I want it to show that there are no villains and there are no angels here, just a heartbreakingly untenable situation, which we need more people to think about, pay attention to and talk about.

To read the rest of the interview, visit Electric Literature

The collection is packed with slice of life tales as varied as NYC pizza pies – with all the toppings: enormous energy, sage street wit, winsome wisdom, and the grit of Truth. And, I reckon, it would be worth the purchase for Zadie Smith’s edgy comical corset saga alone. But it’s a volume chock full of surprises: There’s Lawrence Joseph’s dazzling lyrical poem; bolshy transgenders; a Czech car mechanic (or is he Serbian?); a widowed former Red Cross chaplain turned bar tender dealing with power games of the entitled; gentrifying landlords driving out tenants by neglecting to heat their flats in mid-winter; Junot Diaz’ tale of reciprocal burglary; Bill Cheng’s memoir of being stuck in a hidden, forgotten cubicle writing copy that celebrates rags to riches go-getters; and so on.

To read the rest of the review, visit CounterPunch

There are a lot of recent attempts to cross section the vicissitudes of life in New York City in an essay collection. This is the best of them, and, perhaps, the only one that succeeds.— Jonathon Sturgeon

To read the rest of the article, visit Flavorwire