ISSUE 1 1
Transparently Yourself
2
4
We are Cling Wrap. It is easy to manufacture beauty, because it is easier to pretend that everything is beautiful, than to see the truth. The true feat of an artist is laying bare the ugly, and accepting and rejoicing the differences. We are not collectors of beautiful things. We are not satisfied with being comforted by beauty and ease. While the beautiful things are obviously attractive, we cannot accept fantasy while knowing the true reality: if we presented you with beauty, we would be -positioning-staging-manipulating-editing, pretending that the ugly does not exist. Ugly is the state of diversity of our campus. Ugly is the unequal treatment of women in the workforce. Ugly is police brutality. Ugly is habitat destruction. Ugly is food waste. We are a window to the outside world, the real world. This window is sometimes gritty and dirty and difficult to open or close. We cannot apologize. Rather than taking the ugly, and changing it to make it beautiful, we strive to find ways to accentuate the differences- through its uniqueness, vulnerability, and raw emotion, we find its beauty. We do it because we have the power to publish something powerful. We stand behind the people that know all too well that the world is not always fair and pretty. Maybe we’re being silly, but we want to make a positive impact on these things, one issue at a time. So what do we like? We cherish the alternative-pink cornrows and Lolita girls. We love the confident vulnerability of bright blue jumpers and unapologetic glitter. We celebrate diversity: race, gender, sexual orientation, body size. Everyone is different and no one should be forced into a mold they do not fit. We define beauty as... authenticity. Raw emotion. Complete transparency. Here at WashU, the world around us is comfortable. But we all know it is not real. We strive to make you uncomfortable. To encourage transparency. To think about the world in a more critical light. Stark. Plain. Natural. Unfiltered, unedited, unadulterated. Is it working?
3
4 2
Table of Contents
I. Food Playlist II. Aftertaste III. Red Velvet
IV. The Song of Kathmandu
V. Green and Gold
VI. Groceries Shopping
VII. Food Deserts VIII. BD IX. Ode to Ramen
X. Garden Variety
5
8
6
Food Jams
7
8
Illustrated By Grace Lancaster
Aftertaste
/’aftərˌtāst/ noun: the remaining sensation following an unpleasant experience, incident, etc. Written By Jasmine Han I am excited about my Tupperware of the leftover Korean food I’d have for dinner – excited for a change of pace after one too many ham and cheese sandwiches. As soon as I open it, however, I feel the person sitting next to me immediately cringe away. The person grimaces at the smell and looks at my Tupperware with an accusatory “what is THAT” look. My body burns hot in embarrassment as I put away my Tupperware in response, try to place it somewhere in the depths of my blue lunchbox where I can pretend it doesn’t exist, and I quietly eat my fruit snacks. I ignore how hungry I am for the rest of the day. When I get home, my grandmother asks in Korean why my lunch is untouched. I respond back in Korean, but the language feels foreign on my tongue as I explain I just hadn’t been hungry. I refuse to take Korean food to school after this incident. I go back to eating ham and cheese sandwiches. These are the snippets I remember from the first time I was embarrassed by my culture; the first time I remember feeling “other.” This is the beginning of a years-long struggle with coming to terms with an identity that is never enough – not quite American enough, not quite Korean enough, but somewhere in the middle. I learned too young that internalized hatred of one’s cultural and racial identity is parasitic. The hatred invaded every aspect of my life, and in an attempt to combat it, I found myself giving parts of me away. First, it’s something small, like food. I stopped bringing Tupperwares of leftover Korean food to school and Febreeze-d every nook and cranny of my home to erase the scent of my culture before my friends came over. Food was just one more thing that made me different from my friends in my predominantly white, suburban neighborhood, and being different just felt like a curse. Food was at least something I could hide, unlike my appearance. Then, it was the beautiful hanbok I used to always wear. The vibrant colors of the silk top and skirt seemed to dim every year I refused to wear it. I found myself trying to speak Korean as little as possible and when I did need to speak it in front of non-Korean people, I prepared myself for the onslaught of mimicking that would follow. Eventually, taking part in the mockery of my mother tongue felt like second nature. Once the hatred spread everywhere, it began to grow deeper. I started to hate the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes. I began to hate myself. I lived in a state of self-loathing for years until I finally got out of my little snow globe of suburban whiteness and began to meet people who shared my identity crisis from all around the country. It was through the comfort of knowing that I was not alone and taking refuge in those who had already come to the realization that culture and heritage are things to be proud of, that my self-hatred began to diminish. The different foods of my culture became adventures. My language became music. The way I describe my skin, my eyes, and my appearance has become gentler – I no longer use words to cause myself pain. Ten years ago, I closed my Tupperware of Korean food at lunch and tried to make it disappear in my lunchbox. This year, I sat in a circle with friends around a pan of steaming ddukbokki and we made it disappear into the depths of our stomachs. It has taken ten years, but I am finally content with not being quite American or Korean; I am proud to be Korean-American. 9
