The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, December 9, 2019 — 5A

Midway through Paul Yoon’s “Run Me to Earth,” a woman 
quietly mends shirts in her hut in the mountains. Within 
the next few pages, she finds herself tangled in a stand-
off between a hysterical father and the other people in her 
camp, a stand-off that involves weeping, strangulation and a 
stabbing. Extraordinarily, this moment of violence and what 
should be excitement has the same emotional impact as the 
one of neutral stillness just moments before. Though the novel 
promises an intricately woven story about the aftermath and 
effects of war, it somehow manages to paint images of pain and 
graphic suffering with the same brush used to depict tranquil 
scenes observing birds and peaceful landscapes. This strange 
dichotomy is not a singular occurrence; rather, the lack of 
contrast between emotionally charged and depleted scenes 
repeats throughout the novel, rendering the plot flaccid and 
monotonous.
The novel follows the stories of teenage orphans Alizak, 
Prany and Noi as they navigate bomb-ridden Laos to care 
for wounded civilians and obtain supplies on behalf of 
Vang, a doctor who supplies them with food and shelter as 
compensation for their services. It is 1969, and the country 
is being torn apart by a civil war between the United States-
backed Royal Lao Government and Communist opposition. 
The novel is structured as a patchwork of voices of several 
characters, stretching across countries and years; but despite 
its ambitious arch, I was forced to admit that the end of the 
novel had me feeling as indifferent and unfamiliar towards its 
characters as I had when reading the first page. 
While such narrative structure allows for a more multifaceted 
take on traditional linear plot construction, the jarring leaps in 
time and indecisive switches between narrative voices render 
“Run Me to Earth” shallow and groundless. While these kinds 
of novels often have a satisfying effect of bringing the overall 
narrative full circle, it felt as if Yoon was reaching too far to 
find a way that the different voices of each section are related 
to each other. 
This is not to say that the novel is devoid of descriptive words 
and phrases for outward characteristics and scenes. There are 

even a few passages that are unquestionably beautiful:
“He fought back, got cut four times, swallowed his own 
tooth once, and waited a day thinking it would exit out of him 
— that he would get it back — and then wept when he searched 
for it in his own shit, alone, in a field, and it wasn’t there. His 
own tooth had vanished somewhere inside of him. There were 
times this fact bothered him more than his own hunger or the 
sudden volley of gunfire.”
And still, despite the lyricism of these passages, they manage 
to merge in a way that still fails to add color to a drab landscape.
Though the novel is a conglomerate of several different 
characters’ voices, there is an element of detachment that 
not only disconnects them from each other, but also alienates 
the reader. Somehow, even at halfway through the novel, any 
semblance of character development was nonexistent. Even 
the plot progression felt lagging, and it was extremely difficult 
to continue mucking through the plot without attachment to 
any part of the novel. Yoon’s detached and impersonal writing 
style works for other readers, who praise it as “a sparely (sic) 
written gem.” Others claim that the novel “(finds) depth of 
emotion in formal restraint,” but the repressed nature of this 
novel only served in estranging me from its characters. 
Perhaps Yoon intentionally wrote in a restrained manner to 
suggest how normalized the violence and suffering of war has 
become for the Laotian people. Though even if his intention 
is to make such a statement, it fundamentally impairs one’s 
reading experience by failing to create an engaging narrative 
and presenting characters to which readers find it difficult 
to forge connections with. “Run Me to Earth” addresses 
an interesting and important facet of history, but with an 
approach that lacks emotional weight and urgency. While it is 
not an enjoyable read, the novel lacks enough traction to even 
formulate an aggressively negative review.

‘Run Me to Earth’ is oddly alienating

BOOK REVIEW

JO CHANG
Daily Arts Writer

My eldest cousin just passed his second level sommelier test. A 
sommelier is a trained wine professional who generally works in a 
fine restaurant with an expertise on food and wine pairing along with 
wine selection. He’s the first of the six cousins to become a sommelier 
— my father and my uncle have both been sommeliers since their mid 
twenties. 
When we turned 15, all five of us — my two brothers, two cousins and 
I — started working in our family’s restaurants. We didn’t have much 
of a choice, I suppose, but we also wanted to be there. Our evenings 
were spent in the crazed push and pull of a smoky, beloved building on 
Riverside Avenue — Basil T’s — a place where, among homemade beer 
and perfectly crispy pizzas, the five of us were raised. Instead of learning 
to ride bikes or fill out multiplication tables, we focused on how to grate 
parmigiano reggiano, how to use a prosciutto cutter properly, how to 
pour the perfect ratio of olive oil to balsamic vinegar. These restaurants 
feel more like home than our parent’s houses. They are the product of 
so much labor and so much love, they rest on my father’s shoulders like 
tangy, sweet tomato sauce on top of ropes of homemade pasta. They are 
physical manifestations of my family bloodline, a consistent reminder 
of my heritage, a sanctuary of Italian wines and Sicilian rice balls, and 
most importantly, a love letter to the place I love most: Italy. 
From hostess to waitress to bartender, I certainly wore as many hats 
possible in the restaurant industry (save line cook or sous chef because 
I’m not a very good cook, embarrassingly), and fell in love with quality 
food and the almost poetic, out of the ordinary experience that is a 
Saturday night in an Italian restaurant in New Jersey. At most jobs, one 
can anticipate how a day will go — but in a restaurant, nothing will ever 
be concrete or known until it occurs. The customers, filling the tables 
I’ve known and adored for my entire 21 years, are the audience.
Eating at a restaurant is an experience from start to finish. In many 
ways, a chef is an artist. A restauranteur is a conductor. From soil to 
plate, ingredients are thought out, carefully placed, creatively paired. 
Long before the forkful of ricotta gnocchi paired with roasted eggplant 
and bufala mozzarella is suspended on a fork, steaming below your nose, 
it’s been methodically thought through.

