You may not think it, but there’s a direct relationship between plunging your chopsticks into that white, quart-sized box of cheaply priced Chinese food — and a laborer diligently driving a spike to lay the railroad tracks that became the gateway to the American West. 

May, which is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, marks the anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. It was largely built by Chinese immigrants from 1864 to 1869, working at a grueling pace for less money than white workers. And these labor practices have an impact today on how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food ― rooted in a perception that Chinese labor is inherently “cheap,” historians say.

The earliest Chinese restaurants in America were created for Chinese railroad laborers, who were under contract and lacked negotiating power as they laid tracks from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California ― cutting through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. With Chinese laborers earning an estimated two-thirds of what white workers made, owners had to keep restaurant prices low, Beatrice Chen, programming vice president at the Museum of Chinese in America, explained to HuffPost. 

The mainstream American consumer mindset is that there is a ceiling to how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food.

“This perception of Chinese restaurants has stuck, even though high-end Chinese restaurants in Asia are common and popular,” Chen said. “The mainstream American consumer mindset is that there is a ceiling to how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food, even if they are made with the same fresh ingredients and intricate cooking techniques as say, French or Japanese cuisine.”

‘Cheap Labor’ And ‘Job Stealers’

The railroad also laid the foundation for perceptions of Chinese people themselves. White workers at the time were unionizing, and were less willing to work for lower wages. Railroad executives had been skeptical of the aptitude of Chinese workers, but the laborers set out to prove them wrong, Chen explained.

“This led to the general perception that Chinese were willing to work for lower wages and were job stealers,” she said. 

But what was perceived as a robotic work ethic might have just been survival, Beth Lew-Williams, an assistant professor at Princeton specializing in Asian American history, told HuffPost in an interview in December. She pointed out a discriminatory labor system within the railroad. 

Chinese were paid less, given the worst strenuous jobs. People against the Chinese saw this as revealing of their innate nature.

“It was a race-based dual wage system at the time,” Lew-Williams said. “Chinese were paid less, given the worst strenuous jobs. People against the Chinese saw this as revealing of their innate nature. That Chinese were fundamentally ‘cheap’ labor and designed to do this back-breaking labor.”

On top of negative perceptions, Chinese contributions were largely erased through history. Chen said that of the 17,000 railroad workers, 15,000 were Chinese, though estimates vary. A photo below of the final stake being driven into the track at Promontory Summit, Utah, would have people believe they didn’t contribute at all.

“I hope that telling and disseminating American history told from Asian American perspectives will illuminate that Asian Americans are not necessarily quiet (per the stereotype), but rather, Asian American history/stories and perspectives tend to be silenced in the mainstream,” Chen said. 

Building A Railroad, And Then Banned

Following completion of the tracks, the U.S. implemented the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, stemming further immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first major law that banned a group’s immigration to the U.S. based on ethnicity.

“The Chinese were originally seen as racially unassimilable,” Lew-Williams said. “They could not become Americanized. They were simultaneously racially inferior, backwards, savage heathen ― and in some dangerous ways ― superior.”

The act was technically repealed on Dec. 17, 1943, allowing 105 Chinese visas per year. The measure was largely seen as an attempt to maintain U.S.-China relationships against Japan during World War II.

In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act fully reversed exclusionary practices, which some historians say was meant to prop up Asians as the “model minority” during the Civil Rights movement ― sending a message to other minority groups. 

An Immigrant Story For Today 

Much has been written about the dangers in grouping together Asian Americans as a model minority monolith and erasing the experiences of immigrants. Peter Kwong, a former Asian American studies professor at Hunter College, pointed out that the struggles of the original Chinese Americans have persisted.

It may be that food is the easiest lens through which to view such thorny topics as class, race, social mobility and how much value we place on a given culture. 

If you take price as a surrogate for prestige … there are some cuisines we are willing to pay for and some we are not willing to pay for, and that is related partly, I think, to how we evaluate those national cultures and their people.

Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University, has written about the topic, and said that we might simply hold less veneration for food from certain countries that we see as less well-off. 

