“We are beginning to understand, and for ever, that the only acceptable religion for man is the one that will teach him first of all to recognize, love and passionately serve this universe of which he is the most important element.” (quoting “Tielhard de Chardin tel que je l’ai connu” by G. Magoire, in Synthèse, November 1957)
“As Tielhard de Chardin has stated, only the fantastic is likely to be true at the cosmic level. We believe that human phenomena must also be measured against the cosmic scale. The thinkers of antiquity said this. Our modern world, with its planetary rockets and its efforts to contact other intelligent beings, is saying it.”
“‘The new man is living amongst us now! He is here!’ exclaimed Hitler, triumphantly. ‘Isn’t that enough for you? I will tell you a secret. I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him.'”
“‘In uttering these words,’ added Rauschning, ‘Hitler was trembling in a kind of ecstasy.'”
“As [Robert] Musil has pointed out: ‘If only a single one of the ideas which influence our life were taken really seriously so as to leave no room at all for its opposite, this would be enough to change the whole character of our civilization.'”
“We have a magical relationship with the Universe, but we have forgotten it. The next mutation of the human race will produce beings who will be conscious of this relationship, demi-gods. Already this mutation is having an effect on a few Messianic souls . . . “
“The physicist. George Gamow has conceived of a parallel Universe in which, for example, a billiard ball can go into two holes at he same time.”
–Excerpts from The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960)
Humanity is facing an unprecedented phase of evolution, planetary revolution, and the acceleration of time. More and more people are seeking guidance as they wake up to a connection with something far bigger than what they were taught about human life. Channeled by Lee Harris and prompted by Regina Meredith’s incisive questions, Lee’s guides, the Z’s, expose the lies promulgated throughout history and explain the past and the future,
• why consciousness is driving you faster than your mind • the positive and negative effects of artificial intelligence and other technology on intellect and the brain • the changing landscape of relationships, sexuality, and self-awareness • why the next decade will be a genuinely revelatory time on earth • why the most significant influencer in the development of humanity’s new potential is you
The Z’s remind us that everyone on Earth is being affected by the waves of higher consciousness now flooding the planet. Meant to be experienced, absorbed, and understood, the message from the Z’s is creating a new world is your job. The Future Human tells you why and how.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s most accessible and influential philosophical work, misquoted, misrepresented, brilliantly original and enormously influential
Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead’, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes. Nietzsche’s work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the “death of God” and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. After his death, Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche’s stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche’s work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche’s thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.
In 1859, Harriet Wilson published Our Nig. This forgotten novel was the first book published by a Black woman in the United States. Wilson’s main character, Frado, is parentified too young and then becomes a mother too soon. This traumatic experience is widely caricatured in global literature, but then again misogynoir is older than the so-called democracies of the West.
Across the diaspora, Black women are desexualized and hypersexualized at every age. And as with most anti-Black racism in the United States, it stems from chattel slavery. During this same enslavement, Black midwives pioneered the field of obstetrics and gynecology, yet Black mothers still have the highest mortality rate in the nation, if not the world. With all this and more intersectional and systematic prejudice, the very existence of Black motherhood is a miracle.
Thankfully, more and more Black authors are challenging this dehumanization. They remind us that every Black mother is unique and that each of them has a story worth telling. For some daughters, their mother is their first friend. For some daughters, their mother is their first foe. For others still, their mother is both.
The latter is a pattern in our stories. It is worth noting that most of the authors in this article have experienced or do experience estrangement from their mothers or estrangement from their daughters. What is motherhood if not an act of dismembering; as in putting the whole into separate parts? And what is daughterhood if not an act of remembering; as in putting separate parts of the whole together again?
The tragedy and comedy of it all is that these members, be they mental or physical or spiritual, cannot be truly separate or truly whole again. As I continue to move through the complexities of Black daughterhood, I am grounded in my lifelong love of books. Beginning with the ancestors, these are books that resonate with me on this Mother’s Day.
“I think that being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.” To describe the two biracial mothers in this 1929 novella as “complicated” is an oversimplification. In theory, both women could be black-presenting and white-presenting, but one makes the fateful choice to be white-passing as an adult. Their tense encounters, complete with homoerotic undertones, are explored against the backdrop of 1920s Harlem.
The 2021 film adaptation was poignantly shot in black-and-white and directed by Rebecca Hall. This controversial second book unjustly ended her career but made Nella Larsen the first Black woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.
