labor
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R.I.P.: Labor In, Labor Out
Being reminded of your mortality on a constant basis makes your life so much better.
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Paying It Forward: Meaghan O’Connell’s And Now We Have Everything
[O’Connell’s] baby, once born, is not the answer to any question, but rather the genesis of a thousand new ones.
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Art Monster Moms
Rufi Thorpe writes for Vela on the responsibilities of writing and motherhood, and the transformation of a woman writer into an “art monster”: But any soldier will tell you that much of the Army is similarly boring and routine. Yet…
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Rediscovering Amber Reeves
For Full Stop, Emma Schneider reviews a recently republished book: Amber Reeves’s 1914 novel A Lady and Her Husband, which Schneider aligns with “American pre-war feminist classics such as The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper.” Reeves’s novel offers a comparatively…
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Lost Labor
Certain ways of avoiding a childbirth scene in contemporary fiction have become almost predictable, as clichéd as the clothes scattered on the floor in a movie rated PG-13: the frantic car ride to the hospital, followed by a jump cut…
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Laboring for Masculinity
Allison J. Pugh writes for Aeon on the role of labor in defining American masculinity. After interviewing nearly a hundred subjects, Pugh looks at how work defines the self-worth of men, and how un/underemployed men try to redefine masculinity in…
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Worthwhile Work
Dissatisfaction among the modern white-collar working class might stem from the fact that many jobs simply don’t feel necessary. Strike! Magazine has been advertising on the London Underground with quotes from David Graeber’s 2013 essay, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit…
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Santa’s Little Helper
Santa’s elves spend all year manufacturing low-cost holiday decorations to bring Westerners Christmas cheer. The only problem? They aren’t elves, but Chinese factory workers. The Guardian explores life in the Chinese “Christmas Village” responsible for 60% of the world’s holiday…
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Adjunct Faculty Plan Walk Out
Adjunct college faculty are at last taking a stand against abominable work conditions and low pay by planning a national walk out on February 25, 2015. Unlike their tenured counterparts, adjuncts lack protection from retributive firing should they follow through.…
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Do You Really Want to “Do What You Love”?
Superficially, [“do what you love”] is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who…
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Happy Labor Day!
Celebrate the workers of the world with the Poetry Foundation’s list of “poems reflecting on work, responsibility, and the end of summer.” The post includes links to audio recordings of readings and interviews, as well as a few analytical articles, for…
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Drop Me Off the Cliff
On this particular night, I drink the brown stuff that burns my throat and tastes like the sweat of working men and women. I am full of sorrow for the people of Michigan, which had just been declared the 24th…