All posts by apoole

Nicola Orichuia: Bringing Italian Literature to Boston’s North End

Profile

I AM Books is housed in a four story red brick building in a quaint area of Boston’s North End, the epicenter of Italian culture in Boston. Inside, the store is small, taking up the basement and ground floor of the building, with the basement level devoted to offices and overstock, and the ground floor as the actual sales floor. The bookcase greeting customers at the entrance contains books written in English that take place in Italy, and as one walks deeper there is an English section, a bilingual section, a grouping of works by Italian authors translated into English, and Italian authors in Italian—many of the most prolific authors get an entire shelf to themselves, including Italo Calvino, Elena Ferrante, Andrea Camillieri, and Dante Alighieri. The children’s section has books in both languages, including English classics such as Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss in Italian, as well as Italian classics.

Nicola Orichuia is the young, charming co-founder of the store, so enthusiastic that he apologized for talking too much during our conversation. A journalist originally, Nicola moved to the United States from Italy in 2008 and from Chicago to Boston in 2010. Sitting with me on a small couch tucked between bookcases in the store, he told me that before opening I AM Books, he had never worked in retail or the book industry. During his first years in the United States, he was a founder and journalist of an Italian American online and print magazine, but when a friend was leaving a storefront in the North End, Nicola felt called to put a business there. At first, he admits that he didn’t even know what he wanted to do with the space, but eventually his passion for books gave him the idea for the bookstore, and four months later, the store opened. Nicola firmly believes that every community needs and deserves its own bookstore, and since the North end was without a bookstore at the time, he saw this storefront opening up as the perfect way to fill that void. He had never dreamed of opening a bookstore; the opportunity simply fell into his lap, and he took it.

Having had no experience in the book industry or even in retail, he faced a steep learning curve to get a bookstore on its feet, but with his passion for books and community building, it came together. This passion was evident throughout our conversation in his bright eyes and long answers to my queries. He apologized more than once for talking too much, but to me it was simply clear how much he cares about what he’s doing.

Central to Nicola’s passion for the store is his commitment to its mission. I AM Books wants to be more than “just” a bookstore. Nicola views it as both a bookstore a cultural hub. Critical functions of the store, he feels, are providing opportunities for others, including first time and self-published authors; opening doors and opportunities for everyone; giving people a physical space to come together and meet. Nicola is firm in his conviction that bookstores are vital to a community because they offer a physical space that brings people together. He also stressed the store’s importance as an Italian-American space—blending both cultures together. Italian-American culture is a unique culture with its own identity separate from Italian culture itself, and the store tries to maintain a balance between the two. There is an Italian bookstore in San Francisco that sells purely Italian books, but I AM Books is not that—and it doesn’t want to be. Nicola told me that he believes bookstores allow people to get a deeper understanding of who they are, where they come from, and where they’re going.The Italian angle of his store thus impacts people’s perceptions of themselves in a unique way. He loves getting to know customers, new and regulars, and he loves the way the community has welcomed the store. The growth of the store and the expansion of its community, the regulars who stop by to say hi, the Italian literature festival he will be organizing for the second time this year—all of it makes Nicola feel like he is succeeding at his job.

When asked what a bookstore needs to be successful today, Nicola told me that nothing is more important than having a strong soul and identity. That’s the key, and without it, customers will know there’s something off. He told me that ultimately, if you build it, they will come, as long as you understand and honor your mission. There are always challenges, and no one goes into the bookselling industry to “get rich,” but if customers leave satisfied and you’re carrying out your mission, you are succeeding. And I AM Books certainly is.

If You’re Going to Have a Multicultural Requirement, Do It Right

Op-Ed

Liberal arts colleges have recently struggled with issues of diversity on their campuses. Minority students are often underrepresented and under-supported, and they face micro-aggressions on a daily basis. On some campuses, tensions around issues like race have exploded, as at Middlebury College, where a talk by the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray caused intense controversy in 2017. Liberal arts colleges, like Middlebury, have begun putting into place various programs to deal with their diversity issues. Students at many of them must now fulfill multicultural credits to graduate—credits that are added in addition to traditional distribution requirements in the fields of mathematical reasoning, natural sciences, social sciences, history, and foreign language.

