Ms. Annie Thoms shares congratulations to senior Andrew Li who published a guest essay/op-ed in the New York Times in the next week! The essay is about his experiences with his grandfather, who for many years made extra money as a canner, picking up and recycling bottles and cans in order to support his family. It’s a thoughtful, moving piece about the dignity of the work, and the importance of increasing the bottle deposit.
Andrew wrote the first version of this essay in Ms. Thoms Writing to Make Change class last semester, and she encouraged him to revise and pitch it to Susannah Meadows at the NYT, who had come to speak to her classes the year before. Meadows loved it, and went back and forth with Andrew with edits, then accepted it!
His work and thinking on this issue, which is personal to his family, was also developed through the class' field trip last semester to the art exhibit of Siyan Wong, Stuy ‘93, which focused on the lives of Chinese American canners.
The essay is now on the NYT homepage for Sunday, 2/18, and in the print edition this past Sunday. Read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/opinion/redeeming-cans-bottles.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
