What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
Cite
Abstract
<P><I>What Things Cost: an anthology for the people</I> is the first major anthology of labor writing in nearly a century. Here, editors Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones bring together more than one hundred contemporary writers singing out from the corners of the 99 Percent, each telling their own truth of today's economy. </P><P>In his final days, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a "multiracial coalition of the working poor." King hoped this coalition would become the next civil rights movement but he was assassinated before he could see it emerge as the Poor People's Campaign, now led by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. King's last lesson—about the dangers of dividing working people—inspired the conversation gathered here by Jones and Howell. </P><P>Fifty-five years after the assassination of King, <I>What Things Cost</I> collects stories that are honest, provocative, and galvanizing, sharing the hidden costs of labor and laboring in the United States of America. Voices such as Sonia Sanchez, Faisal Mohyuddin, Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Silas House, Sonia Guiñansaca, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Victoria Chang, Crystal Wilkinson, Gerald Stern, and Jericho Brown weave together the living stories of the campaign's broad swath of supporters, creating a literary tapestry that depicts the struggle and solidarity behind the work of building a more just America.</P>
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- Introduction
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Poetry Is Bourgeois
Ruben Quesada
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America Runs on Immigrants
Sonia Guiñansaca
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My Father Dreams of a New Country
Ruth Awad
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Untitled
Kevin Goodan
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Burden Hill Apothecary & Babalú-Ayé Prepare Stinging Nettle Tea
L. Lamar Wilson
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the bureau of reclamation
Erika Meitner
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write this instead
Marwa Helal
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poem where no one is deported
José Olivarez
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Hummingbirds
Yaccaira Salvatierra
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All in Conflict with This Act Are Hereby Repealed
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
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Workshop
Chris Green
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Dispatch Out of a Language I Used to Speak
Curtis Bauer
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Table Talk
Tomás Q. Morín
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Armory
Seth Pennington
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The Holiness of Our Fathers
Faisal Mohyuddin
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My Father’s Love Letters
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Second Attempt Crossing
Javier Zamora
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Fair Gabbro in the Orchard
upfromsumdirt
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Elegy for the Bloodline
Kendra Allen
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Women’s Work
Carter Sickels
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The Gift
Ocean Vuong
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America Runs on Immigrants
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The Taking Apart
Emily Jalloul
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Mourning Hillary and What Might Have Been
Jason Kyle Howard
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Dialogue in Diptych with Emma Goldman
Alina Stefanescu
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Poolside at the Dearborn Inn
Cal Freeman
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C.R.E.A.M.
Danez Smith
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What Proof Need You of Love
Justin Wymer
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Hymn of Our Jesus & the Holy Tow Truck
Ashley M. Jones
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Just Don’t Never Give up on Love
Sonia Sanchez
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Viscera
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
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Propriety
Rosa Alcalá
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The Taking Apart
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Saltine
Nickole Brown
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On Mute
Tony Sweatt andRobert Gipe
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Where I’m From (2018)
George Ella Lyon
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If Anyone Should Fight to Breathe
Emily Skaja
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Bringing the Monument Down Birmingham, AL
Laura Secord
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If I May Be Frank
A. H. Jerriod Avant
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My Whitenesses
Sandra Beasley
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Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Keith Leonard
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Work
Kwame Dawes
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In Alabama
Reginald Dwayne Betts
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D.D.I.Y.