Unfortunately, schools are putting little effort into creating and enforcing these new requirements. If a school is going to mandate multicultural coursework—which they should—they need to put in the work to make sure that it is truly opening students’ eyes. It is often said that the purpose of college is to expose students to broader perspectives and new experiences, and push them outside their comfort zones. If this is true, isn’t learning about cultures other than their own an intrinsic part of this education? Take liberal arts schools, which aim to give students a well-rounded education that makes them knowledgeable about many subjects, as opposed to the career-focused approach they might find at a non-liberal arts schools. This well-roundedness comes in an attempt to challenge students’ beliefs, make them critical thinkers and writers, and prepare them to become global citizens. In this light, it’s obvious that multicultural requirements are as important as any other area that liberal arts schools might require.

These requirements are often constructed in ways that defeat their purpose. While many schools have caught on and made multicultural credits necessary for graduation, they are not always doing so thoughtfully or developing the new requirements in ways that will effectively challenge students—a deficiency that is particularly relevant to the many liberal arts colleges that remain majority white and have low populations of international students. Colleges must take special care in developing multicultural requirements because what constitutes “multiculturalism” is not as clear-cut as natural science or literature. Multiculturalism can take many forms–learning about cultures foreign to one’s own experience, learning about minority cultures in one’s own country, coursework that takes an intersectional approach to issues within the student’s culture. The central focus of multiculturalism must be learning about experiences outside of the student’s own. Some schools are doing this better than others, some are doing it worse. At Middlebury, for example, multicultural requirements have met resistance in the form of student outcry—students must have coursework in two multicultural areas: one course about Europe, one course from AAL—Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This is a problematic division of mandatory coursework because it privileges European/ Western civilization as equal in importance to Asia, Africa, and Latin America combined. In the wake of recent negative feedback from the students, the school’s administration is considering reformatting this curriculum decision. They are right to do so.

Another issue at some schools is allowing classes about minority cultures in the United States to count for their multicultural requirements. Now, this is not inherently a bad thing, and in some cases it is done well—at Mount Holyoke College, if a class about a Western country or North America is to count, it must be about people of color in that country or region, or about people in North America whose primary language is not English. On the other hand, at Wellesley College, classes about queer culture in the United States are deemed adequate—even though some that count toward this requirement do not include the study of queer people of color, which is essential to a class that is supposed to be “multicultural.” These classes have the potential to be multicultural, but as currently constructed are not fully so. In many cases, it all comes down to what is being studied in these classes and how the curriculum is structured. For example, French language and culture classes that don’t address people of color in Paris or countries other than France that have large French-speaking populations, such as the many African nations once colonized by France, don’t count. In most cases, unfortunately, it can be assumed that schools are not taking the right approach. Some colleges are conspicuous offenders, like Columbia University: classes such as Intro to Geography and Intro Biology can satisfy Columbia’s multicultural requirement. It goes without saying that these courses should not count.

Colleges just aren’t trying hard enough to diversify the perspectives their students encounter in the classroom. It’s not just multicultural requirements: it’s literature classes that don’t include any authors of color and women’s and gender studies classes that don’t include the intersections of class, race, sexuality, and gender. College multicultural requirements are an opportunity for academic institutions to challenge themselves and their students. Any college that allows an intro to geography course to satisfy a multicultural requirement is definitely not trying hard enough–even if it has plenty of company.

Ida’s Strength is in What It Omits

Movie Review: "Ida"

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida (2013) is a sparse, devastating film that looks at the extended aftermath of the second World War in Poland. The winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film is a work of art from which the viewer can’t turn away. Pawlikowski draws a tense, broken post-war image of a Poland that is struggling to accept the events of the war and the German occupation, and that is still recovering sixteen years after the fighting ceased. The film’s power is defined by what it omits–music, visual effects–and these deliberate absences make the emotional content of the film stand out in a powerful way.

Set in 1961, Ida begins with the titular character (Agata Trzebuchowska) as Anna, an eighteen-year-old orphan raised in a convent. Before she takes her vows to become a nun, her Mother Superior orders her to visit, for as long as she needs, her only living family member, a judge named Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza). After traveling to the city of Lodz–a far cry from the quiet stillness of the rural convent–Anna, wearing her novice’s habit, is greeted brusquely by her aunt, who calls her a “Jewish nun,” shocking her. Immediately after they meet, Wanda informs “Anna” that her real name is Ida Lebenstein, and that she’s Jewish. Wanda is the sister of Ida’s mother, and she tells Ida that her parents were among the three million Polish Jews who perished during the war. The encounter lasts a few minutes, and Wanda promptly shows Ida out and seems set to send Ida on her way. However, later she reconsiders and the two ultimately go on a road-trip of sorts to discover the fate of Ida’s parents. As their journey progresses, the source of Wanda’s disillusionment and heartbreak is revealed–not only did Ida’s parents die during the war, Wanda’s son did as well. The film is multi-layered, both an intimate portrayal of the relationship between two women confronting the differences dividing them and a complex exploration of post-war Poland.

