We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg

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Blending lyric memoir and cultural criticism, acclaimed poet Franny Choi's debut essay collection explores our obsession with cyborgs and what sci-fi representations of Asian femmes reveal about race, gender, sexuality, disability, labor, technology, and language.

In the 2014 film Ex-Machina, a Japanese maid named Kyoko-beautiful, obedient, unspeaking-peels back the skin on her face to reveal glimmering circuitry. The white man who has been trying to understand her inscruta...