Filipino American food writer and former Stranger staff writer Angela Garbes has penned a book that reframes care work and mothering as a radical and essential form of social justice. In Essential Labor, Garbes pulls from her own upbringing as a first-generation immigrant in the United States to consider how mothering has been an economic demand, particularly for women of color. Further, Garbes wonders how the emotionally draining act of mothering might be a channel through which to find a deeper sense of self.