“My mother’s gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.” In this 2013 New York Times bestseller memoir, Maya Angelou graciously offers an intimate portrait of her absent mother.
Much can be made of the mother who sends her children away to protect them from herself. They later reconnect, and this last book of hers is ultimately one of redemption. Maya Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom before she died in 2014.
“I don’t care what she is. Grown don’t mean a thing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that supposed to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.” This 1987 ghost story focuses on a formerly enslaved mother who is haunted by her dead daughter and her living daughter. The horrors of motherhood and daughterhood are dissected throughout the book.
This masterpiece was adapted into a 1998 film cast and a 2016 radio series. This novel eventually made Toni Morrison the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“all the girls were cheering when i went downstairs. i was / the one who told them to be tough, to stop believing / in their mother’s pain, that poison… / it wouldn’t hurt / like we’d been told. birth was beautiful if we believed / that it was beautiful and right and good!” This vulnerable poetry collection was published in 1983, and it chronicles the author’s experience with unplanned pregnancy and whirlwind marriage.
Toi Derricotte later co-founded Cave Canem in 1996 and won the 2020 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.
“But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.” This 1982 novel examines a spectrum of relationships between women, including the spectrum of forced motherhood.
This epistolary epic was adapted into a 1985 film, a 2005 stage musical, a 2008 radio series, and a 2023 film musical. This novel made Alice Walker the first Black woman to win the National Book Award in Fiction, and to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you.” This New York Times bestseller is arguably the most prophetic science fiction novel for our times. The heart of this novel and the sequel is a hyperempathetic prodigy turned revolutionary, but the sequel is unempathetically narrated by her daughter. Both books also explore adoptive motherhood and other forms of chosen family.
The Parables duology has been adapted into a 2015 opera and a 2020 graphic novel. The sequel won the Nebula Award, and Octavia Butler eventually became the first science-fiction writer to win a MacArthur Fellowship.
“When children arrive, the window closes. Wife, mother, age, and role model—the ‘respect’ that comes with these roles is the water they pour on your fire.” This multigenerational epic offers a sweeping view of the blessings and curses that daughters can inherit from their mothers.
Aside from cementing the author as the greatest writer in Buganda’s history, this 2020 novel is unique in its expansive definitions of family, and its tender affirmation of being raised by multiple mothers. It also happens to be my favorite book title of all time. Dr. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi won the Jhalak Prize for this classic.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumin, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Say first, for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause Mov’d our Grand Parents in that happy State, Favour’d of Heav’n so highly, to fall off From thir Creator, and transgress his Will For one restraint, Lords of the World besides? Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt? Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in Glory above his Peers, He trusted to have equal’d the most High, If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim Against the Throne and Monarchy of God Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms. Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe Confounded though immortal: But his doom Reserv’d him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witness’d huge affliction and dismay Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate: At once as far as Angels kenn he views The dismal Situation waste and wilde, A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv’d onely to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d: Such place Eternal Justice had prepar’d For those rebellious, here thir prison ordained In utter darkness, and thir portion set As far remov’d from God and light of Heav’n As from the Center thrice to th’ utmost Pole. O how unlike the place from whence they fell! There the companions of his fall, o’rewhelm’d With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns, and weltring by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and nam’d Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy, And thence in Heav’n call’d Satan, with bold words Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d From him, who in the happy Realms of Light Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst out-shine Myriads though bright: If he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize, Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger prov’d He with his Thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those, Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though chang’d in outward lustre; that fixt mind And high disdain, from sence of injur’d merit, That with the mightiest rais’d me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of Spirits arm’d That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power oppos’d In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav’n, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That Glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deifie his power, Who from the terrour of this Arm so late Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods And this Empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc’t, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal Warr Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe, Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n.
So spake th’ Apostate Angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare: And him thus answer’d soon his bold Compeer.
O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers, That led th’ imbattelld Seraphim to Warr Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds Fearless, endanger’d Heav’ns perpetual King; And put to proof his high Supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate, Too well I see and rue the dire event, That with sad overthrow and foul defeat Hath lost us Heav’n, and all this mighty Host In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far as Gods and Heav’nly Essences Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains Invincible, and vigour soon returns, Though all our Glory extinct and happy state Here swallow’d up in endless misery. But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now Of force believe Almighty, since no less Then such could hav orepow’rd such force as ours) Have left us this our spirit and strength intire Strongly to suffer and support our pains, That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, Or do him mightier service as his thralls By right of Warr, what e’re his business be Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire, Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep; What can it then avail though yet we feel Strength undiminisht, or eternal being To undergo eternal punishment? Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-fiend reply’d.