RED
10
Velvet
Art Direction By: Haley Lundberg Photography By: Jojo Yee Models: Kates Taub & Julie Qi 11
12
13
14
15
16
17
The Song of Kathmandu By: Kiri Maasen Right. Left. Right. Left. Grey, packed dust passes my sandaled feet. With each step I kick a pebble and dirty my shoes and pants. Right. Left. I remember the path perfectly. The grey packed dust turns into grey dusty brick that stop abruptly here and there. There is a limited order to the sidewalks here; lack of money, engineering and design leave the whole ground like a strange patchwork. The road is paved beside me now instead of packed earth. The sidewalk path is at a nervous tilt enough to throw me off balance if I were to catch my toe on an assertive brick. Little bits of resilient grass push through cracks in the cement. I walk up one hill and around the corner then down another. There is one place where there is always water in the road. The family that lives in the house near that section must wash up in the morning. There are always a couple dogs that play around in the mud and lick the moisture from the ground. Right. Left. The road I am walking down leads into a highway and I stop to catch a bus. As I approach the crowded street the sound of car engines and horns and people begin to drown out the light songs of birds. The grey really isn’t a grey--it is more like silver dust from broken glass and metal mixed with the tan grit of sandstone and dry earth. It shines if the light catches it right, and sometimes it looks gold, and other times it looks slate grey. I wait for the bus and my eyes drift to the sky. It’s blue is murky and slightly greyed from the cloud of dust that the cars kick up from the ground. The clouds look indistinct and far away and I pull my mask over my face. I ask the next bus if they are going to Chakrapati and the boy who stands in the back and collects money said cha so I climbed into the bus that is actually just a minivan with a few extra makeshift seats and a driver who charges to take passengers where they wish to go. I sat on the tire hump since all the other bench seats were at least one person over capacity already. And I looked out the window. The buses are lively and exciting inside. There is a constant air of being cramped by the fellow passengers but also the carpeting that has been installed along the walls and ceilings and the bright streamers and beautifully vibrant posters of various Hindu gods.
18
Sometimes there is fringe hanging from every surface and sometimes there are little Hawaiian dancers on the dashboard and sometimes there are dice and flowers and beads and glass hanging from the rearview mirror. And there is always music. Music that I cannot understand by word but which paints the brightest and most exuberant colors in my mind. I have always loved the music. I hand the boy a 5 Rupee note and fumble out onto the streets once again. I cross the busy highway, ducking out of the way of motorbikes, busses, Brahmin cows, children and cars alike and find the resemblance of a sidewalk once again. My pants and sandals and feet and covered gently and thoroughly in a layer of dust now and I begin to blend in with the surrounding buildings and shops and the street. I inhale and smell grit and dust and fish and oil. The dust isn’t entirely silver and tan either, there were moments when it looked black in the distance and a deep delicious chocolate color almost. There were times when the dust looked like the blue of the sky and times when it picked up the colors of the grasses around it. And there was a time, after Diwali when the dust was the color of a bird of paradise with massive pools of purple and brilliant yellows and greens. The colors shot into the air in a firework of beauty until a few days later when it had blended and dissipated once again into the humble grey. But not quite grey. This street is lined with shops. There are fabric stores that sell beautiful patterns of once bright but now slightly dusty reds and pinks and blues. There are men and women squatting next to their wears on towels directly on the sidewalk. There are shoe stores and Internet cafes and then the Australian Embassy and more little shops but what was always remarkable was the food. In this world of dust and grey the fruit would always shine. The dust couldn’t touch the rich pomegranates and beautiful shiny apples. The fruit shone form the carts and stands like gems in a foil. It was magnificent. Watching my feet I could follow the sea of grey until it was punctuated by this beautiful color and become distracted enough to buy a snack. Maybe a longan berry here and some pears over there, or maybe just one more pomegranate today. The food was always beautiful. Beautiful like the people who sold the fruit. And beautiful like the city that was filled with so much dirt and grit and grey and life and color. By the time my feet find their destination I will feel happy and excited, and my mouth would be filled with the taste of bright cool color.