Foodie footsteps

FOOD COLUMN

ELI RALLO
Daily Food Columnist

When you’re in peak adolescence, the world seems like it’s going 
to end at any second. Every test you fail, every sports game you 
lose, every dance you go to without a date — it’s all amplified by the 
thousands until you graduate and realize it meant so little. But while 
you’re there, it’s comforting to know that you’re not the only one that 
sees things through a movie lens, which is why shows like “Pretty 
Little Liars” and “Gossip Girl” have been so successful in their reign 
of television. “Dare Me” merges 
the good and bad of the modern 
teenage drama into a mixture of 
sorts: it’s a blend of high school 
pettiness, 
toxic 
friendships, 
sports 
competitions, 
crime, 
cheating and random dance 
scenes. Based off the book of the 
same name by Megan Abbott, 
the television adaptation centers 
around a group of teenage girls, 
each a mirror image of a type 
of high school girl we’ve seen 
in the past. Seeing as they’re all 
on the cheerleading team, they 

carry a sense of superiority with them as they go throughout high 
school. That is, until a championship-winning new coach takes over, 
and the team struggles with the new structure.
At its best, the show is well-paced and unpredictable. The lighting 
is dim and ominous; it captures the essence 
of the typical teen drama and makes us feel 
like something is always lurking around the 
corner. Its tone makes you feel on edge while 
watching it, and it’s hard to tell what the main 
conflict is going to be. The small, ongoing 
passive-aggressive moments edge toward the 
feeling 
that 
something’s 
going 
to 
implode 
at 
any moment — the main quality of the 
show that keeps viewers locked in. 
It’s evident that the show is primarily 
targeted toward a young teenage 
audience, but it’s entertaining enough 
that someone else may continue to 
watch it without being too invested 
into the lives of each character like the 
targeted audience would. 
However, it was a struggle to figure 
out whether the topics of the show 

were suitable for a younger audience to be watching in the first 
place. As the girls train for the cheerleading competitions, several 
of them show clear symptoms of having an eating disorder, but none 
of them are called out for their unhealthy habits. For instance, one 
of the girls is seen bent over the toilet in an 
attempt to vomit, and when she struggles to 
do so, is kicked in the stomach by one of the 
cheerleaders to help her out. While it’s clear to 
healthy adults that this is abnormal behavior, 
it may not be to impressionable teenagers. 
The best way the show can succeed is to find 
the correct target audience, and as of now, 
it seems to be floating in a limbo between 
demographics. 
Like most other teen dramas, it’s the 
script that lacks the most attention and care. Each comeback and 
motivational quote is reused and recycled from other dramas, and 
if anything’s predictable about the show, it’s what each character is 
going to say next. With a script that hits harder and flows smoother, 
the show could likely draw itself in the direction of an upper teenage 
audience. As of now, “Dare Me” comes off as a coming-of-age story 
with toxic themes that tweens might have to avoid (depending on 
their current mindstates). There’s entertaining aspects of it for all 
adolescent age groups, but the task at hand remains in the hands of 
the creators, who need to determine the direction they want to take 
the show in and who they want to lock in as their target audience. 

For the gossip girls: ‘Dare Me’ is a ghost of teen dramas

TV REVIEW

SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer

Dare Me

Season One Premiere

USA Network

Sundays @ 10 p.m.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

In the final scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey opens 
a copy of “Tom Sawyer” that was found under his Christmas tree. 
Written on the back of the cover is the inscription: “Remember 
no man is a failure who has friends.” As a crowd of loved ones 
sings “Auld Lang Syne,” George squeezes his young daughter and 
declares “That’s right!” He turns to the sky, winks and repeats, 
“That’s right.” 
For most of my life, Frank Capra’s (“It Happened One Night”) 
“It’s a Wonderful Life” has been synonymous with Christmas, my 
unequivocal favorite time of the year. It can’t be Dec. 25 until I’ve 
watched the movie one, two, sometimes three times, with a mug of 
hot chocolate in hand, surrounded by the balsam scents and white 
lights of my living room. 
Yet for a movie so associated with Christmas, it depicts very 
little of it. The majority of the film takes us through the life of 
George Bailey (James Stewart, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”), 
a selfless family man living in the quaint village of Bedford Falls. 
No matter how many times I’ve watched the film, I am astounded 
every time by just how much of it is dedicated to simply setting up 
George’s life. From a young boy to a grown man, you are shown how 
George has lived his entire life for the benefit of others. He jumps 
into icy water to save his little brother while they sled as children. 
He risks his job at a drug store as a teenager by not delivering pills 
he saw the distressed pharmacist accidentally fill with poison. He 
gives up his dream of going to college and traveling to take on the 
family building and loan business after his father dies.
Following this man through his life, it’s easy to become 
attached. Watching him experience love and pain, joy and despair, 
George becomes a living, breathing force jumping off the screen 
into real life. I know how the story starts and I know how it ends, 
but everytime I watch I feel myself praying for a happy ending, 
waiting for the moment that someone finally gives back.
But each time, nearing the end of the film, it seems that life 
has still not repaid George. As the film takes us into the present 
day, the Bailey Building and Loan business has been forced into 
thousands of dollars of debt. To pay off these debts with life 
insurance, George goes to a bridge on Christmas Eve to commit 
suicide. But somebody jumps before him, and George dives 
into the freezing river to save them. The man George rescued 
is Clarence — an angel, second class — and in order to earn his 

