New Books (Chu, Robin, Oyamada)

Reviews of Andrea Long Chu’s “Females,” Corey Robin’s “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas,” and Hiroko Oyamada’s “The Factory”

As with any such sweeping provocation, what fascinates is where it leads. Striking the tone of a very online Enlightenment aphorist, Chu is less interested in exhaustive explanation than in the flash of insight produced by a well-thrown knife. Scouring culture for the female condition’s most unlikely expressions, she constellates such subjects as Freud’s castration complex; misogynist objectification among lesbians; trans beauty icon Gigi Gorgeous; The Matrix’s surprising sway over both trans people and incel men; and the story of a woman who not only ate but also “butt-chugged” several pages of Infinite Jest. This last was a theatrical rebuke to the countless men who bullied her to read it and, for Chu, a quintessentially female combination of resistance with self-abasement.