Tag Archives: by April Poole

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.

Reconciling a Foreign Author, a US Book, and Authorial Responsibility

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor,

I am writing to take issue with your article, An Author Canceled Her Own YA Novel Over Accusations of Racism. But Is It Really Anti-Black? (slate.com, Jan. 31, 2019) by Aja Hoggart. The article discusses the controversy surrounding the publication—or non-publication—of Amelie Wen Zhao’s debut young adult (YA) novel, Blood Heir. In late January, a fellow YA author took to Twitter to point out what she considered anti-black racism in Zhao’s forthcoming novel—the book includes a young woman who dies at a slave auction. Though her race is never explicitly stated, some readers interpreted the character as black. Following an explosion of criticism on “YA Twitter,” Zhao decided to indefinitely postpone the publication of her novel, the first part of a six-figure deal for a trilogy.

This article downplays the seriousness of the situation, and the ultimate merit of the accusations. The intense outrage on Twitter may have been overblown, but it shouldn’t be dismissed. However, the situation isn’t clear-cut; Zhao immigrated to the United States at the age of eighteen, and her experiences growing up in China informed her book. She states that the slavery and indentured servitude described in the novel are based on the indentured servitude and human trafficking that she witnessed firsthand in her native China and surrounding countries growing up. Zhao’s cultural background may well have limited her awareness of the cultural connotations surrounding slavery in the U.S. For this reason, and because she has clearly learned from the situation, she should be given a second chance at publication.

Still, it is vitally important to remember that while Zhao may not be from the United States, and while her story takes place in an Asian-inspired fantasy world, the book was set to be published in the United States. The slave auction scenes it contains are troubling and, in our cultural context, morally fraught. Hoggart’s article overlooks this fact, as well as the fact that regardless of Zhao’s intentions or the technicalities of whether or not the book is anti-black, it can be perceived that way. This could have a harmful effect on the American teens who read it—a real concern, and one that Hoggart utterly fails to consider.

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.

The Parisian Myth

Blog Post

In the United States, many Americans perpetuate a belief about the French. The belief is that French people are rude, particularly to Americans.

In discussions I’ve had about travelling in France over the years, I have often heard the same points repeated—that the person liked la province (the non-Paris part of France), but didn’t like Paris because the people were rude. And that while people were nicer in the countryside and the smaller southern cities, they were still often rude.

But during my own travels in France, I discovered that this American belief about the French was really a myth. While traveling in France with a good friend to celebrate my high school graduation, I was lucky enough to spend two weeks in Paris exploring, and then a few more weeks in the south of France moving between different small towns and cities. There is no doubt in my mind that the two of us stood out as American. We were eighteen-year-old “Yankees” with seven years of French lessons from non-native teachers, good grammar and vocabulary but woeful American accents when we spoke French. But even without hearing us speak, any French person could have seen we were American. My best friend wore one of those travellers’ wallets that go under your clothes, but he put too much stuff in it so it bulged visibly through his shirts. We didn’t know how to work the credit card machines in the big H&M in Paris—watching the Parisians in front of us check out only left us mystified—and we were completely lost as to what we were doing wrong in the grocery store checkout lane. As a result, I thought that the French people we met would receive us coldly.

But people were consistently nice to us, both in Paris and outside of it.

In Paris, when I needed to buy a new pair of sunglasses, we ducked into a shop to do so and my high school French teacher’s warnings about the proper etiquette for behavior in shops in France came back to me. Despite this, I expected a cold shoulder, so I was surprised when the employee helped us happily, asked what I was looking for, and made suggestions for glasses that might look good on me. Another day, in a small town in Provence when my friend wanted to visit an art gallery, the gallery owner was delighted to talk to us, wrote a list of other places we should visit in the town, and gave us his business card. When we were lost in Paris, passersby helped us.

To be sure, not every French person we met was unfailingly nice, but far more of them were than I had been led to expect while talking about France with friends and acquaintances.

I should acknowledge that I did witness French people acting more coldly to other Americans, but the root cause seemed relatively clear. To start with, the effort that the visitor put into using French made a significant difference in the way that visitor was received. My companion and I used French as much as possible, and although our French wasn’t the best, our effort seemed to make a difference with many people we encountered. In fact, I would argue that people were much more tolerant of our passable French than many Americans are of people with comparable English ability in America. While I know that not everyone has the option or opportunity to learn French, even foreigners we saw who only said bonjour and merci were received more openly than the many Americans we saw who didn’t use French at all.

My suggestion to non-French speakers and other American readers who think French people in general or Parisians in particular are rude is to think about how you respond to tourists who may not speak English while traveling in the United States. You would probably be frustrated or rude. So expecting the French to be perfectly nice to us when we haven’t made the effort to respect their culture in their country is an unfair double standard. And even if they are rude to us, my experiences gave me reason to think that this rudeness is a result of the lack of respect that many Americans show to them while traveling there. It’s evident while traveling in France that sometimes it’s not enough to say thank you or hello in French and that some people will still treat Americans less nicely than those from other countries. Maybe we do culturally deserve this because of American tourist behavioral norms; still the many individuals that are putting in the effort don’t. It’s a complicated issue that won’t be solved overnight, but each person that makes an effort makes a bit of a difference. Instead of complaining about French people’s rudeness, we should ask how we, as Americans, can respect French people in such a way as to deserve their goodwill.

This problem isn’t just about American tourist behavior in France, it’s about American and global tourist culture as a whole. While traveling abroad, it’s easy to get caught up in the experience of being in another country and not think about the people that live and work there, and I think this needs to change. The myth of French rudeness is just a microcosm of larger problems about tourist culture, centered on American tourist culture while visiting other countries. I think the heart of this issue is just taking greater care while traveling, considering how you’re affecting the people who live there, and working on mutual respect, because the more respectful we are while visiting, the more progress can be made in the way Americans are viewed around the world.