“How to skin a tiger?”, The Tomorrow Archive, Vol. 2, Summer 2024

“Babydogs do not work/SERVICE ANIMAL” Seventh Wave Magazine, On Work, Community Anthology ed. Say Madges, January 2024

“baby doll!” Hayden’s Ferry Review (online, audio, print) Summer 2023

“Writing Advice for Bodies In Pain,” Catapult

“The Killing Of A Tiger,” Denver Quarterly Summer 2019 (print)

“I Assimilate into Mere Bubbles,” The Rumpus

“The Death Of a Symbol,” Lithub

“The Stages Of My Life, In Usernames,” VICE Magazine “Privacy and Perception” Issue, Broadly.

“White Writers Pushed Me Out of Fiction, And Into the Essay.” Electric Lit

“Call Me By My Middle Name” Girlboss

“Pet Culture,” Vol 1 Brooklyn

“charmed,” Fearsome Critters Vol 2

Select Cultural Criticism

“Rajma Masala, The Perfect Pandemic Dish.” On beans, pandemics and colonial histories for Eater

“The Casual Imperialism Of The American Tourist,” Bitch Magazine

“Blank Slate: Spiritual Emptiness Is Clearing Out Our Closets,” on minimalism for Bitch Magazine

“The Temple Aunties,” Edible Queens

“The Waterscape of Mithila,” Bhakti and Power: Debating India’s Religion of the Heart, chapter in University of Washington text published May 2019

On period pieces and colonial propaganda, Vice

“Tipu’s Magic Box Was Stolen. It Should Not Be For Sale,” New York Times

“Ghost In My Mouth,” Bitch Magazine, GHOST Issue

On capitalism and Frida Kahlo, Washington Post

“How Might We Decolonize The Brooklyn Museum?” Pacific Standard

“Royal Representation: On the Strange Racial Politics of ‘Bridgerton,'” Bitch Magazine

“Eugenics As Entertainment: ‘Indian Matchmaking”s lighthearted view of caste oppression,” Bitch Magazine

“The Myth of The Male Genius” Bitch Magazine

“I’m Tired of Watching Brown Men Fall in Love With White Women Onscreen.” Jezebel

“’90 Day Fiance: The Other Way’ Tells A Story of Passport Privilege’,” Jezebel

“Does ‘Call Me By Your Name’ expose the Oscars’ problem with sex?” Playboy

“The Fists Of White Men: Orientalism and Yellow Peril in ‘The Defenders’.” Bitch Media

“Lady Bird‘s glaring white mediocrity” The Week

“The Problem with ‘Aladdin’.” Bitch Media

“Does Hollywood really care about abuse?” Oxygen

“Feminists were right: Ignoring online misogyny has deadly consequences” Washington Post

“Why Pay Secrecy is Inherently Anti-Feminist” Wear Your Voice

“How Reddit Is Used to Indoctrinate Young Men Into Becoming Misogynists” Vice Canada, Reposted on Vice US.

“#MeToo: There’s a List Circulating of Sexual Abusers on College Campuses,” AlterNet

“Funny Women Are Everywhere,” The Juggernaut

“The Model Minority Is Not a Myth: It’s Ajit Pai” The Root

“Tools of Supremacy: The Model Minority” COLORBLOQ Magazine, MODEL Issue.

“Sad, Brown and Gay: Let’s Talk About Queer and Trans Mental Health in the South Asian Diaspora,” INTO (Supported by ASJA)

“The Politics of South Asian Representation,” on ‘The Problem With Apu’ for ShondaLand

“Queer Muslim Artists Are Beyond A “Movement,” INTO

“Milk and Vine’s Viral Success Is White Mediocrity Capitalizing on Rupi Kaur’s Work” Teen Vogue

“A New Exhibit Explores the Art and Identity of Queer Muslims” Vice

Oriental Cyborg, winner of the 2021 Chapbook Prize, was published February 2024. You can purchase it from Essay Press.

About the book:

Who is the Oriental Cyborg? asks Aditi Kini in this collection of notes, jokes, and queries into the provenance of a creature designed for labor, 3-D printed in the technoscientific post-colonies, modeled on old automata. Race is a technology, that we know, and technology can be raced — so why inquire into this at all? Perhaps this, the Oriental Cyborg, is a fantasy more than a memory, or an echo more than a form — or just an essayist’s extraction of personal anguish and humor from globalist decay. 

Taking on the form of historical analysis / lyrical essay / documentary poem / experimental buzzword /  positionality statement, this chapbook and its titular character might still be an elusive mystery even after reading.

Reviews:

“…the book’s form defies genre, inculcated with influences beyond the literary essay, poetics, and theory. It is a single poem, or a fragmented constellation essay. Yet, it is also a dialogue between words and images; art and science; the real and the imaginary…” Heavy Feather Review, a review and reading by Olga Mikolaivna (June 2024)

“…the book puts in sharp relief the distinction between those who can choose identities and those who find identities imposed on them. The author’s ambivalence about their own place along a continuum of alienation and belonging adds a welcome complexity…” Poetry Foundation, Harriet Books Blog review by Sylee Gore (January 2024)

Praise:

“’What is a ghost but a person removed from corporeality?’ This is one among layers of questions Aditi Kini poses in Oriental Cyborg, a lyrical excavation into survival in the era of techno racial capitalism, and its “deleting touch” that so easily voids—reduces to faceless services—the exploited individuals performing various acts of techno-labor. A grieved searching drives this hybrid essay, which feels urgent and necessary as threats from AI grab headlines. This work compels us to see our culture’s love affair with technological progress as a means for continued colonization and domination. It also reminds us, and celebrates, that those erased don’t stay silent forever. We privileged may not be able to hear them yet, but those who are listening know. They roar.”

– Allison Cobb

“In the mirror of Aditi Kini’s Oriental Cyborg, I become the monster—a hopeless automaton, an intelligence stripped of roar. With titanium-threaded theory, Kini radiantly stitches together the ideal Asian working machine. Get your own Oriental cyborg today: super dazzling and sexy, historically embroidered, an oracular truth who never tires, never complains, forever mute, what perfection!”

– Lily Hoàng

Oriental Cyborg on tour:

March 1, 2024:  NYC Launch Party, with performances and videos by Lucien Spect, Neon Mashurov, Charu Sinha, Teo Rivera-Dundas, Zorica Colic, and Benji Santos. The Footlight, New York.

March 14, 2024: San Diego Launch Party, with performances by Olga Mikolaivna and Dana Fidler

March 18, 2024: Climate Control, San Francisco, CA

March 28, 2024: Little Book Night, Topos Too, New York, NY

May 5, 2024: Denver Launch Party, with Andrea Abi-Karam, Maura Modeya, Bo Hwang, Rachel Franklin Wood, Counterpath Press, Denver, CO

October 28, 2024 Middletown, CT: Reading and lecture at Wesleyan University.