Jordan Taliha McDonald is an essayist, critic, editor, cultural worker, and (sometimes) poet. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student in English at Harvard University studying Black literature(s), rhetorical practices, critical theory, and visual cultures within and of the Americas, the Caribbean, and the African continent. Her academic work takes a particular interest in how (anti-)Blackness informs and exceeds philosophical, psychoanalytic, political, and literary discourses on betrayal. Her academic work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Beinecke Scholarship, and the Ford Foundation.
Her public writing, journalism, and cultural criticism have appeared in New York Magazine, The Believer, Artsy, Vulture, Africa is a Country, The Offing, The Harvard Review, Lux, Complex, and more. Her newsletter, “East Coast Lit(erary) Thot” can be read here.
She is the co-host of Lose Your Sister podcast. Her audio work can also be found on the Audible audiobook edition of Minor Notes, Volume 1, edited by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, wherein she reads the poems of Georgia Douglas Johnson.
If you ask her nicely, Jordan will explain to you why Aretha Franklin’s 2018 assessment, “great gowns, beautiful gowns,” is one of the most succinct cultural critiques of the 21st century.
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