WHAT THINGS COST
Benefiting the Poor People’s Campaign
Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones
Associate Editor, Emily Jalloul
Finalist, Foreword INDIES Anthology of the Year
A Best Book of 2023, Ms. Magazine
A Best Anthology of 2023, Book Riot
A Best Anthology for 2023, Poets & Writers
A Best Summer Read for 2023,
The Bitter Southerner
Featured on Poetry off the Shelf by
The Poetry Foundation
A Best Book for 2023, Southern Review of Books
“My parents believed so deeply that if they worked hard enough, they would succeed. That’s not always the case.” Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones
—Listen to The Poetry Off the Shelf interview
“The people are more powerful than any construct or any hallowed hall or even the pen that signs our existence out of law. This book reminded me that none of us are alone if we decide we are together.” Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones
—Read The Rumpus interview
“Work.” “Cost.” “Things”. In the book, these ideas are expansive, guided by the work we received and by our own intention to liberate this anthology from any sort of oppressive or restrictive mindset. bell hooks teaches us to understand the intersectionality of labor. In her words, “the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” works to oppress and restrict us all, even on the page, and this anthology asks the page to galvanize us into a different force of sharing.” Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones
—Read The Tupelo Quarterly interview
“This galvanizing anthology of poetry and short prose highlights experiences of economic exploitation and finds common ground across the working class… a memorable and timely book.”
—Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly
“Taken together, these poems ask us to consider what work means to us, what work has done to us, how our bodies and minds have labored—for what, for whom? This anthology arrives in time to remind us, as Jones and Howell write, "Wealth does not have to be generated by suffering. It does not have to be this way."
—Katherine Webb-Hehn, Scalawag Magazine
“What Things Cost offers a hard-earned generosity of spirit, reflecting the sheer enormity of the working poor’s contribution to everyone’s lives. From the authors’ diversity of experience and seemingly endless variety of aesthetic and formal expression, we recognize all that’s made possible by the persistent, thrumming pulse of the world at work.”
—Emily Choate, Chapter 16 & reprinted in Chattanooga Times Free Press
“What Things Cost is a one-of-a-kind collection…. It opened my eyes to my own privilege, and gave me a better understanding and sense of compassion for those around me who might be feeling overworked, exhausted, underpaid, and under-appreciated. I highly recommend it for anyone else who wants that added perspective in their own life or anyone going through something similar who just wants to feel seen.”
”This gorgeous anthology, What Things Cost, sets to singing the profound dignity of folk too far in the margins of our everyday consciousness. Here, in the figures and rhythms of poetry, one hears and feels both their nobility and disenfranchisement, yet, too, a mighty provocation of truth-telling in song that tilts the world toward parity and justice.”
—Major Jackson. Poet & Host, The Slowdown
“I just left a union meeting in Franklin, Pennsylvania, where Ironworkers were thanking the rest of the labor movement for supporting them during a recent strike. At the core of solidarity is a mix of kindness and courage, rooted in shared vulnerability. And that's exactly what I feel when I read What Things Cost. The stories, confessions, elegies, and authenticities in this book transcend generations and demographics, and feel just as familiar here in Franklin, Pennsylvania, as they will in every corner of every community where work happens.”
—Stephen Cousins. National Field Director, AFL-CIO
“Damn, I cannot shake this book. Traversing an awe-inspiring kaleidoscope of aesthetics and perspectives, What Things Cost is a vital, heartbreaking, and finely curated investigation of the cost of physical and spiritual commodification.”
—William Johnson. PEN Across America Program Director, PEN America
from the publisher - “What Things Cost 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. 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.
Fifty-five years after the assassination of King, What Things Cost 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.”