Tyrone Williams
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Ghazal for Grandma’s Hands
Darius V. Daughtry
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Family Musings, Matriliny, and Legacy
Cheryl R. Hopson
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: the making of {#289-128} in five parts
Randall Horton
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Ars Poetica
Nabila Lovelace
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I Confess
Pauletta Hansel
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Questionnaire
Wendell Berry
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Reparations Redefinition: Bond
Marcus Wicker
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It Comes Down to This
M. L. Smoker
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Work History
Kelly Norman Ellis
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Ode to the Hotel Near the Children’s Hospital
Kevin Young
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My Mother, My Mother
Luther Hughes
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Saltine
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After a Hard Time
Steve Scafidi
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Etymology of Land
Julia Bouwsma
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O Tobacco
Crystal Wilkinson
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Poem in Furrows
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
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Necessary Weight, Necessary Time
James andTina Mozelle Braziel
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The Zone
Rodrigo Toscano
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Unskilled Labor
Vicente Yépez
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“Están Haciendo Trabajos Que Ni Siquiera Los Negros Quieren Hacer”
Nandi Comer
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Yes/And
Ciona Rouse
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Wetback
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
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I Am Bound for de Kingdom
Marlanda Dekine
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After a Hard Time
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Truck Stop
Iliana Rocha
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the fifth note
Keith S. Wilson
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38
Layli Long Soldier
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Thumbprint
Justin Bigos
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The Neighborhood Girls Ask Their Manager for a Raise
Allison Pitinii Davis
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A Whole Foods in Hawai’i
Craig Santos Perez
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Recyclables
Su Hwang
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In Line
Diane Gilliam
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Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
Martín Espada
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It Was Already Dangerous
Lauren Whitehead
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Food Giant
Julie Marie Wade
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For God So Loved the World He Gave Us Vision
Bill King
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Model
Edgar Kunz
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Truck Stop
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From Obit
Victoria Chang
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Most Skin Hit Road
Levi Romero
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January 1, 2018
Phillip B. Williams
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At War with Ourselves: The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy
Nikky Finney
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American Interrogation
Bryan Borland
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Job Opening For Border Patrol Agents
Christopher Soto
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Pride Fight
Patrick Rosal
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Bull Dragged from Arena
Ross Gay
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Somebody Else Sold the World
Adrian Matejka
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Behind You
Jacob Shores-Argüello
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Waitress
Dorianne Laux
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A Crowded Table
Silas House
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Que me manden a matar/If They Send Someone to Kill Me
Alice Driver
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From Obit
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Work Is
Len Lawson
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Lyft Asks Drivers to Share an Inspiring New Year’s Eve Story, Miami 2019
Cathleen Chambless
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The Man of the Small Hours
Christian J. Collier
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300
Yesenia Montilla
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The Night after You Lose Your Job
Debora Kuan
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Fuck It
Ray McManus
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Prayer for the Workingman
Cooper Lee Bombardier
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Riot
Katie Condon
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All My Mothers
Joy Priest
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My Mother Told Us Not to Have Children
Rebecca Gayle Howell
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Mineshaft Dream
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
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Dream of Death by Factory
Ron Houchin
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Factory
Monica Sok
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Lucky
Doug Van Gundy
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Let There Be Coal
Jake Skeets
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When Those Who Have the Power Start to Lose It, They Panic
Savannah Sipple
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The Trouble with Young
Melva Sue Priddy
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Penitential
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
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Disparate Impacts: The Testimony of Joseph Gaston
Philip Metres
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What I Mean When I Say Labor
Geffrey Davis
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Snow, Rain, Heat, Pandemic, Gloom of Night
Jane Wong
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my mom makes friends with the nurses
Janice Lobo Sapigao
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The Horns of Horns Valley Moved from Alabama to Arkansas, Gained an “e,” and I Returned Three Generations Later for Graduate School in Creative Writing, of All Things
Jennifer Horne
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In the Shadow of Babel
Jessica Jacobs
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An Hour with an Etruscan Sarcophagus
Jill McDonough
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The Way Taken
Rose McLarney
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Intimate Detail
Heid E. Erdrich
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Planet Labor
Joseph Millar
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Shanty
Mark Wunderlich
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Omphalos
Kathy Fagan
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From Dear Weirdo
Abraham Smith
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Idle Men on Porches
Richard Hague
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Ghazal Written For the Lids In Downtown Brooklyn Where I Chose My Name
Kayleb Rae Candrilli
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What I Learned About Love and Billionaires in 26 Hours
Eugenia Leigh
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The Courier
Mikey Swanberg
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American Income
Afaa Michael Weaver
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May Frick Be Damned
Gerald Stern
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Santa Ana of Grocery Carts
Aracelis Girmay
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Run’n’Gun
Natalie Diaz
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This moment / Right now
Roberto Carlos Garcia
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Burden of Belonging
Laura Eve Engel
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I Give You Back
Joy Harjo
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Foreday in the Morning
Jericho Brown
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We Don’t Die
Darius Simpson
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Work Is
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