Fall’n Cherube, to be weak is miserable Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure, To do ought good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to his high will Whom we resist. If then his Providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil; Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from thir destind aim. But see the angry Victor hath recall’d His Ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the Gates of Heav’n: the Sulphurous Hail Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice Of Heav’n receiv’d us falling, and the Thunder, Wing’d with red Lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, The seat of desolation, voyd of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There rest, if any rest can harbour there, And reassembling our afflicted Powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our Enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire Calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from Hope, If not what resolution from despare.
Thus Satan to his neerest Mate With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes That sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides Prone on the Flood, extended long and large Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the Fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream: Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam The Pilot of some small night-founder’d Skiff,
Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell, With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes: So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay Chain’d on the burning Lake, nor ever thence Had ris’n or heav’d his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others, and enrag’d might see How all his malice serv’d but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn On Man by him seduc’t, but on himself Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour’d. Forthwith upright he rears from off the Pool His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames Drivn backward slope thir pointing spires, and rowld In billows, leave i’th’midst a horrid Vale. Then with expanded wings he stears his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land He lights, as if it were Land that ever burn’d With solid, as the Lake with liquid fire; And such appear’d in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a Hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter’d side Of thundring Aetna, whose combustible And fewel’d entrals thence conceiving Fire, Sublim’d with Mineral fury, aid the Winds, And leave a singed bottom all involv’d With stench and smoak: Such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next Mate, Both glorying to have scap’t the Stygian flood As Gods, and by thir own recover’d strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime, Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right: fardest from him is best Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time. The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less then he Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, Th’ associates and copartners of our loss Lye thus astonisht on th’ oblivious Pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy Mansion, or once more With rallied Arms to try what may be yet Regaind in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell?
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub Thus answer’d. Leader of those Armies bright, Which but th’ Omnipotent none could have foyld, If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge Of battel when it rag’d, in all assaults Thir surest signal, they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lye Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, As we erewhile, astounded and amaz’d, No wonder, fall’n such a pernicious highth. He scarce had ceas’t when the superiour Fiend Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Ev’ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand, He walkt with to support uneasie steps Over the burning Marle, not like those steps On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire Nathless he so endur’d, till on the Beach Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call’d His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades High overarch’t imbowr; or scatterd sedge Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm’d Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew Busirus and his Memphian Chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursu’d The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore thir floating Carkases And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood, Under amazement of thir hideous change. He call’d so loud, that all the hollow Deep Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates Warriers, the Flowr of Heav’n, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can sieze Eternal spirits; or have ye chos’n this place After the toyl of Battel to repose Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav’n? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood With scatter’d Arms and Ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heav’n Gates discern Th’ advantage, and descending tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe. Awake, arise, or be for ever fall’n.
Kathleen Speeth learned at Gurdjieff’s knee as a child and later studied under his successor, Mme. Jeanne de Salzmann. She discusses Gurdjieff’s spiritual teachings, offers a brief profile of the philosopher, and assesses his influence on the modern world.
The Alchemy of Stones presents an inspired breakthrough in Robert Simmons’ thirty-five-year career of exploring and revealing the spiritual qualities and potentials of minerals, crystals, and gemstones. This holistic, Earth-based framework for understanding stones and their energies initiates readers into an alchemical worldview that leads to spiritual healing, transformation, and transcendence.
The late Jean Houston was at the cutting edge of the work on realizing the fullness of our human potential, which is as mainstream and pervasive in our culture as computer technology. A Mythic Life presents Jean Houston’s real, magical story and her true teaching. Here, she draws on her personal history and vast cultural knowledge to show how we can experience in our own lives the greater human story revealed in myths and discover our real potential.
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VOICES FROM THE KITCHEN: Personal Narratives From New York’s Immigrant Restaurant Workers, edited by Marc Meyer
This is a slim and modest book, a volume of oral histories in the vein of Studs Terkel’s “Working” (1974), but everyone who eats out regularly should know about it. Its title is “Voices From the Kitchen: Personal Narratives From New York’s Immigrant Restaurant Workers.” Its editor is Marc Meyer, a chef and a co-owner of the Manhattan restaurants Shuka, Cookshop, Vic’s, Shukette and Rosie’s.