“If you take price as a surrogate for prestige … there are some cuisines we are willing to pay for and some we are not willing to pay for, and that is related partly, I think, to how we evaluate those national cultures and their people,” Ray said in Voice of America. 

Eddie Huang, owner of Baohaus and a host on Vice, often talks about how mainstream appreciation of food and culture remain a barometer for how conditional your status is as a foreigner, and of your stock value in America. 

Huang has expressed dismay that immigrants like his parents feel they have to work harder just to achieve the same pay as non-immigrants. And thumbing his nose to any such established expectation, Huang has said in the past: 

“I sell Taiwanese gua bao for a full f**king price in America.”  

Read more from HuffPost on Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. 

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Developers and real estate agents thought that they could come into the lower area of Harlem and dub it “SoHa,” short for South Harlem. 

As far as residents are concerned, they thought wrong. NY1 reports that developers want to refer to the area between 110th and 125th Streets to make it more trendy, similar to SoHo.

During a press conference on Wednesday, local leaders rejected the name, saying that it was insulting the culturally rich neighborhood and whitewashes the historically black community. They said the name change would only welcome more high-end developers and wealthy white people, leading to the displacement of long-time residents.

“How dare someone try to rob our culture, and try to act as if we were not here, and create a new name, a new reality as if the clock started when other people showed up?” state Senator-elect Brian Benjamin said. 

 The name “SoHa” first appeared in a New York Times story in 1999, according to NY1. Since then, it has increasingly appeared on real estate websites like StreetEasy. Realtor Keller Williams recently dedicated a “SoHa” team in the neighborhood.

“We’re not going to let people who just got here change the name of our community for their profit,” Harlem District Leader Cordell Cleare said. “This is about greed and lust.”

Community Board 10 member and real estate broker Danni Tyson said profit is possible without rebranding the neighborhood.“This is Harlem — a wonderful brand, a brand that is known all over this world,” she said. 

“No real estate company, no coffee shop, no business should be using the term ‘SoHa’ to refer to Harlem. This is a home, this is a culture, this is a place that people visit,” she continued in the video above.

In addition to residents protesting, folks on social media are less than enthused about the proposed name change. 

Benjamin said he’s working on a proposal to legislate the renaming of neighborhoods, according to DNAinfo. It would require a community review of new projects planning to use new name for an area while also receiving local or state subsidies. 

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A wrestler sets his sights on the NCAA championship; a man goes on a statewide search for his missing son. A trends forecaster learns to cope with the market’s return to IRL experiences; an ex-musician reflects on his glory days. The journeys — both literal and metaphorical — that make up this summer’s new titles will move you. Below are a few of the books we’re most looking forward to in the coming months.

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

In LA, “the beauty’s in the tap water.” At least that what memoirist Lady Daniels says when S., the woman she’s hired to care for her young son while she works, arrives at her door, looking plainer than she’d expected. But she grows close to S. amid the heat of the Hollywood summer. -Maddie Crum, Books and Culture Writer

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

New People by Danzy Senna

The award-winning author of Caucasia is publishing her first novel in over 10 years this summer: a striking, off-kilter exploration of race and class. Biracial graduate student Maria lives in Brooklyn with her fiancé Khalil, also biracial, where they’ve ensconced themselves in a bourgeois, racially mixed community of intellectuals. Maria finds herself falling into an unrequited obsession with a black poet that threatens to shatter her relationship, her reputation, and her fragile mental state. -Claire Fallon, Books and Culture Writer

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam

Sixteen years ago (!), Matthew Klam wrote a collection of much-anthologized stories. He hasn’t published a book since then, so Who Is Rich?, his first novel, actually earns the perhaps hackneyed label of “highly anticipated.” The book follows Rich, a struggling cartoonist, and Amy, a painting student, through their dangerous liaisons at an artist’s retreat. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

 The Locals by Jonathan Dee

Dee, the author of several previous novels, including 2010’s The Privileges, has plenty of experience analyzing the perils of wealth and power. The Locals promises a particularly timely twist, featuring a white working class community in Massachusetts that elects a millionaire expat from New York City as its mayor. Can he save them from economic decline, or will his radically conservative policies wreak havoc ― and what will the new regime mean for the community? -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash

