Powerhouse on 8th Literary Book Club Meeting: Little Labors by Rivka Galchen

Join us for the first meeting of our Literary Book Club, where we’ll be reading Rivka Galchen’s LITTLE LABORS, a dizzyingly brilliant collection of wry, intimate observations, stories, and essays questioning where children fit in art and in literature.

Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors is a droll and dazzling compendium of observations, stories, lists, and brief essays about babies and literature

Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book―a key inspiration for Rivka Galchen’s new book―contains a list of “Things That Make One Nervous.” And wouldn’t the blessed event top almost anyone’s list?

Little Labors is a slanted, enchanted literary miscellany. Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen’s puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder. The 47 Ronin; the black magic of maternal love; babies morphing from pumas to chickens; the quasi-repellent concept of “women writers”; origami-ophilia in Oklahoma as a gateway drug to a lifelong obsession with Japan; discussions of favorite passages from the Heian masterpieces Genji and The Pillow Book; the frightening prevalence of orange as today’s new chic color for baby gifts; Frankenstein as a sort of baby; babies gold mines; babies as tiny Godzillas …

Little Labors–atomized and exploratory, conceptually byzantine and freshly forthright–delights.

Rivka Galchen (born April 19, 1976) is a Canadian-American writer. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008 and was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Galchen teaches writing at Columbia University and is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.

In 2010 Galchen was chosen by The New Yorker as one of its “20 Under 40”.

Galchen’s short-story collection, American Innovations, was published in 2014. The collection was long listed for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize and awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award.