What is critique and who gets to do it?

by Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield

I am not sure when we began to construct “the artist” and “the critic” as two distinct entities, but I am concerned about who gets pushed out of being seen as a credible critic when the two are separated. 

In her lecture “The Individual Artist,” collected in The Source of Self-Regard (2019), Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison makes note of the phenomenon nearly fifty years ago: “In the contemporary world of art and scholarship, literature is, I think, the only discipline in which the scholars do not produce what they criticize…There was a time…when the great critics were the writers; they did both. Now it is separate; the creative artist goes one route and the critic goes another” (60-61). Currently, this separation has caused much anxiety around how, when, and why folks might get to critique the art they consume—in particular when it is art created by people with whom they share identities.

Frequently in the young adult author spaces of social media that I occupy, for example, I see continuous debate about whether novelists are allowed to critique the work of other writers. There is a contingent who prefers to keep discussion of contemporaries’ work neutral-to-positive only, citing that other authors are our colleagues and thus it benefits us to keep a spirit of congeniality. While others maintain that we reserve the right to critique the work of our peers, knowing that if we do not speak on that which we question, potentially harmful representations could multiply unchecked. Given that the repercussions for me as a Black woman are steep if I choose to publicly critique a text, I tend to be measured in the critiques I do share. However, my life as a reader, enhanced by my career as a scholar, means that I do not opt out of critique. I also reject the notion that critique must be scathing; instead, I believe that it can be a series of well-crafted inquiries that come from a place of care. I love young readers, and believe they deserve good stories, so my expectations for what we feed their minds and who tells their stories are high.

Critique, at its core, is a crucial and valuable intellectual exercise, especially when done with accountability to the communities of which the critic is a part in mind. I return often to the words of Dr. Manning Marable in his 2000 Souls article where he reminds us that the work of Black Studies is to be “descriptive,” “corrective,” and “prescriptive.” (17-18) The “descriptive” and “corrective” part, I’d argue, is what many of us engage in on the day to day: that rigorous tussling with ideas and language, in an admirable attempt to name sensations and experiences that expose the larger, often invisible infrastructures of power that underpin our lives.

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The last step—the “prescriptive”—is one of my favorite parts of the equation. The prescriptive is when we all agree that what we’re seeing in the world isn’t working for our collective well being, and that something better must exist. For example, I see this in the way my favorite Black bookstore owner, Demetrius Frazier of Resist Booksellers, identified a literacy problem in his community of Petersburg, Virginia. He reasoned one solution is to increase access to books. His team’s work is some of the most impressive literacy work centering Black folks in central Virginia. Frazier exemplifies: there must be another way. We will make it so.

The prescriptive tells us we can create something better. This is where Afrofuturism comes in: this philosophy insists there are Black people in the future. This is where abolition comes in: the insistence that, in this future, there can be a world where prisons, policing and the frequently violent forms of surveillance that come with them do not have to exist. In its stead, we can have a world that centers community care. It is also easily the messiest part, the most frustrating. Building a more equitable, freer world requires us gathering together as best we can and moving in its general direction without a clear map. 

It is a practice that requires a lot of hope, and a lot of faith, and the understanding that we might have to scrap the plan and try something else. Worldbuilding is iterative. It requires that we be indefatiguable in the sense that we do not abandon the practice. 

Abolitionist organizer and writer Mariame Kaba reminds us that “hope is a discipline.” Meaning there will be days where we feel like we’re building a more equitable world, and others where we feel we are failing. Artists who are also critics that exist in the margin help us keep the faith that something better can exist. From their vantage point as critics, they help us understand that if we imagined the world as it exists over the course of many decades and centuries, we can imagine it into something else. It may not be here tomorrow, but if we commit to it today, it may be here soon.

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This is why critique matters. As one of the preeminent Black thinkers and writers of the mid twentieth century, James Baldwin, has said: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually” (Notes of a Native Son, 1955). Critique does not have to come from love, but it does come from places in us that are complicated, flawed, and exceptionally human. Critique can honor an attempt to get to the deepest core of an issue, to articulate that which may render us powerless, even if it ultimately fails to successfully make the point. Critique can come from a place that says, “I deserve better than what I have, and I know it can be achieved.” Is that not a form of love?

But this clear-eyed version of critique necessitates truthtelling. Truthtelling is not popular. Not only is it unpopular, depending on your positionality, committing to telling the truth can quite literally cost you your life. Following the work of communications scholar Dr. Moya Bailey, who, along with Trudy (@thetrudz), coined the term “misogynoir,” scholar of Black digital misogynoir Dr. Kay Coghill has written about the harm Black women and femmes experience online for speaking up. 

Their work tells us that people most impacted by conversations around public critique of a piece of art are the most vulnerable. This was the case with the blow back Black queer folks received when asking some practical questions about their representation in Sinners (2025) after awards season. All I heard was: “This was beautiful, and how can we, too, be seen next time?” It is hard to be a person who sees so much; to look at something for all its majesty and still want more because you see more. The status quo would rather us be satisfied with what we have, but truthtellers are insatiable. There is always a clearer truth to be had.

This delicate dance of critique and creation is best tended to in environments constructed with care as a first priority. These ideas—many of which I learned from Black feminist theorist, essayist and educator bell hooks, but saw in my family’s pedagogical practice—guided me as I committed to making classrooms where critique and creation not only co-existed, but were of equal importance. Getting students to see and believe it for themselves means co-creating environments where there is a steady flow of care in all directions—not just me to them, and the students as a whole to me, but amongst each other. It is so hard to create under duress, and the realities of our lives mean that we often do. 

In some ways, the classrooms I have been a part of making—in universities, on Zoom, in Black bookstores, in my neighbors’ living rooms and on our driveway—are a direct response to critiques we have about education and schooling. The people I have built with, who range from retirees to second graders, have all decided that they want to see a world where they know more than they did today. I have watched a student who finally saw herself in a book go onto create more book content online to share what she knew. I have seen them create podcasts to preserve student activist movements on campus to leave behind once they graduated so the school could not conveniently claim amnesia. 

Critique can push us to be innovative, especially in environments where there is already an established relationship. It can be a rigorous love practice. 

Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield is a writer, editor, artist and former Peanut Fest Queen from Suffolk, Virginia. She is the author of two novels for young adults, Love in 280 Characters or Less (Feiwel & Friends, 2025) and Love Requires Chocolate (Joy Revolution, 2024). She is a product of Virginia public schools (Suffolk Public Schools) and universities (University of Virginia), all the way up to her PhD in American Studies from William & Mary. Stringfield has been published in a variety of venues for the last six years—book collections, online literary magazines, scholarly journals—but most importantly, she is a lifelong reader and a maker of beautiful things.