There are some books that most people my age and group (white, college-educated) have read or at least had read to them. These include such classics as Little Women and A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit (if not the full Lord of the Rings) and Charlotte’s Web. When I read these we were only about one hundred years after the publication of Little Women and the authors of the rest were still alive and still writing. Very recently deceased (as of 1963) author C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia was one of my vary favourites. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens, when it was pointed out to me, that I even saw the Christian symbolism of the text, with the dying god who was resurrected as even stronger than before, the betrayer who gave into temptation and regretted his actions, and so forth.
I was thinking about this book and the powerful nature of shared experiences even if they are virtual experiences through the written page. The shared experience leads to shared vocabulary and shared values (or at least a shared understanding of what the values of others might be). This, it seems to me, is the biggest impact of a shared summer reading for incoming freshmen. We have had one at my university for the past several years, of various sorts. We once had an essay by W.E.B. Dubois, and I believe one once from Martin Luther King, Jr. This year, as I wrote about last week, we had a book about Harry Truman and I riffed on that by making food that students would have never eaten before. It worked okay, and the people who came to the sessions were very enthusiastic. I will get to students' reactions to the food and the experience in a paragraph or two, but about the reading and the experience of having done it.
I had read the book, and the thing that stuck out to me was that what is exotic to our students is my childhood. The road trip that Harry and Bess Truman took was less than ten years before I was born, and the world they traveled in was still the same US that I grew up with. But the book helps the students understand (probably without realizing it) my America, one that was filled with non-chain hotels and non-fast food restaurants, in spite of which the country was more homogenous, The country was segregated in many areas when Truman traveled, but the time of road trips with my parents that was at least not legally the case. [An aside -- my favourite story told by Barack Obama was about going on road trips and really not caring anything about anything else by the end of the day other than whether the motel his family was staying in had a pool. When I heard that, I found myself wondering whether we had ever overlapped on the way to or from Kansas (my home state) and tried to remember playing with a young boy with big ears in a hotel pool, one just one year older than me, one who would grow up to be president.]
The food the Trumans ate was very “all American” — this was a time when lasagna was exotic and different, and Jell-o salads were not. Fried chicken was often considered southern, and it was common to have canned vegetables as a side dish at even a pretty good restaurant. When I was growing up, people at the gas station filled the car for my parents and cleaned your windshields and often checked the fuel levels and gas pressure. Cars and houses didn’t always have air conditioning, and cars were really big and by today’s standards quite unsafe. Seatbelts were not mandatory; there was certainly nothing like carbags or antilock breaks. Driving was more dangerous and in general life was less comfortable. Life has gotten better in many ways, including our health, and the Trumans were definitely middle class and they lived and traveled like others of their class.
The group of students I had in my three hour-long “encounters” ranged from very local Missouri students (2/3ds to 3/4s of them were in-state) to foreign students and those who had families abroad or who had one or the other parent coming to the United States from elsewhere. Some of them had tried one or more of the foods I offered. I had them write short discussions of each food and collected the paper. I told them I would be happy to give them back their papers if they came by my office next week. I hope some do come, because I would love to talk with them about what they wrote.
The afternoon “tea” at 2:30 pm featured home-made small Eccles cakes, as well as store-bought crackers and Cambozola cheese (thanks, Costco!) and pomegranate and pistachio lokum (a.k.a. Turkish delight). I asked them which one they had heard of and the majority of students had only heard of the Turkish delight. I asked them where they had heard of it, and the answer was overwhelmingly the Chronicles of Narnia. But very few of them had tasted it. The book had always made them curious and I was able to start them off in college by answering one of the questions they had always had, but were unaware it had been a niggling desire until I presented this candy to them. Their responses for this particular item often included a short note about whether it was worth selling out your family for this sweet. The majority who volunteered this response in their writing said it wasn’t really worth it, but a few said they understood Edmund’s betrayal. The students compared the Turkish delight to Swedish Fish, or sometimes to jelly beans or gum. I found it interesting that they knew of this but had never thought to look it up and try t. But I know that when I was in college I hadn’t tasted it either. I first did after I graduated from my own university. And I liked it a lot. Of course I was not eating the enchanted kind, but fresh from the marble countertop in a candy shop in Cairo or Istanbul. It is far better that way than in a box that has been shipped all the way from Lebanon, which is a bit tougher than that packed in fresh boxes, the form of the candy preferably rolled up with cream.
Their favourite in the afternoon session was overwhelmingly the English Eccles cake. I was thanked several times for baking for them. It is always nice to have an appreciative audience/cliental. I decided after that afternoon session to make something for all three sessions, so for breakfast I served them vegemite spread over uttered toast made from bread the night before ( was too lazy to go to the grocery and buy some bread), and nasi lemak with cucumbers, dry-roasted peanuts, and two different sambals (spice paste), one store-bought sambal oelek and the other one I made with hot peppers, lime juice. ad sugar . I also gave them feta with black olives (strong ones, with “seeds" as the students said in their descriptions. The nasi lemak was by far the favourite among the class, but a lot of them were quite intrigued by the vegemite. More liked that than I had thought they would. But they liked the coconut rice, and it was, of course, mine as well. But I do sometimes want something saltier so I would go for olives and cheese.
The lunchtime session was at 11 am and the menu consisted of a pork pie (very similar to a Melton Mowbray one, except with some siracha for added flavour), some red lumpfish caviar (or at least lumpfish roe) on cream cheese on a cracker, and vegan vine leaves, the last from Costco. I wasn’t originally going to make the pie, but I didn’t really have a decent amount of a different food with 26 or 27 students. I am glad I did it, however. It made for an interesting contrast with the other two items. More of the people in the class liked the caviar than anything else. And several wrote “do not judge a book by its cover” or some other indication of surprise that they had enjoyed this particular item.
It was interesting to me. The three sessions were each really quite different from each other, in the way they were made up and how comfortable they were with talking with strangers. The students were adventurous in their attempts to try everything (although several were less enthusiastic than I had expected; salt was a problem, particularly at breakfast, as they had just come from a spread that included such things as cocoa puffs and waffles, which seemed more breakfast to them). They took small amounts, even when encouraged to take more, and were very careful to smell and visually each item before leaning in for a taste. I liked watching them, and I liked reading their comments. some will be in my classes in a few days. I hope I made a good impression.
And as for reading, I like to ask students in my class for some general data about them (what classes they have taken in Art or History, etc.), but I always ask them what book they have recently read that they liked. I am really looking forward to reading their responses.