In his debut book about athleticism and obsession, Habash follows the titular character on his journey to become an NCAA-winning college wrestler. Even if you’re not a sports fan, the prose is dizzyingly good. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Eastman Was Here by Alex Gilvarry

Gilvarry’s second novel takes us back to the 1970s, as a dissolute, once-prominent writer attempts to deal with his atrophied career and an unexpected separation from his wife. Hoping to prove himself once again, to his critics and to the wife he routinely cheated on, he decides to head to Vietnam, where he will research and write a magnum opus on the war. How could that plan possibly go wrong? -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis

If you’re interested in class, and the ways it can inform a community’s politics, Louis’ novel is a worthy read. He manages to write lyrically about the literal, physical blood and sweat that dirtied his childhood in a small, poor town in France, and about what it was like to live there as a gay man. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Everybody’s Son by Thrity Umrigar

Umrigar peels back the heartwarming narrative surrounding interracial adoption in a novel about a black boy separated from his mother, an addict sent to jail under dubious circumstances. Her beloved son is permanently placed with a wealthy white couple, and it’s not until years later that he is confronted with the dark reality behind his adoption. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

Lonesome Lies Before Us by Don Lee

In his last novel, The Collective, Lee demonstrated his skill at writing about the fears and ambitions that drive artists’ lives. He explores similar themes in his latest novel, about a musician who never quite made it, for superficial reasons: his appearance, his lack of charisma. The book’s lyrics were all written by Will Johnson, of Monsters of Folk Fame. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Made for Love by Alissa Nutting

The author of the provocative hit Tampa returns with this Lisa Frank-sheathed, subversive tale of a woman pulled between a boisterous, messy life in a trailer park with her father and his companion, a sex doll, and a deeply circumscribed and monitored, yet luxurious, life with her husband, the CEO of a tentacular tech corporation. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

Touch by Courtney Maum

When trend forecaster Sloane Jacobsen realizes that tactile, in-person experiences are on the rise, she panics ― what’s a woman whose life is built around digital connectivity to do? Maum’s own resume informs her satire; she’s worked as a trend forecaster, and currently works as a product namer for MAC Cosmetics. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Modern Gods by Nick Laird

Domestic drama, adventure travelogue and political thriller meet in this dazzling saga by Laird, a poet and novelist. An Irish family finds itself dangerously entangled in two very different religious extremist movements, as one daughter seeks fulfillment in a second marriage to a local man with a mysterious past and her sister seeks it in a work trip to report on a new cult in Papua New Guinea. Family tensions, and individual traumas, must be reckoned with. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim

In his slim, smart new book, Eugene Lim weaves together two seemingly disparate narratives. Two boys ― social outcasts ― bond over drawing and pornographic comics in their isolating Midwestern town. Meanwhile, a cast of superheroes wax poetic about art, protest and Capitalism. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Adebayo’s novel is the story of a marriage, from the perspective of both partners. Although it’s expected that Yejide and Akin ― a couple living in Nigeria ― will be polyamorous, they agree to forgo the convention. That is, until Yejide fails to get pregnant, and Akin decides to bring a second wife into their home. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

The Answers by Catherine Lacey

The heroine of Lacey’s moody, surreal sophomore novel begins suffering from a host of inexplicable medical problems, only alleviated by a wildly expensive New Age therapy. Broke, isolated, and haunted by her troubled childhood, Mary joins a cultish relationship experiment funded by a wealthy actor to pay for her treatments. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

If a Murakami story doesn’t in some way involve a magical cat, is it really a Murakami story? In his latest ― a collection of seven tales, all involving men who are isolated or otherwise lonely ― a vanishing cat makes a welcome appearance. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy

A beach read for masochistic parents, Meloy’s novel depicts a family cruise gone horribly awry. A shocking tragedy exposes the cracks in two sets of parents, and their longtime friendships with one another. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

The author of The Past further demonstrates her knack for quiet lyricism in a new collection. As in her latest novel, Hadley’s stories often center on brewing familial tensions. Diaries are read in secret; houses are explored in the dark. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

