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The Raw, the Cooked and the Hydrolysed

Fred Warren The 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.

Why Barbie Must Be Punished

Leslie Jamison The NewYorker
"She was flawless, something had to be wrong. I wanted to heal her, but I also needed her sick. I wanted to become Barbie, and I wanted to destroy her. I wanted her perfection, but I also wanted to punish her for being more perfect than I’d ever be."

Poisoned Water

Philip C. Kolin
Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin reminds us of the next imminent global disaster—bad water—and in some places it’s already here.