He is also a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press, 2016.) He previously contributed to Artforum, The Atlantic, Grantland, Slate, and The Wire (UK). His scholarly work has appeared in American Quarterly, Criticism, PMLA, and Genre. His essays and criticism have been anthologized in Best Music Writing and Best African American Essays, and his 2012 essay for Lucky Peach on suburban Chinatowns was a finalist for a James Beard Award for food writing. He also served on the editorial board of A New Literary History of America (HUP, 2009). He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the advisory board of the Center for Experimental Humanities (NYU) and the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. From 2014-2016, he was a fellow at New America.