Andrea Long Chu

Andrea Long Chu (born 1992) is an American writer and critic. Long Chu has written for such publications as n+1, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Bookforum, and Chronicle of Higher Education, and various academic journals including differences, Women & Performance, and Transgender Studies Quarterly.[1] Chu's first book, Females, was published in 2019 by Verso Books and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 2021, she joined the staff at New York Magazine as a book critic.[2]

Andrea Long Chu
Born1992 (age 29–30)
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.
OccupationWriter
Alma mater
Period2018–present
Notable works
Website
www.andrealongchu.com

Early life and education

Chu was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1992. Her father was finishing a medical residency at the University of North Carolina and her mother was in graduate school at the time of her birth.[3] Her father is half-Chinese.[4] A few years later, Chu moved with her family to Asheville, North Carolina. Although she described Asheville as a "very hippy dippy kind of place," Chu said that she was "raised pretty Christian"[3] and described herself as "very goody two shoes."[5] She attended a small Christian school. Her family belonged to a conservative Presbyterian church. Chu described her childhood as "saturated" with Christianity.[3]

Chu went to Duke University for college and graduated in 2014.[6] She started as a theatre major and eventually graduated with a degree in literature.[6]

Chu is currently a doctoral student in comparative literature at New York University.

Career

Chu gave an account of her early life when she was interviewed in 2018 by Michelle Esther O'Brien for the New York City Trans Oral History Project.[7]

In 2018 Chu published "On Liking Women" in N+1 magazine, an essay in which she considered her own gender transition, discussed her fascination for Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, and explored how her attitudes about her gender transition evolved in relation to feminist writings she had read. In the essay, Chu wrote, "The truth is I have never been able to differentiate liking women from wanting to be like them."[8]

Chu has also published in academic journals, writing about Hegel's remarks on Africa in the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (2018)[9] and about the impossibility of feminism in differences, a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (2019).[10]

Chu also wrote an opinion piece published in The New York Times, "My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy."[11] In that piece, written a few days before Chu underwent sex reassignment surgery, she discussed her gender dysphoria, her experiences with hormone therapy, and questioned the widespread belief that gender transitioning will make a trans person feel better. "There are no good outcomes in transition," she wrote. "There are only people, begging to be taken seriously."[11]

Chu wrote about her experiences as a teaching assistant for Avital Ronell at New York University, stating that based on those experiences she believed the accusations of sexual harassment leveled at Ronell by graduate student Nimrod Reitman.[12]

In 2019, Chu published her first book, Females. Published in 2019 by Verso Books, the book was selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction.[13]

In 2021, Chu published a full-length profile on writer and model Emily Ratajkowski for the New York Times Magazine.

In 2021, Chu was named a staff book critic for New York Magazine. To date, she has written critical reviews of books like Hanya Yanagihara's To Paradise and Maggie Nelson's On Freedom.

Reception

Writer Sandy Stone praised Chu's 2018 essay, "On Liking Women," and stated that the essay "launched 'the second wave' of trans studies."[2] Mareile Pfannebecker, for the London School of Economics' Long Read Review, wrote of Chu's "admirable boldness," noting how effectively she "makes the case that the gender experience of trans women like her rests not on identity but on desire."[14]

Amia Srinivasan criticized "On Liking Women," writing in the London Review of Books that Chu's essay "threatens to bolster the argument made by anti-trans feminists: that trans women equate, and conflate, womanhood with the trappings of traditional femininity, thereby strengthening the hand of patriarchy."[15] Chu responded to Srinivasan's criticisms in a dialogue with Anastasia Berg that was published in The Point.[16]

The New York Times published two reader letters, dissenting from Chu's essay "My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy." The letters were published under the title "Feeling Better After Gender Transition."[17] Kai Cheng Thom, writing in Slate, offered a detailed criticism of "My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy."[18] Conceding that Chu is "often brilliant," Thom criticized Chu's New York Times essay as potentially damaging to the cause of trans acceptance, by confirming "unfortunate stereotypes of how people talk and write about trans people."[18]

In a piece for the London Review of Books, essayist and poet Kay Gabriel said about Females, "Chu makes a claim about what she calls an ontological, or an existential, condition. Being female, in her account, is a subject position outside and against politics."[19] Chu's ontological approach to theories of gender/sexuality pulls from a variety of cultural and philosophical references such as Valerie Solanas's musings on Candy Darling, The Matrix, Lacanian psychoanalysis and castration anxiety, sissy porn, and the comedic bits.

Personal life

In an interview for the New York City Trans Oral History Project, Chu said that she was in a relationship with a "wonderful cis woman" who was very helpful in preparing for Chu's sex reassignment surgery.[20] Discussing the relationship, Chu stated, "[h]eterosexuality is so much better when there aren't any men in the equation."[20]

Bibliography
  • Females (2019). Verso. ISBN 9781788737371

Essays

References
  1. "Andrea Long Chu Joins New York Magazine as Book Critic". New York Press Room. 2021-10-27. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
  2. Blanchard 2018.
  3. O'Brien 2018, p. 3.
  4. Shapiro, Lila (2019-10-16). "Andrea Long Chu Wants More". Vulture. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
  5. O'Brien 2018, p. 4.
  6. O'Brien 2018, p. 8.
  7. O'Brien 2018.
  8. Chu 2018a.
  9. Chu 2018e.
  10. Chu 2019.
  11. Chu 2018c.
  12. Chu 2018b.
  13. Lorusso 2019.
  14. Pfannebecker 2018.
  15. Srinivasan 2018.
  16. Chu & Berg 2018d.
  17. New York Times Letters 2018.
  18. Thom 2018.
  19. Gabriel, Kay (25 November 2019). "The Limits of the Bit". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  20. O'Brien 2018, p. 25.

Sources
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