A family saga rooted in black Louisiana society, A Kind of Freedom follows three generations of young adults ― Evelyn, a studious girl from an established Creole family who falls in love with a man from a rough background; her daughter Jacqueline, whose successful pharmacist husband spirals into a cocaine addiction, leaving her to care for their infant son T.C.; and T.C., hustling the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans to make a living for himself, his sometime-girlfriend, and the baby they’re expecting. In the process, Wilkerson Sexton subtly lays bare the ever-present societal forces at work to undermine black success and family. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan

Kurniawan has become the rare Indonesian author to break through to a typically translation-allergic U.S. market, after his novels Beauty Is a Wound and FT Emerging Voices Fiction Prize winner Man Tiger were published stateside in 2015. Like Man Tiger, Vengeance Is Mine promises dark, sexually charged and subversive comedy in the story of a Javanese teenager who becomes impotent after witnessing a violent rape ― then, troubled and desperate, gets drawn into a dark criminal underworld. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma

With his last novel, Family Life, Sharma demonstrated his skill at writing economically and feelingly about familial tensions and tragedies. In his forthcoming story collection, A Life of Adventure and Delight, promises to do the same. The stories, including “We Didn’t Like Him,” a smart examination of class in India, have been published elsewhere, in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

Like debut author Clemmons, narrator Thandi is the Pennsylvania-grown daughter of a South African mother and an American father. In the novel, constructed of precise, charged vignettes, Thandi traces her parents’ history and her own upbringing; meanwhile, her strong-willed mother is dying of cancer. Thandi is left searching for meaning, and sorting through her scattered internal collage of experiences to piece together a cohesive racial and personal identity. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

The author of the Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things has written another sprawling epic, another story that weaves together the quotidian rituals that make up a life and the trying relationships that test our spirit. This time, Roy has dedicated her book, simply, to “the unconsoled.” -MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore.

 

The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk

The Nobel Prize winner returns with a tragic and dreamy novel: A young, fatherless laborer finds a parental figure in the well-digger he is working for. But when he’s caught up in a distracting romantic fantasy over a mysterious beauty from a theater troupe, his master is killed in an accident, leaving the young man once again adrift, and wracked with guilt. -CF

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

 

Eat Only When You’re Hungry by Lindsay Hunter 

The author of Ugly Girls ― a smart, spare novel about a pair of lovable young delinquents ― returns with a book about the myriad forms of addiction. An overweight father takes a trip in an RV to find his son, an addict who’s gone missing. If Eat Only When You’re Hungry is anything like Hunter’s last book, it’ll be both a tender examination of character, and a spot-on look at class in America. –MC

Buy it on Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 

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Writer Denis Johnson, the author of the modern classic short story collection Jesus’ Son and National Book Award-winning novel Tree of Smoke, died on Thursday at 67.

His death was confirmed to the Associated Press by Jonathan Galassi, president of Johnson’s longtime publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Fellow writer and friend Chris Offutt also confirmed on Twitter, noting that Johnson was “at home, peaceful” when he died. 

Johnson was best-known for his 1992 Jesus’ Son, a collection of linked short stories set in a gritty realm of drug addiction, violence, and casual destruction. The stories, narrated by a young drifter named Fuckhead, drew attention for the stylishly jumbled narratives and neon-bright prose. The collection was adapted into a 1999 film starring Billy Crudup.

His 2007 novel Tree of Smoke, a hefty book about CIA operations in Vietnam during the war, won the National Book Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novella Train Dreams, first published in the Paris Review in 2002, came out as a book for the first time in 2011. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, but the fiction prize that year went, controversially, unawarded. 

Johnson’s body of work ran far deeper than his most famous titles, however; he penned plays, poetry collections, screenplays, journalistic works, and numerous novels. His last novel, The Laughing Monsters, came out in 2014 and received comparatively unenthusiastic reviews. HuffPost deemed the book, a brooding spy caper set in Sierre Leone, “a compelling read” constructed of “stripped-down, evocative prose,” yet “disappointingly underbaked.” 

A powerful inspiration to many American writers, Johnson’s reputation amongst the literati has never faded. His distinctive, arresting style and capacity for human insight can be found in stories like “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” “Happy Hour,” and “Emergency,” and in his ongoing influence on contemporary fiction writers.

