Goddess Complex
In this week’s newsletter:
Fast Five with Sanjena Sathian
Celebrating James Baldwin
3 Episodes on: Teaching
Meet the Press: NYU Press
Fast Five with Sanjena Sathian
Sanjena Sathian is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Goddess Complex and Gold Diggers, both published by Penguin Press. Her short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One Story, and more. She’s written nonfiction for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Drift, The Yale Review, and NewYorker.com, among other outlets. She lives in Hong Kong and will teach at the University of Hong Kong in spring 2026.
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi - When I was growing up, the South Asian author everyone told me to read was Jhumpa Lahiri, whose story collection The Interpreter of Maladies still reigns in the American imagination as “the” brown book. In order to become myself as a writer — and to write my first novel, Gold Diggers — I had to un-yoke my voice from hers. Hanif Kureishi’s classic comic novel is part of how I did that. It’s a bawdy story about a bisexual, biracial man coming of age in Thatcher’s London. It is hilarious, rebellious, and essential.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith - If I had my biggest influences on a personal Mt. Rushmore, I’d have Kureishi and Smith up there alongside Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth. Smith actually doesn’t like her first novel, White Teeth, anymore, but it exploded my idea of what a novel could be when I read it in college, and I wrote my senior thesis about it. She is a master of what she might call the “we” novel — a novel that shows us something about a wider society even as it focuses on just a few lives. Stylistically, it is bombastic, daring, and uproariously funny.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - My second novel, Goddess Complex, began as a retelling of du Maurier’s gothic novel, narrated by an unnamed newlywed woman who discovers that something is off about her husband’s past. She is haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, and the novel walks an incredible line between the real and the unreal. You keep waiting for the unreal to break through, for Rebecca to appear as a ghost, but something subtler is at play.
Mating by Norman Rush - Rush set out to write one of the great female narrators of all time, and he — a man — did it, in my humble opinion. Mating is a novel about an unnamed, very brainy nutritional anthropologist (based on Rush’s own wife, Elsa) who falls in love with an older man, an esteemed anthropologist named Denoon; Denoon is trying to create a matriarchal society in rural Botswana, and the couple take up residence in this experimental community. But Mating really isn’t about the plot. It’s 500 pages of pure voice, intelligence, and wit. You read it because you want to be in the company of a wonderful mind. It’s like hanging out with your smartest, funniest friend. And the voice really influenced Goddess Complex, which is also a snarky book about an anthropologist.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki -I recommend this book widely, and it’s never failed to delight people I give it to. Ozeki, a half-Japanese half-Canadian novelist who also happens to be an ordained Zen Buddhist monk, delivers a bravura performance in this book, which follows an unhappy teenage girl living in Tokyo named Naoko, and an author named Ruth (like Ozeki), who finds Naoko’s diary washed up on the shores of Vancouver Island. The novel is about Buddhism, time, quantum mechanics, history, suicide, and hope. It is what people might call “big-hearted” and generous — but not in a sappy way. To me, it is just what novels should be: a feast.
Listen to Sanjena’s full interview on the Asian Review of Books Podcast, a channel of the NBN! And pick up a copy of her latest book Goddess Complex
Celebrating James Baldwin
James Baldwin’s birthday was August 2! Baldwin was a prolific writer and civil rights activist whose oeuvre includes novels, essays, poems, plays, and short stories. His work explores themes of race, class, sexuality, and religion and has continued to influence activists, writers, and thinkers.
Some of his most famous works include Giovanni’s Room, Go Tell it On the Mountain, If Beale Street Could Talk, Notes of a Native Son, and The Fire Next Time.
Tune in to a few great NBN interviews with scholars of Baldwin’s work to hear great analysis of his life and work.
In Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I, Douglas Field embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthrall us decades after his death. He traces Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digs into archives to create an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence.
Listen to our discussion with Josef Sorett about The Fire Next Time. Josef Sorett is an interdisciplinary scholar of religion and race in the Americas, and a professor of religion, African American and African diaspora studies, at Columbia University. He currently serves as Dean of Columbia College, the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor and Vice President for Undergraduate Education.
In James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues, Tom Jenks shares in-depth analysis of Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues.” His scene-by-scene, and sometimes line-by-line discussion contextualizes Baldwin’s musical and biblical references, and expertly analyzes the time structure, characterizations, and dramatic action to gain deeper understanding of this impactful short story.
3 Episodes on: Teaching
As we gear up for the Fall semester, check out three episodes on teaching! And subscribe to our New Books in Higher Education channel to stay updated on great new scholarship about teaching and the world of higher ed.
In Meditation in the College Classroom: A Pedagogical Tool to Help Students De-Stress, Focus, and Connect, Steve Haberlin provides background, strategies, and tips for higher education faculty and instructors interested in incorporating meditation in their classrooms.
Tune in as the authors of Smart Teaching Stronger Learning: Practical Tips for 10 Cognitive Scientists, discuss their helpful book which provides teachers with evidence-based practices for immediate classroom implementation. The chapters introduce a concept, describe how to implement the concept in your classroom, and provide multiple resources for further study.
Listen to the editors of Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics discuss different dimensions of teaching civic engagement. This book elaborates on theory behind civic engagement, and how to think about this concept as a dimension of or the entirety of a college course, as well as different approaches to embedding civic learning into courses.
Subscribe to the New Books in Higher Education channel to hear experts discuss their research, and learn about different approaches to teaching, graduate school, and navigating a career in academia.
Meet the Press: NYU Press
NYU Press has been publishing original scholarship since its founding in 1916. The Press publishes over 110 new books each year, in the humanities and social sciences with particular focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and youth studies.
Check out books from a few of their new series! The Latina/o Sociology series publishes innovative and engagingly written books of substance and broad interest about contemporary Latinas/os in the United States, and in transnational contexts as well. The LGBTQ Politics series addresses the current state of LGBTQ+ movements at the grassroots level, and in political and policy spheres. Finally, Critical Cultural Communication takes critical-cultural approaches to explore the impact of media in varied contexts worldwide.
NYU Press is also having a summer sale! Just use code NYU60 at checkout, and orders over $40 receive free domestic shipping! Listen to interviews with scholars who have published with NYU Press, then browse their website and purchase a few great books for the school year.
As a University Press partner with the NBN, they have their own channel From the Square: An NYU Press Podcast which features fascinating interviews! Here are a few interviews to get you started:
Amanda D. Lotz discusses her book, After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century
Henry Jenkins shares his book, Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America
Judith Weisenfeld gives a great interview about Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery's Wake
And subscribe to From the Square: An NYU Press Podcast!