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Giving Shakespeare the Tough Love He Deserves

John Douglas Thompson The New York Times
In “The Great White Bard,” Farah Karim-Cooper maintains that close attention to race, and racism, will only deepen engagement with the playwright’s canon.

What’s in a Name?

Carol Kanter
Who is Jack Smith? asks the poet Carol Kanter. Cross your fingers. Is he the hero who shows that someone with a fancier name is not above the law? Look it up.

The Gender of Capital

Khushbu Sharma LSE Review of Books
In this book, writes reviewer Sharma, the authors argue that despite supposed equality, women in all classes of society are economically disadvantaged with respect to their husbands, fathers, and brothers.

The Raw, the Cooked and the Hydrolysed

Fred Warren Dark Mountain Project
Marketing departments inject Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) with stories ranging from the banal (a cereal box cartoon character) and aspirational (health promises), to the manipulative such as ads picturing fast food eating as the center of family life

Chinese Exclusion Act

Gerald Sloan
Arkansas poet Gerald Sloan reminds us that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was no “act” but often lost to history and found again.

Poetry, Biography, and the Unknowable

Hollis Robbins Los Angeles Review of Books
These books offer two approaches to the life and work of Wheatley, who is a cornerstone figure of the U.S. and African American literary traditions.