Meyer’s methodology is straightforward. He sat down with 27 of his employees, many of whom have worked in his restaurants for decades, and recorded their stories on his iPhone. He transcribed the interviews and poured them with minimal editing into narratives.
These men and women came from all over the globe — Ecuador, Bangladesh, Peru, Egypt, Mexico, the Ivory Coast, Bosnia, the Dominican Republic, Gambia — and their accounts of getting here, and scratching out lives in New York City, are plucky, harrowing, moving and often very funny. They’ve lately become anonymous political targets, and “Voices From the Kitchen” gives them back their human faces.
It’s possible to be cynical about Meyer’s project, and he’s aware of that. An obvious power dynamic is at play: No one is going to tell the entire gnarly truth about their lives, and especially about their jobs, to their employer. And Meyer is aware of whatever “white savior” vibe might cling to such a project.
It’s possible to hold those things in mind and admire “Voices From the Kitchen.” (All proceeds go to the narrators, and they’ve retained legal ownership over their stories.) Food titles arrive by the landslide in bookstores, yet so few dig into the lives of the immigrants who work in the back of the house as dishwashers, bussers and prep cooks, and increasingly in the front as servers and captains. More than a few by now are head chefs and managers.
Stories like these haven’t gone entirely uncollected. The Southern Foodways Alliance, the American Folklife Center and other organizations have assiduously compiled food-related oral histories you can find online. But it’s good to have these accounts between hard covers. “Voices From the Kitchen” is intrepid and timely enough to make you optimistic that someone will compile a more expansive book in this vein, not limited to the workers in one restaurant group.
Most of the men and women here came from small towns. Many had absent or abusive fathers, and no access to real educations. They fled to America to help support their families back home, to escape gang violence and corrupt governments, and to attempt to seize a part of what can only be called the American dream. Many had relatives who’d already come to New York.
The arrival stories are intense: days in the desert with little food or water, thieving coyotes (human smugglers), random gunmen, terrifying river crossings and long trips while packed “like cookies” into heavy trucks meant for hauling liquids, with few air vents. Many felt they would not survive. One rode to New York from Los Angeles in the back of a watermelon truck.
All started at, or near, the very bottom: cleaning bathrooms, bussing tables, working coat checks. All rose — first to a bit of prep work, then to a salad station, and so on — through hard work, thrift and perseverance. These are what we used to call, long before America’s descent into the ICE age, Horatio Alger stories.
Part of the pleasure of this book is following these men and women as they move between restaurants, assiduously climbing the ladder. There’s a built-in nostalgia factor in clocking the names of these places, some long gone and some standing: Big Kahuna, Ocean Grill, Red Gravy, Le Zoo, Clyde Frazier’s, Jean Georges, Mercer Kitchen, Momofuku Ssam Bar, Ernie’s, Lil’ Frankies, Bayamo, Poiret, Brown Betty, Avanti, Danji, Seventh Avenue Donuts, Charlie Bird, Calle Doa, Veranda, Fraunces Tavern, Sequoia, Maestro’s Steakhouse, Upland, Danube, A Voce Columbus, Aqualis Grill, Bayamo.
Not so long ago, most restaurant work was considered menial labor. Thanks in large part to Anthony Bourdain, it has become admired and cool (if still brutal) work. People want to look and be like chefs: raffish, tattooed, blunt, forearm scorch marks on display. The job offers intense camaraderie. It is a backdoor gateway to all manner of culture, in a way that most other blue-collar professions are not, should one wish to step through that gate.
A not-untypical story here is that of Vico (Meyer uses first names only, and sometimes pseudonyms), who arrived from a small village in Mexico in 1986 and started in restaurants as a porter. He’s now married and has been a United States citizen for eight years. He runs his own well-regarded restaurant, La Flor, in Queens, and oversees more than 20 restaurants in the Bowery restaurant group.
Vico’s daughter graduated from Amherst College. Another interviewee, Angel, also from a small town in Mexico (his father was a truck driver), is now a chef who has a son at Phillips Exeter Academy.
The women in this book express feeling pressure to prove themselves in a male-dominated profession. They feel as squeezed as tubes of tomato paste between work and family. Some have been sexually abused. But more than a few have risen to the top. Carlha, whose father was a fisherman in the Dominican Republic, came here at age 6. She’s a chef and manager at Shuka.
