After my book came out in Italian, I was asked, and was delighted to be asked, to edit a special issue of COLORS magazine, my training ground, alma mater, place that taught me to write about huge topics in short captions. The result is SHIT: A Survival Guide. Why survival? Because shit can kill, obviously. 2011, and we are still letting children die more often from the shits than from AIDS or measles. So this issue of COLORS will introduce you to the weapon of mass destruction that is diarrhoea. But it will do more than that. You will also learn how to perform a faecal transfusion (possibly my favourite story in the magazine, thanks to an amazing colour reportage in a Brooklyn operating room); how to build an emergency latrine, as instructed by the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand; how to use biogas, as illustrated by my visit to Rwanda’s prisons, where mass murderers eat food cooked with the produce of their own bowels. And there is more, more and more.
I am extremely proud of my book. But it is so exciting to see its themes illustrated so powerfully, so visually. Powerful photographs; fantastic illustrations by Nam. And of course exceptionally good text. Buy it here, and also dive into the Lab, which has even more enticing shit stories.
