At least half of all farmworkers in the United States are undocumented Mexican immigrants. And “documentation” often dictates inclusion in a guest-worker program that’s been compared to slavery. Americans avoid these jobs, yet elected a president who promised mass deportation. There’s a crisis brewing in our fields, and it’s about to get much, much worse.
michelleweber
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Fighting Azov Dolphins
The Mariupol, Ukraine Dolphins play (American) football seven miles from the front lines — a weekly chance for “three hours of American way of life.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Who Is Guy Fieri?
Who is Guy Fieri, really, and how does one get to Flavortown?
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The End of (Almost) Everything and (Almost) Everyone
Writing in The Baffler, Laurie Penny explores what it will mean for the civilization to collapse slowly, because of climate change, rather than in a single nuclear bang.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Fifty Shades of Dreck (or, Save Two Hours and Read This Spoiler-Filled Review)
Christopher Orr, film critic for The Atlantic, watched Fifty Shades Darker — the second film in the series based on the super popular Fifty Shades of Gray books — so that you don’t have to.
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Law and Order, Coffee Shop Edition
Susan Read’s short fiction centers on a Kafka-esque interrogation in the back room of a coffee shop — you know, the one where they wear the green aprons — that’s a stinging indictment of the byzantine policies, procedures, and psychology of being a low wage employee.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
A Fat Body and a Fat Mind: On Taking Up Space, Unapologetically
Carmen Maria Machado’s stunning essay in Guernica on the power of women who take up space is an important read for people of any size.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
It’s Wednesday, So This Must Be the Vice President’s House
Historian Merry Ellen Scofield, writing in Common-Place, dives deep into the intricacies of 19th century social etiquette: calling cards, the hierarchies and politics of who visits who and when, and the details of the cards themselves.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Slow Confiscation of Everything
Climate apocalypse: a coming calamity that’s morally different from nuclear exchange in a way we haven’t yet dealt with.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fifty Shades Darker: A Spoilereview
A blow-by-blow recounting of an awful, retrograde sequel.