The writer does give us very much of Robert Shelton’s personal history, but it’s extremely important here as it gives us, the readers, an idea of where he’s coming from and ultimately, his intimate connection with the Domino sugar factory. His personal history is a nice touch to this article, it makes it very personal and real.

The narrative is essentially Shelton’s relationship with the factory and its neighborhood, and how much everything has changed since he started working there, culminating in the now abandoned factory housing a huge sculpture, indicative of the artsy population that has taken over the neighborhood.

The lead, “Robert Shelton had never seen the floor of what he always called the sugar house until the day this spring when he returned to the Domino refinery.”, is a great sentence that leaves the reader begging for more. “Who is Robert Shelton, why has he never seen the floor of the Domino refinery, and what is his place there?” is what I’m wondering when I read this lead. It’s not a hard news lead that reveals all the important information at once, but works well in this piece.

The nut graph doesn’t appear until much later, “He was talking about “A Subtlety,” the massive sculpture by the artist Kara Walker, a sugar-coated homage to African-American slave women and to the slave laborers who built the 19th-century sugar trade.”. The author explains essentially why we need to read about Robert Shelton and the refinery, with his point of view being slightly Shelton’s side, as a reader, I found myself rooting for Shelton.