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Nameberry is honoring the veteran celebrity moms ― the ones who have gracefully combined high-profile careers with parenting and added another baby to the mix since last May.

These stylish mamas have chosen a mix of traditional and surprising names for their new additions. Plenty of these could prove influential in the upcoming years. What are your favorites? From Amalia to Zen, there’s something here to suit every style.

Amalia

Natalie Portman made headlines when she named her firstborn Aleph in 2011. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Recently she and husband Benjamin Millepied added a daughter to their family. Amalia is a slightly more conventional choice, but sticks with the A theme. With Amelia near the top of the popularity lists, cousin Amalia promises to inspire.

Caleb

Kerry Washington has stuck with a winning strategy for naming her two children with husband Nnamdi Asomugha. New baby Caleb Kelechi joined big sister Isabelle Amarachi last October. Both first names are mainstream favorites, but the “Scandal” star and her NFL husband chose middles that honor his Nigerian heritage.

Daisy

Olivia Wilde impressed us all when she and husband Jason Sudeikis named their son Otis Alexander. They did it again, with daughter Daisy Josephine’s name in October. The first names are vintage and nickname-proof, while the middles feel longer and slightly more traditional. Otis re-entered the U.S. Top 1000 following his birth announcement; Daisy already ranks in the Top 200, but might also get a boost.

Dimitri

After Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher named their daughter Wyatt Isabelle, we knew their son’s name would be equally unexpected. Sure enough, the couple went with Dimitri Portwood for their November 2016 new arrival. Ashton has shared that Mila suggested the name, but not explained why. Since Mila was born in the Ukraine, it feels like a great heritage choice for the couple. 

Hugo 

Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas might be the best boy namers of our time. Firstborn son Oliver Finlay arrived in 2014. The “Once Upon a Time” stars added son Hugo Wilson in June 2016. Oliver has raced up the popularity charts in recent years. Now his little brother’s name seems likely to do the same. The subtle connection between an O-starting and an O-ending name links the boys nicely, too.

Ines

After bestowing family name James on a daughter in 2014, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds surprised us with their second daughter’s name, too. Instead of a borrowed-from-the-boys pick, the famous family opted for a traditional Spanish choice, Ines. A form of Agnes also spelled Inez, it was quite stylish in the US circa 1910. No word on why they made the choice, but Ines feels like one to watch.

Lula

Liv Tyler knows what it means to grow up with a trendsetting name, and now her children will, too. She welcomed firstborn Milo back in 2004. Now she and David Gardner are parents to son Sailor Gene, born in 2015, and July 2016 arrival Lula Rose. Vintage Lula fits in with Lucy and Louisa, an early 20th century favorite all but forgotten until now.

Major

Like Natalie and Benjamin, Eva Amurri and husband Kyle Martino stuck with their favorite initial for their children. Daughter Marlowe arrived in August 2014. The family added son Major in October 2016. Eva has talked about sticking with her instincts and choosing unusual names that feel right for her family. Major makes for a big name, but like many bold word names, it feels very current. 

Onyx

Alanis Morissette went with the short and meaningful Ever Imre for her son back in 2010. Now she and Mario Treadway have added a daughter to their family with an equally brief and bold name: Onyx Solace. The double word name fits nicely with big brother Ever. While gemstone names like Ruby and Pearl are familiar for girls, Onyx tends to lean masculine – at least for now.

Phoenix

Vanessa Lachey and husband Nick have traveled the U.S. with their children’s names. Eldest son is Camden, followed by daughter Brooklyn. In December 2016, they added son Phoenix. While it sounds like the couple is borrowing from the map, that’s not quite the case ― though Camden was inspired by an LA street and Brooklyn by New York. This last time, Vanessa just plain liked the fast-rising and meaning-rich name.

Sally

Audra McDonald’s firstborn was already a teenager when she welcomed her second. The Tony-winning actress named her elder daughter Zoe Madeline, a choice that proved very stylish in recent years. Last October, she and husband Will Swenson added daughter Sally James to the mix. We know that James is a white hot middle name pick for girls. Is Sally the next Sadie?