The film’s emotional and thematic center comes from the relationship between Ida and Wanda, and the contrasts and connections between the two. Pawlikowski paints a picture of two women who are complete opposites–sinner and saint, jaded and innocent, Communist and Catholic. While on the surface they’re opposites, they are ultimately connected by their shared past and by the Polishness of their conflicts. Ida is a victim of the German occupation and Polish anti-semitism, and Wanda has become hurt and disillusioned by the corruption of the Communist party ideals. They are on two different paths, but both women are struggling with their pasts and their presents and ultimately need each other to overcome the challenges they’re facing. The differences between them allow them to help each other and grow throughout the film as the worldview of each challenges the other’s. Pawlikowski does a masterful job of conveying these two opposing women without passing judgment on either. Ida and Wanda are portrayed as equals and the viewer feels for them equally.

One defining characteristic of the film is its use of sound, and lack of sound. Silence is used as a tool that makes every sound, line of dialogue, and bit of music a statement.  This is a quiet film; each clink of a spoon against a bowl, each exchange of words between characters, and snippet of music played by a jazz band is set in stark contrast to the silence that threads persistently through the film. Pawlikowski doesn’t incorporate a soundtrack for the film; the only music comes from the characters putting a record on or attending a dance. The film also uses dialogue sparingly, making the viewer take in each line with maximum impact. The disruptions of the jazz music that recur throughout the film highlight the way that American and western culture are breaking through the Iron Curtain and slowly beginning to become part of life in these countries. They also signify the disruption of Ida’s quiet life that comes from her trip with Wanda and the challenges that the woman brings into her world. Silence is an essential vehicle that conveys the stark world these women are living in.

Visually, the film also use absences and contrast to their advantage through stillness, a black and white palette, and the use of space. The characters are almost surreally still in this movie, especially Ida, and their immobility is complemented by Pawlikowski’s use of long, unwavering camera shots and the limited use of changes of field. These cinematographic choices allow the characters to be truly still, creating striking portraits for the viewer. Ida’s stillness in particular is part of her power, calling attention to her stoicism and the learned emotionlessness that she has been brought up with in the convent. The use of black and white film could seem pretentious here, but instead it allows a stark portrait of the realities of post-war Poland. What could feel like a cheap trick acts instead as a muted background to highlight both the characters’ pain and the figurative colorlessness of their world. It also allows for a vivid play of light and shadow, with a single light often used to illuminate a scene, leaving the characters half in shadow, a beacon piercing the darkness around them.

In many films, what they lack is what detracts from their power, but Ida demonstrates the inverse. The characters can’t avoid their pain–even if they try, with Wanda having sex and drinking, and Ida immersing herself in her religion–ultimately they cannot, and neither can we. Ida is a powerful, arresting film that captures the viewers in its stillness and quiet and immerses them in the emotional journeys of its characters.

Fear and Ignorance Open the Door to Disease

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor,

While Japan contributes a significant amount to UNICEF towards the elimination of measles, and their infant mortality rates are amongst the lowest in the world, children there still die from preventable diseases.  The recent outbreak of measles, as described in the news article “Japan Battles Worst Measles Outbreak in Years,” (World, February 22) is not an isolated incident and has an impact beyond the island nation. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Japan has been one of the countries most responsible for exporting measles to the U.S. over the years. If nothing else, that makes it a keen point of interest for us. Just as an individual’s choice not to get vaccinated can impact those they come in contact with, Japan’s choices can impact our nation.

The measles vaccine was first introduced in Japan in 1966, followed by the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1989. However, the MMR vaccine was pulled in 1993 due to unexpectedly high incidences of aseptic meningitis. This led to widespread public distrust towards vaccines which, in 1994, resulted in them no longer being mandated by law. This fear, while understandable, led to a regulatory vacuum that left the country vulnerable to otherwise preventable diseases.

