“I don't believe that intelligence can be reduced to a number, frankly. But I can see how doing exactly that produces a useful sorting mechanism in our society in order to separate children into categories of promising and doomed. The tests seem arbitrary and without real scientific value and yet have lasting consequences.”

American writer

Rachel Kushner is an American writer known for her novels Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers, The Mars Room, and Creation Lake. Her fiction includes Telex from Cuba, published in 2008, The Flamethrowers, published in 2013, The Mars Room, published in 2018, and Creation Lake, published in 2024. These works established her reputation as a novelist whose name is closely tied to contemporary American fiction.