[2] Chu received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2023 for "book reviews that scrutinize authors as well as their works, using multiple cultural lenses to explore some of society's most fraught topics.
[10] To date, she has written critical reviews of books by Hanya Yanagihara, Maggie Nelson, Octavia E. Butler, Ottessa Moshfegh, and The Velveteen Rabbit.
"[2] Noah Zazanis, in The New Inquiry, expressed ambivalence about "On Liking Women" from a transmasculine perspective, writing: "If turning your back on manhood is an ultimately feminist act, what are we to make of the decision to become a man?
"[16] Amia Srinivasan noted in the London Review of Books that the essay "threatens to bolster the argument made by anti-trans feminists: that trans women equate, and conflate, womanhood with the trappings of traditional femininity, thereby strengthening the hand of patriarchy".
[19] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, poet Kay Gabriel wrote that in Females, "Chu makes a claim about what she calls an ontological, or an existential, condition.
In the essay, Chu argues that "in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history... For now, parents must learn to treat their kids as what they are: human beings capable of freedom.
"[21][22] Fellow New York writer Jonathan Chait disagreed with Chu's rights-based argument while praising the essay's "honesty" for acknowledging the different sides of the debate.