Author Angie Cruz started the Instagram account, Dominicanas NYC, when she couldn’t find photos of 1960s Dominican working-class women while researching her novel Dominicana. Cruz spoke to the Cut about this community-driven project that shares photos and stories of Dominican women from across the country. “I’m interested in writing about the working class, which is often under-documented,” she says. “What’s documented is what we see in the papers, about politicians, or people who have power, or crime. My family was in NYC in the ’70s, but for Dominicana, I was interested in writing about 1965. That was the year the U.S. occupied D.R. It was the year Malcolm X was shot across from the building I grew up in [in Washington Heights.] I wanted to bring all these historical moments together and show how, even if they’re different stories and movements, they’re all interconnected.”
Angie Cruz’s Working Women
The Questions We Ask
Over at New York, Year in Reading alumna Meaghan O’Connell writes on “What’re you going to do when your kid Googles you?” and other patronizing questions for women who write.
Reichenbach Pilgrimage
“I am lately returned from a pilgrimage, bearing bloodied knees and a holy relic; my destination was a place of love and sacrifice that’s lived long in my heart. No Lourdes for me, though: I went to the Reichenbach Falls.” Sarah Perry makes a pilgrimage to the death place of Sherlock Holmes and writes about it for the Guardian.
Writing Without Reading
Buzz Poole expands Macy Halford‘s riff on the consequences of writing without reading. In the process, he refers back to last month’s popular piece here at The Millions by Steve Himmer.
Buy Debt Without Going Into Debt
David Graeber’s Debt (which was just reviewed in the New York Review of Books) is available at a 40% discount all weekend long.