In celebration of International Workers' Day and in conjunction with the "Labor" issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, this episode of The Detour explores how work shapes our lives. What is work for? Are work and labor the same thing? And what, if anything, makes work meaningful? To get at these questions, we talk with three people who spend a lot of time thinking about labor and work. First, we speak with Lydia Kiesling, author of the novels The Golden State and Mobility. Next, we talk to Nicholas Hengen Fox and Jorge Herrera Caro about Working Class Literature, the only class explicitly about class at Portland Community College.
Show Notes
About Our Guests and Further Detours
Lydia Kiesling is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others. It was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Lydia is the recipient of a 2025 Miller Foundation Spark Award. Her essays and nonfiction have been published in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Cut.
In the "Labor" issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, Lydia revisits W. Somerset Maugham’s 1915 novel Of Human Bondage, reflecting on "his descriptions of struggling to find your place in the world—and, crucially, the central role that work plays in this determination."
Last year, Nicholas Hengen Fox and Jorge Harrerra Caro both took part in Working Class Literature, the only class explicitly about class at Portland Community College. In a collaborative piece for the "Labor" issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, they reflect on some of the impactful books, stories, and poems they read and discussed in that class, including:
- We Want Everything by Nanni Balestrini
- “Something That Needs Nothing” by Miranda July
- How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
- Microchips for Millions by Janice Lobo Sapigao
- The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
During the episode, Nick reads "B Sharp Blues" from Today in the Taxi by Sean Singer. Adam reads "A Red Palm" by Gary Soto.
The cover image of this episode is Jean-François Millet's painting Man with a Hoe. The painting was an international sensation when it debuted in 1863. Edwin Markham, Oregon's first poet laureate, wrote a poem inspired by the painting that ran in newspapers across the US.
Transcript
Transcript coming soon.