In an effort to get consumers to think more consciously about the “human cost” of commercial sugar production, artist Kara Walker has installed “Subtlety,” a large-scale public sculpture in Brooklyn’s iconic Domino Sugar Factory. Meanwhile, Edwidge Danticat explores contemporary labor conditions in the Dominican Republic’s cane fields.
“Would we also just weep and walk away?”
Bethanne Patrick’s Bottom 10 of 2009
Book Studio‘s Bethanne Patrick‘s Top 10 and, perhaps more interestingly, Bottom 10 Books of the Year. Patrick minces no words on Lethem, Kingsolver, Niffenegger, Moore, and Larsson.
“I was sad as I began to think that I might be gay.”
Recommended Listening: Andrew Solomon’s Moth story, “My Post-Nuclear Family.” (Solomon’s work has previously been shouted out in our Year in Reading series by Millions staffers Hannah Gersen and Edan Lepucki.)
Happy Birthday, New Directions
Powell’s is celebrating New Directions’ 75th birthday by offering a 30% discount on select titles.
Weltsday
Here’s a Rob MacDonald poem about a spelling bee contestant struggling with the word weltschmerz to get you through your Wednesday.
Roxane Gay at AWP
Watch Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay discuss Bad Feminist at AWP via PBS. You could also read our review of Gay’s first novel, An Untamed State.