Right. Left. Right. Left. I will always remember the path perfectly.
19
Laken- Green and Gold 2-3 pages (1-1.5 sheets)
20
Green & Gold
Moroccan Whiskey, Western Appropriation of Oriental Crafting, and the Gendered Worlds of Tea Culture in Rabat Illustrated and Written by: Laken Silvander
I thought perhaps my high school French curriculum’s pathetic attempt to introduce us to the Francophone world via the repeated notion that Moroccans love their “thé à la menthe” was a rigorous-ly overused and exaggerated example. One month of living in Rabat, the country’s capital, and I can confirm that drinking mint tea is a cornerstone of every Moroccan man, woman and child’s day. My host family serves it with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and of course pre-dinner tea. Baba Said laughs when he tells me that I’m drinking Moroccan whiskey during my first dinner with my new family. Whether it is at home with Mama Fatima and Niama before school in the early morning, or walking past the male-only cafés with terraces lining the streets of the new town, little silver and gold pots with long curved spouts too hot to touch are filled to the brim with boiling water, mint leaves, and enough sugar to con-stitute your average syrup recipe more than a basic beverage. The standard practice requires the fol-lowing: wrap a cloth around the handle of
the pot, pour your tea into a small crystal glass from several inches above the rim, set your pot down and flip the lid open, pour the tea from the glass back into the pot, and repeat at least two more times before picking the glass up from the rim with anxious fingers trying to not get burnt to take your first sip. The short-lived sugar buzz and process of getting there look the same whether you are comfortable at your own kitchen table or in a public space, but the spaces feel polar opposite. At home, Fatima has her hair casually wrapped up in a navy headscarf with white lace trim, tied in the front in a playful knot, and she’s bouncing around her tiny but hyper-functioning kitchen to the upbeat Moroccan dance music blasting from an old radio above the fridge. With just us women in the house, the music is playing louder than ever and Fatima is a magnet for all of the energy in the room as we wait for the water to boil. On a café terrace on Avenue Mohammed V, rows of men sit at small black tables facing the street popping tea shots
21
in starch-white collared shirts, navy slacks, and near silence, occasionally mut-tering to each other. Whether you are at home or in public, the quality of glass and metalware is consistent, and in that it is dazzling.. The pots are well-worn gold and silver of a sturdiness as heavy in measure as the crystal glasses that accompany them are delicate. I’m anxious to pick out my set to bring home for my-self and as gifts, and yet I am consistently struck with disappointment as I picture these very designs and aesthetics on shelves of Free People or Anthropologie. The names for these stores are overwhelm-ingly ironic: the often female-dominated workspaces that fuel these massive conglomerates of the Amer-ican appropriation of an “oriental” aesthetic are rarely home to a “free people” but rather an impover-ished labor source with few other options. The rampant and thoughtless appropriation here is perhaps more appropriate of an antiquated anthropology that the current field is going to great lengths to dis-tance itself from. But in the fashion world, that orientalist, nostalgia-drenched aestheticization is relent-less and too often unquestioned. Consumption of patterns, silhou-
16
22
ettes, textures do not define these women’s femininity. But as far as consumption goes, fresh mint is bought every day if it is not picked from Fatima’s plant growing on the rooftop terrace of her immaculate home. It is the literal consumption of the spectacularly syrupy tea and the calm we find in sitting across the table from each other, Niama, Fatima and I, that I feel most welcome into their homes, their lives, their culture, and their femininity. This is their space and Fatima’s tea is her art. I can see how proud she is of it. Maybe the music is gaudy, maybe the chairs are plastic not the aesthetic of choice, maybe my broken Darijha and Fatima’s broken French leave it to our eyes and smiles to build connection and trust—but perhaps this is the closest I’ve come to ap-preciating a culture not my own.
