Results by title

A collection that explores the space between personal loss and collective crisis

The essays in Between What Was and What Is address timely questions of power, identity, history, and resilience. Ranging from intimate personal reflection to global crisis, Adriana Páramo examines the contradictions and tensions that define how we live—and how we make sense of what we’ve lived through.

Grounded in the present moment, Páramo engages directly with current events: the death of Pope Francis and the debates about reform his passing has reopened, and the ongoing devastation of the war in Ukraine. She grapples with the lasting weight of colonial, familial, and national trauma, and with the experience of returning to a homeland that no longer matches memory. These essays enter a broader conversation about the liberation of brown and Latina women—voices frequently pushed to the margins of predominantly white feminist spaces. She asks what drives people to persist in the face of systemic inequality. An encounter with a Kumari Devi in Nepal becomes an occasion to examine faith, ritual, and the assumptions we bring to spiritual experience. Throughout, Páramo moves between the everyday and the sacred to interrogate how culture and identity are lived and inherited.

From personal reflections on age, feminism, and rebuilding after failure to larger examinations of race and systemic oppression, Between What Was and What Is asks readers to engage seriously with difficult realities. It takes stock of what we inherit, what we survive, and what we carry forward.

Every day, in every sector of our economy, a business shuts down while another starts up, jobs are created while others are cut, and workers are hired while others are laid off. This constant flux, or turbulence, is a defining characteristic of our free market system, yet it mostly inspires angst about unemployment, loss of earnings, and the overall competitiveness of corporations. But is this endless cycle of fluctuation really so bad for America? Might something positive be going on in the economy as a result of it?

In this penetrating work, three esteemed economists seek to answer these questions by exploring the real impact of volatility on American workers and businesses alike. According to the authors, while any number of events--shifts in consumer demand, changes in technology, mergers and acquisitions, or increased competition--can contribute to economic turbulence, our economy as a whole is, by and large, stronger for it, because these processes of creation and destruction make it more flexible and adaptable. The authors also acknowledge and document the adverse consequences of this turbulence on different groups of workers and firms and discuss the resulting policy challenges. Basing their argument on an up-close look into the dealings and practices of five key industries—financial services, retail food services, trucking, semiconductors, and software—the authors demonstrate the positive effects of turbulence on career paths, employee earnings, and firm performance.

The first substantial attempt to disentangle and make clear the complexities of this phenomenon in the United States, Economic Turbulence will be viewed as a major achievement and the centerpiece of any discussion on the subject for years to come.