Although Japan is in the process of overhauling its vaccination policy and has made progress against measles in the last decade, the Japanese still have a way to go before they have eradicated the disease. Japan doesn’t have an “anti-vaxxer” movement like the one we are dealing with in the U.S., where the irrational and unfounded belief that vaccines lead to autism has become deeply entrenched, but many Japanese don’t understand how not being vaccinated can affect others. The groups largely responsible for the current measles outbreak in Japan were very willing to get vaccinated when they realized their actions could have a negative impact on others in their community. This shows a clear need for more understanding –both here and there–about the importance of vaccines and how they work. The measles outbreak in Japan has a lesson for all of us: promote science to combat fear and ignorance.

Nostalgia, Childhood, and Jars of Honey at the Museum of Fine Arts

Feature Report

       From early December 2018 to February of 2019, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston hosted a special exhibit titled “Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic,” that brought visitors back to their childhood through the art, history, and culture surrounding the iconic character Winnie-the-Pooh and his creators, author A.A. Milne and artist E.H. Shepard.

      The exhibit explored the origins and life of the now ninety-three year old bear and the other inhabitants of the Hundred-Acre Wood. Walking through the exhibit, visitors could see stuffed animals, Winnie-the-Pooh memorabilia, original pencil-and-ink sketches, book covers, and sketchbooks and journals containing inspiration for the series. Designed to appeal to kids and adults alike, it was a multimedia experience that captured the imagination of the Pooh world.  The walls were painted with blown up reproductions of drawings by Shepard, and there were 3D replicas of Pooh’s home, the bridge from the Wood, and other set pieces from the books for visitors to enjoy. Fun additions like an old-fashioned phone that played the only recording of Milne reading Winnie-the-Pooh out loud also made the exhibit more of an immersive experience than just art on the walls. The walls with full-sized images and 3D replicas of recognizable landmarks from the world of Pooh created a walk through childhood, the exhibit leaning into the charm and nostalgia surrounding Pooh.

        Winnie-the-Pooh is a much-beloved figure around the world. Originally created in Britain in 1926 and based on stories that Milne told his kids about their stuffed animals, Winnie-the-Pooh has enjoyed fame not just in Britain and the United States but globally. The first room of the exhibit included Winnie-the-Pooh memorabilia like clothing, sneakers, silverware, and various stuffed animals, from several countries, such as Japan, Sweden, and Brazil. The rest of the exhibit was more focused on evoking warm, nostalgic feelings from visitors as they traveled through rooms bringing them into life in the Hundred-Acre-Wood.     

      The Museum of Fine Arts clearly anticipated Winnie-the-Pooh being a high-volume attraction. The museum created a special stroller parking area for families near the exhibit entrance, showing the MFA’s expectation that it would be heavily populated by families. And this was true to an extent—there were a number of families visiting the exhibit on a Friday evening, but the attendees were predominantly adults. There were couples on date nights, families made up of parents and adult children, and groups of friends, as well as some solo adults. They listened to the Milne recording and drew their own Winnie-the-Pooh renditions at a coloring table. Even though most of them were too tall for the child-sized Pooh setting replicas, they still ducked into Pooh’s house in the hollow of a tree. They climbed over a bridge in the central room of the exhibit and pointed at the fish projections swimming through the “river”, and enjoyed a table laid with reproductions of different scenes from Winnie-the-Pooh, the original prints of which could be seen throughout the exhibit. Some of the behavior adults were engaging in throughout the exhibit may have been “undignified” in the outside world, but in that little bubble of happiness and nostalgia, it seemed perfectly normal and charming to see adults coloring or crawling into a tent on the floor. There is something humorous about this behavior, but unlike in the outside world where the humor or fun might have been based in irony, the laughter and smiles of the adults seemed sincere.

       Adults also traveled through the exhibit more slowly than families with children, lingering in each room and pulling their companions over to look at their favorite features in the exhibit. People could be heard talking about which scenes they remembered from childhood; this made the love and nostalgia that people felt while traveling through the exhibit clear. It may have been aimed towards children in some ways, but the pure joy that it brought the adults illustrated how badly a lot of people need that dose of kindness and remembrance of childhood right now.

        This said a lot about how Americans experience nostalgia and how much they treasure experiences from their childhoods. People reminisced about what editions of Winnie-the-Pooh they had as kids, tearing up in front of their favorite features of the exhibit, and taking second and third passes through the exhibit to savor the experience. For adults, the value of an experience like this is a re-experiencing of childhood memories, and a return to a simpler world of friendship, love, and jars of honey. In the chaos of today’s America, people feel that they need something simpler, kinder, and purer than our current reality. The central enjoyment of the exhibit seemed to be the opportunity to enjoy a return to a world of friendship and love that is so far from the reality we’re living in today.  Walking through the exhibit, it was easy to forget the outside would for an hour or two and just let myself enjoy the warm emotional experience of remembering my mom reading me Winnie-the-Pooh stories from copies of the books that she’d had as a child. I went home afterward and dug out those very copies and flipped through them to see the illustrations featured in the exhibit once more, and I bet I wasn’t the only one.

