The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, April 2, 2015 — 3B
FOOD COLUMN
Eating to a sense of
where you are
A
block away from my apart-
ment in Rome, next to the
barber and the stop for the
44 bus, is a small, red restaurant
called Home Baked. When I first
eyed it two
months ago,
I assumed
it was just a
normal café,
the name due
to the Italian
love of English
phrases like
“Snack Bar”
or “Happy
Hour.” But
Home Baked
serves “American” food — you
can get a latte there, or a bagel, or
a bacon-egg-and-cheese. When
my professors were introducing
the neighborhood the first day
of class, one of them mentioned
Home Baked, and quietly advised
us to “not let it become a crutch.”
I harrumphed at his warn-
ing, not because I thought it
was wrong, but rather because I
assumed it could never apply to
me. I was in Rome, for Jupiter’s
sake — why would I waste even one
meal on American food? I couldn’t
even fathom why Italians would go
there, when they had cappuccinos
and cornetti on every corner.
But then again, I often find
myself becoming obsessively, even
fanatically locavore here in Italy.
Not in a slow-food, “These onions
were grown a mile away away and
the chicken’s name was Beyoncé,”
kind of way. It’s more a heightened
sense of regionalism, an acknowl-
edgement that Italy is, in a sense,
made of many different countries.
For a long time, this was a lit-
eral truth. Italy was fragmented
into various city-states. There was
a Kingdom of Sicily. There was a
Republic of Venice, whose power
ebbed and flowed like its famous
canals. Rome was, naturally, an
independent territory ruled by
the Pope. These mini-nations had
their own governments, their own
armies, their own culture, even
their own loosely related languag-
es. What we think of as “Italian”
today is really just the dialect of
Medieval Florence, which Dante
famously wrote in.
This system continued until
the 1860s, when the various
Kingdoms were pieced together
(after many battles) to form one,
Frankenstein-like nation. So vast
were the cultural, economic and
linguistic differences between the
new citizens that one statesman,
Massimo D’Azeglio, claimed “We
have made Italy. Now we must
make Italians.” And after decades
of television, highways, education
(and fascism), Italy has succeeded
somewhat. But there remains an
intense spirit of regional identity,
with many people considering
themselves Neapolitan or Roman
or Sicilian before Italian.
With all of this in mind, I always
make a point of sampling the deli-
cacy of any new city or region I
travel to. In this food-obsessed and
fragmented country, those two
descriptors can be one in the same.
And in the last month, I’ve made
quite a journey.
I started out in early March, in
Calabria, the toe of the boot-like
Italian peninsula. In the small
town of Paola, where my bus had
stopped on a windy afternoon
for lunch, I hunted for something
— anything — to eat indigenous
to the area. Ducking into a small
salumeria with two friends, I cau-
tiously approached the counter
and asked the grizzled proprietor
if he had any ’nduja (ahn-doo-ya),
the uniquely Calabrian cured pork
spread made with red chilis. He
broke out into a huge smile, and
replied that he had a jar of his
homemade version. A few euros
later, and I received a plate with
several slices of toast, thickly
spread with dense, artery-red
’nduja. The fat seeped through the
bread and glistened on my finger-
tips, as I took less-than-delicate
bites and felt my lips glow from
those incredible peppers. It tasted
like Calabria.
Two days later, I took a ferry
from the lapis-lazuli waters of Cal-
abria, onto the periwinkle shores
of Sicily. I could devote a bakers
dozen columns to everything I saw
and ate there, but my first meal felt
the most emphatically Sicilian. In
Taormina, a seaside town in the
northeast corner of the island, at
a restaurant named “La Grotta
Azzura” tucked away in an alley, I
waited a half-hour before the pasta
arrived to the table on a silver plat-
ter. Our scruffy Adonis of a waiter
tossed the linguine before doling
out the portions. The long noodles
were coated with a silken sauce of
cherry tomatoes, flakes of sword-
fish, and caperberries the size of
gumdrops. It was one of the most
intense things I had ever tasted;
those tomatoes, jiggled in a hot
pan until they burst, were the most
tomatoe-y tomatoes I’ve sampled.
It tasted like Sicily.