wings, Clarence must prove to George just how important his life 
has been for others.
The remainder of the movie shows how miserable everybody is 
in a world where George had never been born. His brother died 
in that icy water, the pharmacist went to jail and even Bedford 
Falls is not the same, now named after the avaricious banker that 
is trying to run George out of business.
For a movie entitled “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the majority of the 
film is quite dreary. Greed, suicide, war — these aren’t exactly the 
themes one would expect from a Christmas story. But that is what 
makes the story so real, so persistent. With every year I watch the 
film, with every new life experience, I understand George Bailey 
a little bit more. When I was a kid I didn’t know why George 
went to the bridge that night, but now I see. Misery doesn’t end 
when the holidays start, and 
even a life of selflessness can feel 
empty. Capra doesn’t sugar coat 
life they way the other candy-
colored Christmas movies do. 
The emotions from George Bailey 
and those who have come to love 
him are raw, breaking the surface 
of 
life’s 
unyielding 
struggles 
during a time of year they are 
most stifled. 
Perhaps it’s that desperate 
need for catharsis that makes 
the end of the movie so moving. 
As George returns to the bridge 
and cries desperately for his life 
back, snow begins to fall and he races through town, hugging and 
waving at everyone in his way. He returns home to a parade of 
people whose lives he touched, waiting to give him money to pay 
off his debts. A bell chimes on the family Christmas tree and his 
daughter utters the famous line: “Teacher says, every time a bell 
rings, and angel gets his wings.”
The story is one of classic Christmas feel-good victories, 
and like its protagonist, the movie itself also has somewhat of a 
comeback story. Following its release in 1946, “It’s a Wonderful 
Life” was a complete box office flop, to the point that it shuttered 
Frank Capra’s production company. Yet 30 years later, after 
someone forgot to file an updated copyright request, the movie 
became public domain and networks played it every day, every 
hour, during Christmastime.

Perhaps that’s the greatest allure of the movie: its timelessness. 
It’s been over 70 years since “It’s a Wonderful Life” was first 
released, but to this day, it gives family and friends occasion to 
squeeze together onto couches and under blankets to watch 
George Bailey’s story play out. Everybody wants to see themselves 
in George Bailey, in a world where nobody would be better off 
without their presence. Where everything one does somehow 
affects someone else which affects someone else, and so on. 
It’s a message even a toddler watching it for the first time in 
her grandparent’s basement can understand. Nobody’s life is 
worthless.
For 20 years I’ve been watching Frank Capra’s unlikely 
masterpiece in the lead up to Christmas. I don’t race my brother 
down the steps on Christmas morning anymore. My presents to 
family are bought with money 
from jobs rather than twisted 
together with construction paper 
and pipe cleaners. I’m too far 
away from home to help string up 
the lights, and there’s an empty 
seat at our Christmas table now.
The sad truth is that sometimes, 
it truly is a terrible life. There 
is pain, loss, helplessness. It is 
easy to look around and give up, 
to feel beaten by life. But the 
most important scenes in “It’s a 
Wonderful Life” aren’t the ones 
predicated on sacrifice and anger. 
They’re the silent promises to 
love someone until the day you die. The pocketing of petals to 
bring a young girl’s flower back to life. The quiet prayer muttered 
in a crowded bar. The decision to jump in to save someone else 
before you save yourself. Believing that even at the lowest point, 
there is hope.
As much as the world has changed since 1946, and as much as 
my life has changed since that first viewing, “It’s a Wonderful 
Life” has not gone away. I predict it never will. The human desire 
to feel needed transcends time and age. The six year old watching 
next to their grandmother may be inspired to reach out one more 
hand, to be kind to one more person. The grandmother may reflect 
on her many years, and be grateful for the good and the bad. Like 
the motto hanging in the Bailey office insists, “all you can take 
with you is that which you have given away.”

Publish Our Love: ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ that’s right

PUBLISH OUR LOVE

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA
Senior Arts Editor

Run Me to Earth

Paul Yoon

Simon & Schuster

Jan. 28, 2020

USA NETWORK

PUBLIC DOMAIN