Art D i Photo rection B g Model raphy By y: Carla : Wil s B Graha : Katie l Sun eghin Yu m Gad des & n, Mimi Bor Chukw u One ders, jeme
p o Sh
37
G
e c ro
s e ri
g n pi
23
24
25
26
27
52 28
29
Written By: Ashley Holder
Food Deserts
Graphics By: Eva Nip
have no opportunity to experience the variety of food options that we take for granted s Wash U students, we don’t think here at Wash U. This is the reality for people twice about where our next meal will come across the country that live in food deserts. from. We know that between classes we The USDA defines Food Deserts as can grab a bite at the DUC and that BD will urban neighborhoods and rural towns without be open at 1:30 when we’re craving an egg access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. sandwich. If we get tired of campus food, it’s It’s estimated that between 25 and 30 million easy enough to walk to Kayak’s, the Loop, people in the US live in food deserts, and that or Schnuck’s. And as college students, we the city of St.Louis has 15 of them. People have the freedom to only eat half and halfs for who live in food deserts don’t just make unbreakfast, lunch, and dinner, but if we really healthy choices- they literally do not have the wanted to we have the choice to hit up the option to eat healthy food. Most people who salad bar or order whatever fall vegetable live in food deserts buy most of their food at medley has appeared in the display cases at fast food restaurants and gas station conveBD. But imagine if all of the on campus eaternience stores. Food deserts disproportionally ies only served hamburgers and French fries, affect low-income people because they have Paws and Go only stocked candy and sodas, less access to transportation that could take and the nearest Schnuck’s was miles away. them outside of the food desert, in addition Sure, we wouldn’t go hungry, but with no opto the high cost of fresh fruits and vegetables tions for remotely healthy food, or even filling compared to processed food. In the entirety food other than a couple of options, we would of North St.Louis, a low-income area, there suffer from the multitude of heath problems are only 2 Schnuck’s stores. associated with malnutrition, and we would
A
30
31
32
The city of St.Louis is taking some strides to combat the food desert problem, such as opening a few “no-frills” type grocery stores that sell fresh food at reasonable prices, but much of the assistance is coming from sources outside the city government. A Wash U grad and a SLU medical student recently retrofitted a city bus into a farmer’s market that drives through the JeffVanderLou neighborhood in North St. Louis, but critics say that simply depositing healthy food in communities it is not enough. Someone who works two jobs to support their family is not going to want to buy broccoli unless they know that they can make an easy, inexpensive meal out of it that their kids will actually want to eat. A group of Wash U students is making an effort to integrate healthy eating into the lives of a small group of St.Louis kids through the City Faces program. Founded by associate architecture professor Bob Hansman, for years the City Faces program has organized tutoring and mentoring for the children who live in the Clinton-Peabody Public Housing community, but in spring 2015 the program expanded to include a Community Garden division, which supplemented the community garden that already existed in Clinton-Peabody. Adults in the community had been growing their own vegetables since the garden’s inception, but the City Faces program seeks to bring kids into the garden so they can learn about nature and healthy lifestyles while growing their own vegetables and herbs, which they can take home to their parents. Activities this semester have included picking and eating the summer tomato harvest, planting winter vegetables, making bird feeders, roasting pumpkin seeds, and a field trip to an urban farm in downtown St.Louis, which was incredibly popular with the kids.
Despite the its success this semester, the City Faces garden program is still in its beginning stages, and its coordinator, Mikayla Frye ’18, acknowledges that there is still more work to be done. “I would really like to see the garden become more of a sustainable and substantial form of nutrition for the community,” she says. She hopes that “eventually there can be more community involvement and ownership, and that the garden develops not only into more a community space, but a space that integrates City Faces into the Clinton Peabody Community”. The efforts of the City Faces program, coupled with the community’s own participation in the community garden, can bring a small source of fresh vegetables to Clinton Peabody, where a gas station convenience store currently is the only place to buy food within walking distance. However, ultimately it should not have to be the residents’ responsibility to grow their own food. Everyone deserves access not just to fresh produce, but also to food options beyond what can be found at a gas station. With 15 food deserts within its limits, the city of St.Louis should make more efforts to bring affordable grocery stores to low income parts of the city—and institute community health initiates that will help people utilize their access to healthy food. Perhaps the most important thing the City Faces Community Garden Program does is not physically providing residents with food- it’s teaching the kids that healthy food can be delicious and easy. There’s no clear solution to the national problem of food deserts, but as the Clinton Peabody Community Garden shows, small efforts at the local level can make a difference. 33
BD.