My next stop: Ann Arbor. I flew
back there after Sicily, and in the
days leading up to it, all I could
think of was the food there. Not
with dread or disgust, but hungry
anticipation, like a man about to
be released from prison. And yet,
I wasn’t craving American food,
but rather the cuisines of Viet-
nam, China and Mexico. My entire
frigid week there, I ate nothing but
bibimbop, burritos and baozi. It
tasted like America.
Italy and America are very
different,
gastronomically
speaking. Not simply because
disparity in ingredients or cook-
ing methods, but more a matter
of focus. If I could narrow “Ital-
ian” food down to one ethos, it
would be making things taste
like themselves. An orange in
Palermo tastes like a whole grove
of oranges. A slice of prosciutto
in Ravenna tastes like the pig
was eating other pigs. I can only
narrow down American food
to an ethos of non-narrowness.
Whatever it sacrifices in terms
of intensity of flavor, it regains in
diversity, for better or for worse.
Since I’ve come back to Rome, I
always look at Home Baked a little
differently, trying to imagine what
an Italian might think of it. Maybe
they really do think of it as a for-
eign invader, peddling fodder for
flabby tourists. But maybe it’s an
amusing little addition to the sta-
tus quo, an occasionally fun treat,
never a member of the family, but a
good neighbor, nonetheless.
Buonomo is eating a
hamburger in Italy. To ask
what’s wrong with him, email
gbuonomo@umich.edu.
Bringing the arts
behind cell bars
PCAP helps
find beauty in
unexpected places
By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK
Daily Arts Writer
When you picture prisoners
making artwork, what do you
imagine? Is it something dark, like
a roughly etched skull inspired by
some grisly tattoo? Or a bitterly
quipped poem, dripping with edge
and resentment?
In a correctional facility void of
color and the vivacious hum of life,
it’s difficult to believe that creativi-
ty can thrive — like plants, art must
be tended to, pruned by its habi-
tat and nourished by its creator.
Beautiful art comes from beauti-
ful situations, not necessarily in
the literal sense, but abstractly:
the artist seizes a desire, a motion,
then encapsulates it. But first, he
must have the knowledge to exe-
cute his art, from hours of school-
ing and practice. He must have
the agency to learn, to rove and be
inspired by his surroundings — all
privileges that are unavailable to
people who are incarcerated.
Though in spite of this, prison-
ers — perhaps more than anyone
else — have a desire to create art,
not only for self-expressive and
rehabilitative purposes, but also
because of a humanistic need to
produce something of value.
What makes something valu-
able? We treasure Leonardo Da
Vinci’s Mona Lisa because of its
antiquity and haunting realness;
we prize our mother’s jewelry col-
lection because of its sentimental-
ity and hushed worth. We value
our friends, our essays, the college
acceptance letters we ecstatically
received. We latch onto land-
mark paintings in the Louvre and
our own tiny trinkets of memory
because of their uniqueness, for an
object’s value comes from it being
one of a kind.
Sometimes the sheer knowledge
of one’s own value is the tipping
point between a deadly fall down
the wrong path and the drive to
do something great in life. Ashley
Lucas, director of the University’s
Prisoner Creative Arts Project,
found herself teetering on this
point at age 15, when her father
was summoned to a long prison
sentence. In his absence, Lucas
floundered in school and drifted
toward a rough crowd, struggling
to find a purpose each day.
“Theater saved her life,” said
Phil Christman, Lucas’s husband
and editor of the PCAP Literary
Review of Creative Writing by
Michigan Prisoners. “As a teen-
ager, Ashley took refuge on stage
and threw herself into acting.
She eventually performed a one-
woman play expressing the clash-
ing emotions she had been feeling,
which drew University attention
and earned her a scholarship to
study drama.”
Realizing the power of art,
not just as an outlet for creative
expression but as the turning key
to a meaningful, fulfilling life,
Lucas was inspired to give the men
and women incarcerated in Michi-
gan the same experience through
PCAP. Initiated by University stu-
dents in 1990, the project has since
expanded its outreach: hosting
annual events, including the Exhi-
bition of Art by Michigan Prison-
ers; showcasing the best artwork
and writing submitted by Michi-
gan prisoners, as well as a juvenile
art show; directing the Portfolio
Project, a one-on-one program
that assists prisoners in preparing
portfolios of their artwork to pres-
ent to judges and future employers,
and the Linkage Project, which
provides a creative community for
adults returning from incarcera-
tion.