Family Doesn’t Always Look Familiar

Blog Post

Two strange things happened when my mixed-race family went to Hawaii: 1) my dad was mistaken for a local and 2) someone assumed I was related to my mom.

To clarify, my dad is not from Hawaii. His sandals were completely sandless when we landed on the tiny island of Kauai. He is a Chinese man who has been living on the East Coast for nearly four decades. There’s nothing “hang loose” about his sedentary work life and newfound need for reading glasses.

As for the second strange thing, no one ever thinks my red-haired mother is biologically related to me. Look at me: I’ve got dark shiny hair and my Chinese father’s face. At least for mainland Americans, whose default is white, a lot of people don’t initially understand I’m related to my mom. When I was little, many thought I was adopted. When I was a teenager, many thought I was the kid of some Asian friend.

So, when these two things happened in Hawaii, I was a bit taken aback. Honestly, the moment I got off the plane, I felt like I’d flown into Neverland. There were so many people who looked like me. (Well, if I had a tan.) Around 25% of Hawaii residents are mixed-race–and on top of that, one of the most common combinations is white and Asian. I was shocked. I’d spent my whole life in a place where only 2.4% of the population is mixed-race. I never expected anyone to look like me or have a family that looked like mine.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but this was all about the power of familiarity. It was all about feeling, for the first time in my life, like I could be a part of the in-group based on how I looked. It was about feeling for the first time like my dad belonged with the people around him more than my mom did. He was the one, with his tan skin and sun spots, who looked like the right color.

It’s not a secret that mainland Americans are obsessed with the matching game that is guessing strangers’ ethnicities and cultures based on how they look. The list of guesses I’ve gotten grows all the time. From Latina to Japanese to even that one time someone in Boston thought I was Hawaiian, racial and cultural assumptions affect every interaction I have. It’s all based on how I look to other people. Have we ever stopped to think that how we look is entirely incidental to who we are? Sure, sometimes people appear to embody images that many may associate with other cultures, but this impression relies on the false belief that race, culture, and phenotype are all one and the same. This is simply not the case. To assume this is to minimize the complexity of the human experience; it wrongly pretends to understand and predict the various interminglings of biology and society.

My dad’s culture isn’t Hawaiian, but that didn’t stop a newspaper reporter from assuming he was a resident and interviewing him as one at a local farmer’s market. My dad simply looked the part of a local Asian man in a worn aloha shirt shopping for groceries. And so, he was accepted as one.

My culture isn’t Hawaiian either, but it is evidently much more common in Hawaii for a white parent to have an Asian looking child than it is in the continental States. My mom and I were a familiar pairing. The store woman treated us as the mother and daughter that we are because of how familiar we looked to her. She understood us–not because we had a shared culture, but because we looked like what she was used to.

Basing our acceptance and understanding of each other on how we look is damaging and potentially misleading. Not only can we be easily fooled, like that newspaper reporter who ended up writing partially fake news about my dad’s residence, but we may also end up sabotaging our understanding of others based on shallow physical features. The flip side of my mom and me finally being recognized as what we are is that for the rest of my life it’s been the opposite. My mom deliberately refers to me in public as her daughter so storekeepers and others recognize our relationship.

How can humankind ever get to the point where everyone extends a genuine social acceptance regardless of phenotype? The thing is, this ideal is what it is–a happy intention too lost in the conceptual to amount to any real action. Even when we do try to act on our convictions, superficial assumptions are so ingrained in how we see ourselves and the world that our efforts may seem fruitless. We may even feel powerless.

However, some things are in our power. We do have the power to ask ourselves, “Do I really understand this other person?” Even more, we have the power to choose to include someone, to go out and understand someone, and make person after person in this universe feel known. It is in these actions–minute though they may be–that real change occurs. So, go out and act.

I know Hawaii has many of its own struggles with race and culture and stereotypes, yet I am thankful to say it affirmed what my own family has taught me: not all unfamiliar things are strange, and people don’t have to look alike for us to like them anyway. They don’t even have to look alike to be family.