Written By: Kates Taub
Some memories are so pertinent that it is hard to escape the thought of them as mere “memories”. Rather, you play these moments so vividly in your head that you can never fully escape or master the feeling, the sense, the taste, the full color awash in your brain. And while certain moments can live in your head for an eternity, an unexpected occurrence can dive you into this arena of the past. These moments are so visceral and unexplainable that we, as humans, can only even think about relating to one another on this level. So, in an unexplainable feat that I will more than likely not even come close to accomplishing, I will attempt to do so by noticing that emotional reactions can be set off by something as simple as a warm dish. The human experience is complex and almost mocks us all by being completely undecipherable; but for a vague moment, the memory of food can provide a sincere moment of clarity. I can recall my own personal experiences with my strong food memories.
34
In truth, these times have shaped me as a person. A simple taste of a meal can bring me back to these formative, important, and overall undescribable moments. Most clear is the honey coated chicken my mother would make every Shabbat. Now, although I am currently a vegetarian, I can still taste and smell the exact way she would cook it. My siblings and I would gather around the table with my parents and talk, in an ever so sarcastic way about the ways our lives had, for lack of a better term, gone to shit over the week. But I still strongly associate this memory with the thought of that chicken. Now that I am in school, it’s hard for me to truly have moments where I can taste, see, and smell my mother’s cooking. Yet that does not mean that I have lost touch with the special connection food creates for me and for all others around me. Just recently, I was having a rather stressful day. As I had been persuaded by my friend to get stir fry, I tried to slowly carry the overfilled container to the checkout line at Bear’s Den
(BD). As I did, the box started to fold in on itself, pouring out boiling sauce. I burned my hand. But more importantly, I spilled some food all around myself. To say I was mortified would have been an understatement. But afterwards, I was helped and consoled by the woman working the counter. She was quickly catapulted to the top of my “favorite” list. I still owe her an incredible amount of gratitude (amongst other, more tangible gifts). Other memories can permeate into the psyche as it relates to the epicenter that is BD. For example, a fellow sophomore recounts to me his favorite moments in the establishment. They don’t have to do with the actual consumption of food--rather, it is the time he would spend dancing around Paws ‘n Go with one of the workers there. This specific worker opened up to me about how she feels associated to food; her favorite meal, Macaroni and Cheese, was always a staple at her house. She felt spoiled as a kid, but one night she was upset because this meal, while it was there, was also pre-cooked. However she later came to find out that the
reason this was this way is because her mom was out, getting her a puppy. Still to this day, she associates the memory of that fantastic moment with the love of her mother and her Mac and Cheese. What I’m saying is that food is entirely universal as much as it is individual. It keeps us as we are as people, reminding us of the specific memories we have. However, everyone eats and knows how to associate the ramblings of their mind with certain tastes and experiences. That is unescapable. Truly, food sets off visceral and almost otherwise unattainable reactions. Circumstances like the ones we have at BD are amazing because it brings so many cultures, so many people, and so many stories together to experience one of the most fundamental and important parts of their life. While we may take for granted the instances we have of stumbling into the establishment for some fries at two in the morning on a Friday, we tend to overlook the fact that memories made there and here are the most pertinent of all possible ones. Food is a human element. Overall, in the past, present, and future, food is the binding clarity that reminds us all of humanity.
35
Ode
to
18 ce
nts
3 36
pack
per
age
u h alm
c f o tes
u n i m
g n i mm
37
hhhh
hhhh
rrrrrr
rr
wait
’ t ha
h g i sh
w
38
h t er
l a es
n o tc
t n te
lo b y
m r o
n o Lc
O H CO
L A od
t n te
fork or spoon spork or chopsticks 39
fuck
it just u se
your
hand
s
ouch
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ 40
41
42
Art Direction By: Burning Kumquat Photography By: Emma Thompson Models: Clayton Scott, Addae Melhuish, Claire Elias & Le-aysha Pearson
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Staff and Contributing Artists Carla Beghin Erin Waldman Emma Thompson Haley Lundberg Jojo Yee Laken Silvander Ashley Holder Kates Taub Eva Nip
Grace Lancaster Jasmine Han Kiri Masen Julie Qi Will Sun Amanda Reiter Zoe Grieze Anonymous contributor Burning Kumquat
Thank you to our Donors The Beghin family The Thompson family Cynthia Lee Mary Kay Lundberg Julie Qi Lemoine Joseph The Waldman family Will Sun Graham Gaddes ......... and multiple anonymous donors
50
find us... on Facebook Cling Wrap Magazine on Instagram @clingwrapmag & on our website clingwrapmag.com
51 36
52