Not all of these stories are happy. Some interviewees are depressed or have other health problems. “This city can give you economic stability, but it cannot give you emotional stability,” one says. Some merely want to go home to places that don’t quite exist any longer. “Why didn’t I stay?” another asks, about his hometown in Mexico. “I think I lost something from the past, and it’s gone forever. I can’t get it back.”
These interviews come most alive when narrators break the harmonious aura, when you sense someone scraping away at the pith. One woman admits that waiting tables too long can burn you out and make you snippy. Another remarks that working in diners sucks because so many are owned by big Greek families. Everyone in the family has an opinion, so you get it coming and going.
Rare comments like these remind you of the limitations of “Voices From the Kitchen.” Because these narrators are speaking to their boss, the underside of kitchen work is rarely on display — the rude customers, billing mistakes, racism, restroom hookups and cleanups, blood blisters on your feet, ego collisions, having to “push” menu items, trips and falls, the flameouts of co-workers, mandatory last-minute shifts, clearing away gross, half-eaten meals, tipping agonistes, cuts and punctures, dealing with celebrities and V.I.P.’s, cramped and noisy environments — everything that goes on below the deceptively smooth front-of-house choreography.
There is a more honest and encompassing oral history project out there, waiting to be compiled. Editors, start your engines.
I know about this book because I had lunch at Cookshop a few months ago, and copies were on the host’s table. It was a good find. Some of these stories are so tangled and involving they could be made into films.
This is not an explicitly political book. It has nothing concrete to say about immigration policy. It does not argue for wide-open borders. But it complicates easy narratives and asks that we see people not merely for what they are but for what they might become.
“They read my name and saw my face and pointed to the dishes,” says the job-seeking narrator of one of the stories in Bryan Washington’s collection, “Lot” (2019). This is surely happening daily in New York City restaurants. “Voices From the Kitchen” is an optimistic book — it reminds you that if many restaurant careers begin that way, they don’t have to end there.
VOICES FROM THE KITCHEN: Personal Narratives From New York’s Immigrant Restaurant Workers | Edited by Marc Meyer | Beacon | 223 pp. | $29.95
Dwight Garner has been a book critic for The Times since 2008, and before that was an editor at the Book Review for a decade.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 30, 2026, Page 8 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Restaurant Takeaway. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning came all of art; out of our longing for truth all of science; out of our longing for love the very fact of life. We may give this undertone of being different names — Susan Cain calls it “the bittersweet” and Portuguese has the lovely word saudade: the vague, constant longing for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality — but we recognize it in our marrow, in the strata of the soul beyond the reach of words.
No one has explored the paradoxical nature of longing more sensitively than the philosopher, storyteller, beloved Narnia creator, and modern mystic C.S. Lewis (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963) in a sermon he delivered on June 8, 1941, which later lent its title to his 1949 collection of addresses The Weight of Glory (public library).
Illustration by Margaret C. Cook for a rare 1913 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. (Available as a print.)
This desire for our own far off country [is] the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
As Lewis considers the illusory nature of these shorthands for our longing, we are left with the radiant intimation that “the thing itself” is not something we reach for, something beyond us, but something we are:
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.
For Lewis, who was religious, this notion of “the thing itself” — the ultimate object of longing — was anchored in his understanding of God. For me, it calls to mind Virginia Woolf’s exquisite epiphany about the meaning of art and life, found while strolling through her flower-garden:
Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern… the whole world is a work of art… there is no Shakespeare… no Beethoven… no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
This early science fiction novel offers a fascinating vision of a shadowy underworld populated by strange and beautiful creatures who closely resemble the angels described in Christian lore. These beings, known as Vril-ya, live underground, but are planning soon to claim the surface of the earth as their own — destroying humankind in the process.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular writer of his day, who coined such phrases as “the great unwashed”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and the infamous incipit “It was a dark and stormy night.”
He was the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire. He had two brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer.
Lord Lytton’s original surname was Bulwer, the names ‘Earle’ and ‘Lytton’ were middle names. On 20 February 1844 he assumed the name and arms of Lytton by royal licence and his surname then became ‘Bulwer-Lytton’. His widowed mother had done the same in 1811. His brothers were always simply surnamed ‘Bulwer’.
“Underlying the ultra-conservative’s paranoia is his inability to enter into subsets of reality play other than his own. Once he has modified to a world view he is frozen into it. Alien views become threats to his very universe.”
