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WORK TITLE: American English, Italian Chocolate
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://rick-bailey.com
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://rick-bailey.com/about/ * https://users.hfcc.edu/~rbailey/bio.htm
RESEARCHER NOTES: HE IS NO LONGER TEACHING AND NO LONGER ON THE FORD COLLEGE WEB SITE. DID NOT INCLUDE COLLEGE ADDRESS OR EMAIL–DP
PERSONAL
Born 1952; married; children: one daughter.
EDUCATION:Eastern Michigan University, B.A.; Duke University, M.A.; University of Michigan, D.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Henry Ford College (formerly Henry Ford Community College), Dearborn, MI, instructor in English, 1980-c. 2017. Codirector of oral history project on working people in Southeastern Michigan, 1998-2002; former consultant on Landmarks of American History Workshop, former travel guide for excursions in Italy.
AWARDS:Grants from National Endowment for the Humanities.
WRITINGS
Contributor to literary journals.
SIDELIGHTS
Rick Bailey grew up in Freeland, Michigan. He focused on rhetoric and freshman writing for his doctoral studies and went on to teach writing for thirty-eight years at Henry Ford College, where he infused writing into courses in technical physics, electronics, and mathematics. He also developed a custom curriculum in a project called the Detroit Manufacturing Technology Bridge. Bailey is the author of several textbooks on writing, some with coauthor Linda Denstaedt.
In his book American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance, Bailey presents a memoir in essays, from his time growing up in the American Midwest to visiting northern Italy after his retirement. In the process, he covers a wide range of topics and things that interest him. In one essay, Bailey reflects on the past as he travels from Michigan to New Jersey for a college friend’s funeral. He also writes about his teaching career and ruminates on how he saw himself losing his connection with a female student who was also raising children as a single mother and trying to avoid confrontational abuses from her ex-husband. Bailey writes about the time he served as an extra in a college performance of Richard III. Comparing modern films and movies to the classic plays by William Shakespeare, Bailey decries the tendency to forgo the use of language to reveal emotions in favor of having, as an example, a character looking thoughtful while he or she showers during times of stress.
Bailey, who is married to an Italian immigrant and has served as a guide to travelers to Italy, also writes about his visits to the country and the thoughts that these visits bring about. For example, in the hills above the Adriatic Sea, Bailey is in a trattoria thinking about beans and their history. He also writes about the differences between living in different cultures, in his case Midwest America and Italy. He finds that Italy offers a kind of comfort to both Bailey and his wife in a way that a homogenized America, with its familiar stores found beside nearly every freeway, does not. “I particularly liked one essay when he shops for underwear, on the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend, at an Italian outdoor market where a vendor recommends a pair of briefs emblazoned with ‘SEX. KISS,’” wrote a What’s Nonfiction? website contributor. Other anecdotes from his trips to Italy include the time he and his wife were locked out of their vacation rental apartment and their efforts to get out of traffic tickets. Discussing marriage, he explores his long marriage and the differences, mostly idiosyncratic, that are part of a couple’s lives together.
Another vignette focuses on Bailey’s feelings about watching his aging parents decline. He also addresses the idea of memories and admits that memories are often deceptive. In an essay about insect infestations in the home, Bailey pays special attention to a housefly infestation in his own home and a subsequent search into the history and working of flies that reveals things to Bailey that he wishes he did not know. Bailey writes in his American English, Italian Chocolate: “Flies have been around for some sixty-five million years. When they buzz, they buzz with a kind of confidence we can only imagine.” Some of the forty essays included in the book were previously published in literary periodicals.
American English, Italian Chocolate “encompasses a wide variety of tones, from the earthy … to the picturesque,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, adding that “overall the book delights.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked: Bailey’s “essays represent the written equivalent of thinking out loud—or musing, wryly and wistfully.” On the website What’s Nonfiction?, the contributor noted that not every essay is a standout. Nevertheless, the reviewer commented that “the vignette-length means that if something doesn’t appeal, it’s over quickly; and his fickle attention means that the next essay’s topic will veer in an entirely different direction.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Bailey, Rick, American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2017, review of American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance.