PCAP also organizes collabora-
tive workshops within correction-
al facilities and urban high schools
for theater, creative writing, art,
dance and music, driven mainly by
small groups of University under-
graduates. Facilitating these work-
shops is a richly rewarding way to
get involved as an undergraduate,
not only because they give volun-
teers insight into the justice sys-
tem and allow them to tune their
own artistry, but also because of
the impact they make on those
incarcerated.
At the book release and read-
ing of the Literary Review on
Sunday, Barbera Montez, wife
of Steven Montez, read the essay
“Confluence” on the behalf of her
husband, who wrote it. Before
beginning, she addressed PCAP
by saying, “Thank you for giving
the voiceless a voice. Even more,
thank you for listening to what
they have to say.”
The Literary Review, published
annually, is a compilation of the
best creative writing submissions
from prisoners, as voted on by a
large group of readers in the Ann
Arbor area. I was fortunate to be
one of the readers for this year’s
volume, working with Christman,
assistant editor Denise Dooley,
copy editor Ian Demsky and oth-
ers to determine which works to
publish. Submission criteria are
simple: anything goes, from poet-
ry to essays, as long as the con-
tent is not explicit enough to shut
down PCAP.
“Really,
criticisms
of
the
Department
of
Corrections
should be made,” Christman said,
explaining what can and cannot
be published. “But there’s a big dif-
ference between writing a memoir
about how bad prison food is and
saying that you want to harm a
particular officer.”
The fact is, writers write from
experience. It only makes sense
that
frustration,
confinement,
isolation and homesickness are
recurring themes among submis-
sions. These themes come even
more alive when reading the writ-
er’s personal statement — a note to
the reader that often describes the
circumstances that led to his or
her prison sentence, told in heart-
breaking honesty.
For me, these notes made it dif-
ficult to reject submissions; I won-
dered what Christman thought.
“Deep down, you know that
these are people who have been
told ‘no’ their entire lives,” Christ-
man said. “But you have to look
past this and read them critically
like anything else. The crueler
thing would be to accept every-
thing — it would devalue the writ-
er’s integrity.”
“One time a writer we published
asked me, ‘Are you all just doing
this to be nice?’ It broke my heart,”
Christman continued. “He wanted
so badly to be taken seriously that
it was impossible for him to believe
that we heard him, that he had
made something beautiful.”
The man was Thomas Engle,
a talented writer who has been
featured in several volumes of
the Literary Review. Having now
returned
from
incarceration,
Engle appeared on Sunday to read
his own story, “Jim.” I was able to
catch Engle on his way out of the
Art & Architecture Auditorium,
where the reading was held. I
hoped that he could reveal how,
despite being removed from much
of life’s beauty, creative inspira-
tion still thrives within prisoners
through PCAP.
“Their
minds
have
been
untapped — they have the focus
and determination of those that
have had no chance to express
their talent,” Engle said. “The
sad and lonely have a story to be
heard.”
Though the sad and lonely may
be imprisoned in body, they cannot
be confined in mind. The mission
of PCAP is to sift through the feel-
ings of hate, of hopelessness and
hurting, to seek a light and pull it
shining to the surface.
GIANCARLO
BUONOMO
SINGLE REVIEW
Rihanna said she wants
her eighth album, currently
referred to as R8, to be “time-
less.”
Not
long
after,
we
get
“Bitch Bet-
ter
Have
My Money.”
Will every-
one still be
“turning up
to Rihanna
while
the
whole club
fucking wasted” in 40 years? I
mean, I probably will be, but I
may be a poor judge of timeless-
ness.
Rihanna gave us her time-
less “FourFiveSeconds,” and I
am happy to see Riri return to
some of her signature thump-
ing in-you-face fighting lyrics.
She knows she is hot; we know
she’s hot; and she knows that we
know that she’s hot.
The beats are surprising
minimalist for producer Kanye
West; without any deep bass
drops, this song gets its flow
from Rihanna’s lyrics and their
delivery. Her flow is infec-
tious, especially in lines such as
“Louis XIII and it’s all on me,”
and “Shit, your wife in the back-
seat of my brand new foreign
car.” At first listen, the song may
sound as if it lacking a catch, but
after a few more plays it will
have listeners chanting along.
I don’t know if this bitch has
Rihanna’s money, but I will
gladly throw her my $1.29 to
have this sure-to-be hit in my
music library.
