Sugar Changed the World

Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

“The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery” by Khalil Gibran Mohammad

• feature article produced as a part of The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project
• Compare and contrast how Sugar Changed the World and this feature treat the same topics.
• Ask students to consider whether Mohammad’s approach to history also conveys the ideas that History is Complex and Personal and that Positivity Can Come from Negativity.

Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy by Albert Marrin

• a nonfiction young adult book about the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
• Compare and contrast with the treatment of history, exploitation, and commerce in Sugar Changed the World.
• Ask students to consider whether Marrin’s approach to history also conveys the ideas that History is Complex and Personal and that Positivity Can Come from Negativity.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

• a middle-grade historical fiction novel from the perspective of an enslaved child during the American Revolution
• Compare and contrast with the treatment of history, slavery, and political change in Sugar Changed the World.
• Ask students to consider whether Anderson’s approach to history also conveys the ideas that History is Complex and Personal and that Positivity Can Come from Negativity.
• Chains on SuperSummary

“Remember” by Langston Hughes

• an approachable 19-line poem about the legacy of slavery by the Harlem Renaissance writer
• connects to the idea that History is Personal and questions how much Positivity Can Come from Negativity

Other Student Resources

“Sugar & Slavery: The Building Blocks of Bristol’s 1% | Empires of Dirt”

• six-minute YouTube video from VICE News
• explores Britain’s role in the brutal history of the sugar industry
• part of the Empires of Dirt series, which focuses attention on how European wealth was built on the suffering of people around the globe

“Extorted and exploited: Haitian labourers on Dominican sugar plantations” by

Raúl Zecca Castel

• brief article from openDemocracy that explains how some modern sugar plantations are still engaged in oppression
• provokes questions about our modern world related to the historical concerns in Sugar Changed the World

“Sugar Cane Plantation in Barbados, West Indies, 1920s - Film 1015022”

• five-minute YouTube video from the Huntley Film Archives
• offers a visual illustration of sugar production on plantations