Publishers Weekly, April 24, 2017, review of American English, Italian Chocolate, p. 77.
ONLINE
Henry Ford Community College Website, https://www.hfcc.edu/ (January 9, 2018), faculty profile.
Koba English, http://www.koba-english.com/ (September 6, 2017), review of American English, Italian Chocolate.
Rick Bailey Website, https://rick-bailey.com (January 9, 2018).
What’s Nonfiction?, https://whatsnonfiction.wordpress.com/ (June 30, 2017), review of American English, Italian Chocolate.
Rick Bailey grew up in Freeland, Michigan, on the banks of the Tittabawassee River. He taught writing for 38 years at Henry Ford College in the Detroit area. While writing textbooks for McGraw-Hill, he also wrote with classes he taught, a work habit that eventually led to Tittabawassee Road, a blog of essays on family, food, travel, and currrent events. His blog became the basis for American English, Italian Chocolate. A Midwesterner long married to an Italian immigrant, in retirement he and his wife divide their time between Michigan and the Republic of San Marino.
Rick Bailey grew up in Freeland, Michigan, on the banks of the Tittabawassee River. In college he studied English language and literature (BA, Eastern Michigan University; MA, Duke University; DA, University of Michigan). He then moved to Detroit and taught writing for 38 years at Henry Ford College.
Sometime after finishing his doctorate, he wrote textbooks for McGraw-Hill: The Creative Writer’s Craft (2009), On the Go (2011), and Going Places (2011). Part of his teaching practice consisted of writing with his students, a work habit which eventually led to Tittabawassee Road, a blog largely made up of essays on family, food, travel, currrent events, what he reads and what he remembers.
A Midwesterner long married to an Italian immigrant, he has learned the language and food of Italy, traveled around the country, and, in the process, he has been (partly) made over–italianizato. In retirement Rick and his wife divide their time between Michigan and the Republic of San Marino.
Rick Bailey
English Instructor
Phone: (313) 845-6498
Fax: (313) 317-6690
E-mail: rbailey@hfcc.edu
Office: A-214
Building: Learning Technology Center
I've taught English at HFCC since 1980. My doctoral work at the University of Michigan focused on rhetoric and freshman writing. In my dissertation, I applied the Harvard Business School's case method approach to forms of academic writing.
Since finishing my doctorate in 1989, I have explored my interest in thinking-writing connections and writing across the curriculum in a number of projects funded by the National Science Foundation at HFCC, infusing writing into courses in technical physics (1998), electronics (1999), and mathematics (2004). I also helped develop custom curriculum through HFCC's Office of Corporate Training, in a project called The Detroit Manufacturing Technology Bridge.
Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, I have been privileged to work with HFCC colleagues in the humanities and career education on a number of issues related to work.
With my colleague Dr. Michael Daher, I co-directed an oral history project focused on working people in Southeastern Michigan (1998-2002). More recently, I worked as a consultant on his Landmarks of American History Workshop, also funded by the NEH.
While working on these inter-disciplinary projects, I have road-tested teaching ideas in my creative writing and developmental writing classes, culminating in these publications: The Creative Writer's Craft: Lessons in Poetry, Fiction, and Drama (Glencoe, 1999), Destinations: An Integrated Approach to Developmental Writing (McGraw-Hill, 2005). My new books are Going Places (McGraw-Hill, 2009), and On the Go (McGraw-Hill, 2009).
Time permitting, I take travelers on one-week excursions in Italy (Florence, Venice, Rome), focusing on slow travel: churches and museums, local culture, and heroic eating.