-CHRISTIAN KENNEDY
ROC NATION
VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily
Artwork created by prisoners as part of the Prison Creative Arts Program.
By CATHERINE SULPIZIO
Senior Arts Editor
The evaluative index for scary
movies is rarely their ability to
be re-watched. Even the scariest
disintegrates under a second
viewing — neither makeup nor
special
effect
nor
narrative
arc can launch itself very far
without the element of surprise
propelling it. “It Follows” is
different. Traditional scares still
abound in the film, mechanized
by the now-famous score and
figures that loom into central
focus. But just as “It Follows”
raids the toolbox for formal
techniques, its real sticking
power is less synthetic.
“Sticks” is a fitting word.
After all, the fear “It Follows”
generates isn’t of the atomized
variety, like in a movie like “The
Conjuring” where the monster
can be categorized, and there-
fore predicted, by its phenome-
non. The monster of “It Follows”
is formless: With no backstory or
recognizable figure, the monster
is a flytrap for the characters’
various psychic configurations.
Fathers and mothers take on the
nude form of “it,” a trick which
exploits our visceral disgust to
anything Oedipal.
The movie harnesses yet
another
Freudian
principal,
the uncanny. On one hand,
unheimlich, its German term,
connotes
the
familiar
and
at-home; on the other hand, its
second meaning refers to the
concealed and secret. So the
word itself holds a dialectic
set of meanings at its pole and
antipode: the domestic and the
strange. Under the uncanny, the
entire landscape becomes fair
game for this ambivalent hold.
“It Follows” plasters pulpy
references across the screen
—
female
protagonist
Jay’s
lurid blonde hair and lingerie
glisten
in
the
moonlight
while she makes seamy love
in an old sedan’s backseat.
But the film’s most potent
chemical for the uncanny is
nostalgia. Teen crushes are
imbued
with
life-or-death
stakes; childhood friends band
together to ambush the monster
like the gang in Scooby Doo.
Though Michigan natives will
recognize some locations, the
suburbs are indistinguishable
from Anywhere, USA. Most
importantly, parental figures
are
reduced
to
generic
peripheral blurs that hover in
the background.
And instead of thrusting the
teens into the realities of adult-
hood and responsibility, the
monster is an extension of ado-
lescence. After all, the purely
physical aspect of sex is not the
ground that the monster preys
on. Rather, it’s teenage sex’s
clearinghouse of lore — its urban
myths, its allures, negotiations
and anxieties — that produces
the monster. Even the name
“it,” which is all one can call the
monster, turns a condition into a
taboo. If a 30-year-old contracted
“it,” she would go to a doctor cov-
ered by ObamaCare or take the
morning-after pill. But for the
adolescent sequestered from the
adult world’s decisive rationality,
the monster festers.
This dark side that dims ado-
lescence’s halcyon glow marks “It
Follows” ’s turn into the uncan-
ny, because there is something
off about the world. Unlatched
from temporal referents, the film
derives its nostalgia from cans of
soda with brands that don’t exist
and a strange e-reader nestled
in a clamshell compact, all cast
under a Polaroid hue. The result
is a familiarity that is hollow, a
nostalgia that rings false. Even
the camera lacks a grip on iden-
tity. In one shot, Jay, tied down
to a wheelchair, shudders. And
almost imperceptibly, the camera
shudders as well, as if it forgets
who it is. It forgets what its job is
too. During moments of suspense,
the camera discards its role to
telescope details with a hyper-
aesthete’s eye, lingering on vivid
green grass à la “Blue Velvet” or
a shock of shimmering hair. In
another much talked about shot,
Jay and company talks to a school
administrator as the camera scans
the office in a slow, 360-degree
circle of paranoia, trying to appre-
hend if “it” is among the strangers
in the room.
The evaluative index for a
scary movie comes down to “does
it scare you?” “It Follows” doesn’t
just scare, it crawls under your
skin and casts the film’s aesthetic
gaze on everything you see. I saw
“It Follows” twice. The first time
I jumped more, the second time I
was no less engaged. The adrena-
line spikes are exhaustible, but
what pervades is the sense of
dread — not an accelerating anxi-
ety, but a deadening gloom.
The uncanniness of
fear in ‘It Follows’
FILM NOTEBOOK
A-
Bitch Better
Have My
Money
Rihanna
Roc Nation