On the Right to Read September 8th marks International Literacy Day, an observance UNESCO created back in 1966 to spotlight a hard truth: the ability to read and write still isn’t a given for everyone on the planet. Worldwide, an estimated 775 million adults — the majority of them women — can’t read at all. And the problem isn’t confined to other countries. Here in the U.S., nearly one in five adults (21%) reads below a fifth-grade level, and an estimated 130 million U.S. adu

There is a particular kind of joy that comes from walking into a bookstore where the shelves were curated with you in mind. Where the spines you see reflect lives that look like yours, histories you were never taught in school, and voices that have always deserved far more room than the publishing industry has traditionally given them. This week, in the spirit of National Honey Bee Awareness Month — a month about the kind of labor that sustains entire ecosystems without getti