From NPR’s Morning Edition:
So while it’s still early to predict what a slowdown in U.S. consumer spending would mean for Vietnam, workers on the production floor at state-owned garment factory Hanosimex are already worried.
Nguyen Thi Thao is grateful for the $70 a month she makes. The 28-year-old has a husband and a 9-month-old baby.
“I watch the news on TV, and I heard about all the trouble in the U.S.,” she says, “and I know it will affect us, because if the U.S. economy slows down, Americans might reduce orders and spending. And that might mean fewer jobs for people like me.”
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More from Morning Edition: Bosniaks are Obamaniacs….
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It’s like Christmas without the food, cookies, cinnamon candles, and family, and with all of the neurosis.
Annie told me on the phone that two hot-off the presses hardcover copies of Where Am I Wearing? had arrived.
I drilled her with questions. “How big is it? Does it look like a real book? You know, like an actual adult book? Well, I didn’t mean adult. You…uh…you know what I mean, don’t ya?
“It looks good.” That’s about all I could get out of her.
We hung up and my wheels were still turning. “Oh my God,” I thought. “The dedication and the acknowledgments!” I wanted to be there when she read them.
I called her back. “Did you read them?”
“Did I read what?” she said.
“The…
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Let the conspiracy theories end. Behold the mysterious TIME write up….
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Apparently the 90-word write up in TIME Magazine isn’t in every issue of TIME. From the best I can tell, the piece is in the issue sent to subscribers, but not in the one available on newsstands. This is somewhat disappointing, but I find consolation in the fact that 3.4 million folks subscribe to TIME. If 1% of them bought my book, I would be pretty stoked.
I still haven’t seen a real life version of the review. My brother has. He said that there is a pic of the book to accompany the blurb. Kyle, if you’re reading this could you scan the page and email it to me. I kind of feel like I need to prove myself here. …
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1. I’m babbling about my book over on my agent Caren’s website today.
2. The “Hot Girls Make Great Clothes” thread has sparked up some lively conversation that involves pig anuses, boob jobs, and Keebler elves among other things….
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Back in 1997 Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote a piece titled “In Praise of Cheap Labor” on Slate.
Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land–or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?
The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit–and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards
I had never read this piece before, but it feels like I have, and to…
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You can’t go much more against the grain of the global market than this: American Apparel now open at Shanghai’s 1933 Building…
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(Just to be clear, I photoshopped the cover a bit.)
A year ago, I had just signed with my agent Caren. Next week WAIW? will be featured in TIME Magazine.
But you can read TIME’s review of WAIW? now. It’s not a very long review, but it’s a nice one. As I’ve done with other reviews, here are some highlights:
“…a quixotic journey…often loopy…all over the developing world…Timmerman’s youthful exuberance carries this unlikely consumer tale.”
The issue doesn’t come out until next week. However, I can assure you that I didn’t make the cover. But this guy did. And that’s perhaps more exciting.
It’s not just any old issue of TIME. It’s a commemorative one! …
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