Zen

Zoe Saldana and Marco Perego added a third son to their family earlier this year. Zen joined brothers Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, twins born in 2014. Zoe and Marco have opted for modern names with roots, unexpected and seldom heard but still very wearable. All three choices could prove influential in the coming years. What we’d love to know: Zen’s middle name!

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Three-year-old Scout Larson has made headlines thanks to her series of adorable photos that show the little girl dressed as as fierce female icons. 

For her latest shoot, the toddler emulated a special hero in her life: her grandmother, who is a breast cancer survivor.

Scout’s mom, Ashley, told HuffPost that her mother was the initial inspiration behind the famous icons shoot. She wanted to teach Scout about strong, courageous women as her grandmother battled cancer. 

“From the beginning, I was planning on making Scout and my mom (”Nonnie”) each a photo book of all the recreated photos we shot,” Ashley told HuffPost. “I felt like it would only make sense to do photos of my mom as well since she’s the inspiration behind the entire project.”

The grandmother was a bit camera shy at first. “My mom is very selfless,” Ashley explained. “Being the center of attention is definitely not her favorite thing.”

Scout, however, loves posing for pictures and helped bring her out of her shell. The toddler particularly loved the matching shirts, which Ashley and her mom made for the grandma-granddaughter photo shoot. 

“She had such a blast getting to shoot with her Nonnie,” Ashley said. “She was seriously thrilled to get to match with her.”

Today, Ashley’s mother is doing well. “She’s cancer free and back to doing whatever she feels like doing! Her hair is growing back in beautifully and her strength is coming back,” she said, adding that her mom has one surgery coming up, but they’re ready to face this last step together as a family.

“She’s the toughest lady I know,” Ashley added. “My sister and I are lucky to be a part of her. My babies and my nieces have the best Nonnie in the world.”

Ultimately, Scout’s mom wants people who look at these photos to see that women are fierce and strong. 

“My mom, although she was sick, was my rock throughout the entire diagnosis and treatment. Fighting breast cancer, I know she was in pain and she was exhausted, but she never once showed that side to the little people who call her ‘Nonnie,’” Ashley said, adding that the grandmother continued to laugh and play with her grandchildren and took part in a normal Christmas celebration just a few weeks after having a double mastectomy. 

“Being a hero doesn’t always mean you’re saving the world,” Ashley said. “Sometimes, just showing up for life and meeting the problems head on is enough.”

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The ladies of Twitter never fail to brighten our days with their brilliant ― but succinct ― wisdom. Each week, HuffPost Women rounds up hilarious 140-character musings. For this week’s great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.

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“Love Actually” is still all around us, thanks to the mini-sequel that aired Thursday during NBC’s Red Nose Day charity special. We are now blessed with an update on most of the characters from the 2003 Christmas hit that continues to inspire obsession and vitriol around the world. 

It’s happy endings (mostly) all around. The couples formed in the film ― Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) and the prime minister (Hugh Grant), Jamie (Colin Firth) and Aurelia (Lucia Moniz), even Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Joanna (Olivia Olson) ― are still together. Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is still showing up at Juliet’s (Keira Knightley) door while Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) awaits her return, but now Mark is married to Kate Moss. Billy Mack’s (Bill Nighy) manager has died, but Billy is still recording half-baked publicity singles and giving cantankerous radio interviews. Rufus (Rowan Atkinson) is methodically packaging gifts at Walgreens, because product placement is real, and Daniel is inquiring about Sam’s life on that same waterfront bench (sans Claudia Schiffer). The happiest ending of all goes to Sarah (Laura Linney), who’s bagged a new fellow played by Patrick Dempsey. 

Cast members missing from the roster: Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman (who died in 2016), Rodrigo Santoro, Kris Marshall and the rest of Colin’s crew, and Martin Freeman and Joanna Page, who played the flirty body doubles. 

You can watch the full 16-minute bit above. 