(Image from AbeBooks.com)
By Joseph Chilton Pearce
“Our inherited representation, our world view, is a language-made affair. It varies from culture to culture. Edward Sapir, the linguist, called this idea of ours that we adjust to reality without the use of language an illusion. He claimed that the “real world” is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group.”
“…our ‘semantic universe,’ as Lévi-Strauss has called our word-built world.”
“Autistic thinking can only be defined in a roundabout way. For instance, a pianist friend told me of the following experience, the most impressive of his life. His favorite work, one he had lived with for years, was Mozart’s last sonata, K576, the one written after the composer’s late discovery of Bach. My friend was giving a concert one evening, and was scheduled to play this sonata. Just before commencing, he leaned back for a moment to sense the mood of that contrapuntal texture, and was struck anew by its exquisiteness and his love of it. At that moment, in a single frozen instant out of time, he ‘experienced’ the sonata. Every note, phrase, nuance, shadow and line formed in an ethereal circle of perfection for him. He described it as a volume, a sort of universal whole, perfect, far more than human, and happening to him as something unique and totally outside of himself. Though it had occupied only a second, the occurrence was immeasurable by any kind of time, and was numinous and profound.”
“One Yogic activity was the production of a tulpa, a phantasm, or imaginary person. The production was a slow development which could itself only be undertaken in a mature stage of training. Eventually the tulpa creation would begin to form and take on aspects of reality for the subject-creator.”
“Is there an ‘exact image’ of a physical world? Consider even photography. The same subject can be hideous or lovely according to the skill of the photographer. Photography is an art because it can catch aspects of reality that escape us, precisely as painting can do. I can traverse the same tired street year in and year out, familiar with every twig and stone–but a photographer can suddenly present me with a photograph of it that makes me catch my breath much as from a poem or a piece of music. I refuse to believe the ‘police lineup’ photograph on my driver’s license is my real image; as with all aspects of the police mentality it somehow has sought out the worst possible aspects of me.”
“The Worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men hate God; for there is no other God.” (quoting William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
“Speech is radically discontinuous with those life forms leading up to it. Speech serves no adaptive purpose, no ‘pair-group’ survival function, as the naive realists claim. Yet speech was developed by life, and its purpose can be understood from its real function, a function . . . slowly being grasped by others.”
“Underlying the ultra-conservative’s paranoia is his inability to enter into subsets of reality play other than his own. Once he has modified to a world view he is frozen into it. Alien views become threats to his very universe.”
“Back in the mid-thirties, a German told Tom Wolfe that Germany was caught on a fast train with a madman at the throttle. To jump off seemed suicide, to stay on even worse. . . . The German was right. To stay on the train is madness, to leap from it suicide. But there is still a Way–a narrow hard Way, a difficult crack between the worlds where, losing your life, you can find it. Therein might lie the only hope for the train itself, improbable as the notion sounds.”
“The crack in the egg is sought by Jesus to restructure some specific problem area in ordinary reality. His system works only in relationships between people. His non-ordinary states are created as shared states by the constant focus on the needs of the other. No isolation is engendered. Two or three can gather together and reach a non-ordinary consensus, a point of agreement different from that of the ordinary world.”
“Reality-adjusted thinking was Jesus’ point of departure. He did not break with logic or ‘law,’ the reasoning functions of mind. He spoke of perfecting logic in order to go beyond it. His child-metaphors have meaning only against an adult background. The first demand he makes is that the ego-centered, reality-thinking personality must be surrendered. Unless you hate your life you cannot follow where he goes–not just because ambiguity would result from trying to hold two orientations at once; more, unless you are willing to give up your world view structured from infancy, those concepts directing your percepts cannot be restructured.”
“Our leaders, placed in positions of power, immediately succumb to that power and speak of ‘dealing from positions of strength,’ which translates into power over and against–a desire to be God. The great hopefulness exhibited by that long-gone America of the Marshall Plan and the young United Nations, moving for others as the best protections for ourselves has been eclipsed in a mirroring of our adversary’s paranoia. Now we find that it is we ourselves, not that perpetual enemy, who are considered the ‘nightmare of the world,’ as Toynbee plainly called us.”
“The whole experiment is a gesture toward bridging the modes of mind, and the results could reach beyond science fiction. We may yet see the day when the tragedy of school is overcome.”
–excerpts from The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality by Joseph Chilton Pearce
Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
This desire for our own far off country [is] the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
