemporary art's astronomer of the archives, always searching for the dark matter that 'documentary' images conceal." -- @jcljules.bsky.social via @newyorker.com