Selected essays
Radha writes about women, history, culture, and politics. She has written extensively on crime fiction and women in early cinema.
For Mehta, women’s rights were human rights, a conviction best exemplified when she was one of just two women, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, to be selected as delegates to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights…”
“Why is the US an outlier when it comes to electing a woman head of government?,” Scroll.in
Women in America are subject to seemingly impossible expectations—especially women politicians. Their every move is scrutinised.”
“The Forgotten Female Action Stars of the 1910s,” The Atlantic
[M]ore than a century ago… actresses headed up some of the U.S’s most popular and successful action movies—even if they performed stunts in skirts that ended only a few inches above their ankles….”
“When Progress Ebbs: Career Women at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Los Angeles Review of Books
The idea that opportunities had been better for professional women in the early years of the 20th century, but went downhill in the following decades, might seem strange. It’s common to believe that social progress moves in one direction — upward — and to conflate different kinds of freedoms: political, social, economic.”
“It’s Time for More Period Dramas To Embrace the Diversity of People of Color,” CrimeReads
[A] little digging quickly reveals that there were indeed all sorts of Black Victorians in London engaged in a variety of activities, particularly in the East End, just as there were people of all different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds living and going about their business in the capital of the British Empire.”
“Yes, Crime Fiction is Literature (and Other Observations on the Genre),” Kirkus Reviews
The distinction between highbrow and lowbrow has always felt arbitrary to me. And it is perhaps the accessibility of crime fiction—thanks precisely to its genre constraints—that obscures the sophistication involved in writing even the simplest crime story, and the sophistication involved in reading one.”
“American Families,” Criterion.com
Our understanding of this country’s past has changed dramatically since The Family Album was made in the 1980s. We are learning to find and incorporate the stories of overlooked groups into our narrative of American history—this is a project that is only beginning and still has a long way to go.”
“Why Spiral Doesn’t Deserve To Be Compared to The Wire,” CrimeReads
Spiral is fiction, and yet, under cover of a gritty, no-holds-barred ‘realism,’ it is constantly making choices—bold ones for its white heroine and her comrades, and disappointing ones for the minorities who have the misfortune to people its vision of multi-ethnic France.”
“Stories and letters poured into newspapers questioning the loyalty of so-called “hyphenated Americans,” especially German-Americans, who were looked upon with suspicion in the aftermath of the sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats earlier in May.”
[Woman in White] is fascinated by women’s sexuality, women’s mental stability (or lack thereof), and the perception of women’s physical vulnerability. These themes have provided rich narrative fodder all the way from Collins’s time through noir, neo-noir and to the present. If handled with originality and flair, they not only deliver the fuel to keep the narrative engine going but can turn suspenseful domestic dramas into blockbusters.”