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In mythology, the trickster is an archetypal character that takes many shapes ― animal, human and divine ― distinguished by intellect, cunning, a penchant for mischief, and an aversion to rules, lines and norms of all kinds. In African folklore, the trickster takes shape through Anansi the spider; in America, Brer Rabbit; in France, Reynard the Fox. In pop culture, you’ll recognize trickster tendencies in characters like Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat and Bart Simpson.

In each case, the character uses questionably moral tactics and a generous helping of wit to subvert the natural order of things, tip-toeing over boundaries and shaking up power dynamics to turn the world topsy-turvy. They are clowns, jokers and provocateurs, able to outsmart traditional hero archetypes through their ability to camouflage, think on their toes and step outside traditional moral frameworks. 

Outside the realm of myth, in contemporary life, artists often embody the trickster ethos, pushing buttons and testing limits in a world that, quite often, doesn’t quite know what to make of them. This was, at least, painter Kehinde Wiley’s understanding when he embarked upon his most recent painting series “Trickster.”

“Artists are those people who sit at the intersection between the known and unknown, the rational and irrational, coming to terms with some of the confusing histories we as artists deal with,” Wiley said in an interview with HuffPost. “The trickster position can serve quite well especially in times like this.”

The series consists of 11 paintings, all depicting prominent black contemporary artists who, according to Wiley, embody this trickster mode of being. There’s Mickalene Thomas, known for her bedazzled portraits of glamorous black women, as the Coyote, portrayed with feathers in her hair and a hand on her heart. And Nick Cave, whose boisterous “sound suit” sculptures are ecstatic cyclones of matter and sound, assumes the role of famous portrait subject Nadezhda Polovtseva, wearing a beanie and high-top sneakers while beckoning to the viewer with an umbrella. 

Wiley described his subjects as his heroes and peers. “These are people I surround myself with in New York,” he said. “Who come to my studio, who share my ideas. The people I looked up to as a student, as a budding artist many years ago.” He savors that intersectionality, using his brush to peer into art’s past, present and future. 

Since 2001, Brooklyn-based Wiley has painted grandiose, large-scale portraits of black subjects, injecting them into the largely pasty halls of Western portraiture. Riffing off traditional Renaissance imagery canonizing kings, nobles and saints, Wiley gives his contemporary subjects a hybrid sense of regal aplomb and swagger, a nod to the performative gestures that communicate youth, blackness and contemporary, image-saturated life.

Wiley’s painted figures are most often swallowed up by his sumptuous textile backdrops that creep meanderingly into the foreground. The serpentine vines and decorative flourishes usher Wiley’s typical human subjects ― whom he plucks from sidewalks and shopping malls ― out of their previous existences into the realm of paint, timeless and eternal. Over the past 15 years, Wiley’s artistic style has become immediately recognizable, if not iconic. And yet the artist believes his much of his practice remains, to a degree, misinterpreted.

“So much of my work has not been fully investigated,” he said. “Many people see my early work simply as portraits of black and brown people. Really, it’s an investigation of how we see those people and how they have been perceived over time. The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There’s a dissonance between inside and outside.”

Wiley perceives his current series, too, as an exercise in careful looking. “It’s about analyzing my position as an artist within a broader community,” he said. “About an artist’s relationship to history and time. It’s a portrait of a group of people coming to terms with what it means to be an artist in the 21st century dealing with blackness, with individuality.”

Those familiar with Wiley’s work might do a double take upon seeing this new work, which does away with lavish, cloth-like backdrops in favor of phantasmagorical scenarios. “This show is about me being uncomfortable as an artist,” he said. “When I’m at my best, I’m trying to destabilize myself and figure out new ways of approaching art as a provocation. I think I am at my best, when I push myself into a place where I don’t have all the answers. Where I really rely on instinct.”

While Wiley’s earlier works have drawn comparisons to Barkley L. Hendricks, Jeff Koons and David Salle, this current series calls upon the spirit of Francisco de Goya, specifically, his “Black Paintings,” made toward the end of the artist’s life, between 1819 and 1823. The most famed work in the series, “Saturn Devouring His Son,” depicts Saturn as a crazed old man ― bearded, nude, eyes like black beads ― biting into his child’s body like a cut of meat. 

