Assimilation

People who speak Spanish all have outside jobs, my daughter announces as the Mow ‘n Blow crew descend from a truck to ravish our lawn. I read her a book about dark children dancing, playing drums with wrinkled elders, eating fried plantains. Bored, she grabs Dr. Seuss. I’m not Latin Mommy. I’m light pink like … Read more

Chicago Breakdown

Thomas Geoghegan, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement (The New Press 2014) Thomas Geoghegan has devoted his life’s work to the defense and advancement of the American labor movement. The author of seven books, the most well-known his first,Which Side Are You On: Trying To Be … Read more

Caravaggio (1571-1610)

  First thanks Verso Books—and Colin Beckett in particular—for enabling us to reprint this piece from the forthcoming volume, edited by Tom Overton: Portraits, John Berger on Artists. Each is going to his own rest. But they are all returning to the world, and its first gift is its space; later, its second gift will … Read more

Part Three

This installment of Hornick’s ongoing essay (see Part Two here) considers how serializing generates powerful effects in the Italian writer Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, the fourth and final of which will be published in English in September of this year. Taken collectively, the Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante comprise a single story about the relationship … Read more