“I’m interested in blackness as a space of the irrational,” Wiley said. “I love the idea of starting with darkness but ending up with a show that is decidedly about light. There is a very self-conscious concentration on the presence and absence of light ― tying into these notions of good and evil, known and unknown. There is a delicate balance that comes out of such a simple set of metaphors.”

The trickster, like Goya, alternates methodically between these notions of light and darkness. Yet the practice extends beyond the metaphorical and into all too real life when black artists navigate the hegemonic and largely white institutions of the art world. “The trickster is an expert at code switching, at passing and posing,” Wiley said.

“In African-American folklore, the trickster stands in direct relation to secrecy,” he continued. “How do you keep your home and humanity safe from the dominant culture? How do you talk about things and keep them away from the master? These were things talked about in slavery that morphed into the blues, then jazz, then hip-hop. It informs the way young people fashion their identities.”

Just as a young man hanging out at the mall performs black masculinity through his look, walk and speech, artists like Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu and Yinka Shonibare are cast in the role of “black contemporary artist” ― a role they pilot with dexterity and finesse. “It’s about being able to play inside of it and outside of the race narrative at once,” Wiley said. “It’s difficult to get right.”

Wiley’s paintings are visual folktales littered with clues ― a rifle, a leather-bound book, a slew of dead foxes ― that, like Goya’s 19th-century canvases, reject certain understanding. Instead, they place viewers in an indeterminate space of in-between: between past and present, dark and light, classical and contemporary, reality and myth. 

“I am painting with this romantic idea that portraiture tells some kind of essential truth about the subject,” Wiley said, “but also with this modern suspicion of any representation to tell the truth about an individual. It’s about being in love with a tradition that is inclusive of so many possibilities, but still contains so much absence.”

Indeed, portraiture has historically served aristocrats and elites, leading critics like Vinson Cunningham to question whether such a medium can ever transcend its chronicled prejudice. “How can Renaissance-descended portraiture, developed in order to magnify dynastic princes and the keepers of great fortunes, adequately convey twenty-first-century realities or work as an agent of political liberation?” he wrote earlier this year. 

Yet what Cunningham views as painting’s weakness, Wiley sees as its strength. “Any writer or artist or thinker must have a set of limitations from which to push off from,” he said. “By virtue of its familiarity it can offer surprise.” And it does. With each subsequent series and show, Wiley stretches the understanding of what shape a portrait can take, who the art establishment serves, what the next generation of great American artists has in store. 

“When I have exhibitions, the people who don’t belong to the typical museum demographic show up,” Wiley said. “People view themselves within the rubric of possibility.” The artist himself had a similar experience back in the day, upon seeing Kerry James Marshall’s portraits flourishing, black American life at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The works left him “thunderstruck.”

Today, Wiley refers to Marshall as “a hero who has, in an improbable way, become a friend.” His smiling face appears three times over Wiley’s “Portrait of Kerry James Marshall, La Lectura.” Seated amidst a dim, rocky cave, Marshall assumes the roles of both student and teacher, directing the viewer’s attention to a large book in his lap, whose insides remain indecipherable. His grin is illuminated with wisdom, kindness and a glint of mischief, leaving the viewer to question what comes next. 

Kehinde Wiley’s “Trickster” runs until June 17 at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. 

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It’s not every day you can lead a chant of your own name. 

In fact, don’t do that. That should never happen. The one exception is if your name is Ryan and you’re breaking the Plinko record. 

On Thursday’s episode of “The Price is Right,” contestant Ryan Belz got the chance to play Plinko, and the guy made the most of it. The contestant’s chips landed in the $10,000 slot three times, and he ended up with a total of $31,500.

For those who don’t know “Price is Right” history off the top of your head, host Drew Carey said that’s a new Plinko record.

And Blez lost his mind the whole time.

If you weren’t aware, Belz is somewhat of a “Price is Right” fan. You know, somewhat …

In a video on TMZ, the contestant said he’s such a fanatic of the show that he scheduled his classes at Penn State around “Price is Right” so he could watch. Belz even has an impression of the “Price is Right” announcer George Gray.

He said he’s not allowed to appear on the show for another 10 years now, but added, “10 years, mark my word, you know where I’ll be.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.