Bailey , Rick: AMERICAN ENGLISH, ITALIAN CHOCOLATE
(May 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Bailey , Rick AMERICAN ENGLISH, ITALIAN CHOCOLATE Univ. of Nebraska (Adult Nonfiction) $19.95 7, 1 ISBN: 978-1-4962-0119-5
Memories of a Michigan upbringing proceed to anecdotes on retirement in Italy, as a writing professor writes what pleases him, which is often about what doesn't.In this collection of short essays, Bailey (Emeritus, English/Henry Ford Coll.; co-editor: The Creative Writer's Craft: Lessons in Poetry, Fiction, and Drama, 1999, etc.) skips back and forth across time and place. Many of these pieces have been published in literary journals and small magazines, and they weren't necessarily intended (or sequenced) to be read as a whole. However, there are certain themes that pervade throughout. Some touch on mankind as part of nature and apart from it: "The outhouse was where man met beast, and the beast was himself." Some decry the ways that regional differences (especially in food) have given way to cultural homogenization. "Much of the United States looks like Ohio warmed over," he writes in the concluding title essay. "Pull off the freeway...and you'll see the same thing. When you pass the Bed Bath and Beyond, you'll know that Chili's is not far away." Bailey writes of flip-flops and sweatpants, of the idiosyncratic differences that a long, loving marriage encompasses, and of living in the very different cultures of the Midwest and of Italy, land of his wife's familial ancestors, where both of them feel comfortable. He writes of dreams, nightmares, and memories while recognizing of the last that "memory is capricious, frequently a liar." If readers identify with what he writes, that's fine, but one never gets the sense that he's writing for anyone but himself and that his essays represent the written equivalent of thinking out loud--or musing, wryly and wistfully. Maybe he writes because that's what academics do, write to publish, and because that's what writers do, observe to write. Easiest to digest in snack-size portions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bailey , Rick: AMERICAN ENGLISH, ITALIAN CHOCOLATE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2017. General OneFile, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491934122/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=abe953a2. Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491934122
American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p77+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance
Rick Bailey. Univ. of Nebraska, $19.95 trade paper (204p) ISBN 978-1-4962-0119-5
Bailey (The Creative Writer's Craft) finds inspiration in everyday mundanities--buying a cup of coffee, helping his wife replace a duvet cover--to create short memoiristic essays that can jump, say, from his Michigan boyhood to the plays of Shakespeare. The essays read like the best of short stories: their significance extends beyond what is on the page. Bailey demonstrates a genius for locating a telling detail and employing it sparingly to evoke a setting or character trait, keeping the writing concise and the pace swift. Bailey's voice is genial and ingratiating and he expertly mixes literary allusions from his career as an English scholar with his Midwestern charm. His humor is the type to inspire smiles of recognition rather than full-on belly laughs. The book encompasses a wide variety of tones, from the earthy, with essays inspired by toilets, nail biting, and the rising trend of vomit in TV and movies, to the picturesque, in travelogue vignettes about Bailey's experiences visiting Italy. Not every entry in this collection of 40 essays (some previously published in literary journals) feels completely realized, but overall the book delights and will makes readers stop and notice the individual pieces of their everyday lives. (July)
Caption: Two American soldiers sitting on a jeep in Vietnam, ca. 1967, as seen in Fighting for Freedom (reviewed on p. 85).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance." Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 77+. General OneFile, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250847/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=db2c4f77. Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250847
Reveiw: American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance
I am a sucker for a great essay collection. There is an art to crafting short writing, fiction or otherwise, that I admire in others and wish I could cultivate for myself. Incidentally, despite my struggles with brevity, I am absolutely ruthless when it comes to editing other people’s short writing. I have a friend on a short story kick who can attest to the extent of my cuts (and actually, you’ll blog-meet him soon enough). But the only way to get better at short-form writing is to read a lot of it, right? So when this collection turned up on NetGalley, how I could turn it down?
American English, Italian Chocolate is a memoir in essays beginning in the American Midwest and ending in north central Italy. In sharply rendered vignettes, Rick Bailey reflects on donuts and ducks, horses and car crashes, outhouses and EKGs. He travels all night from Michigan to New Jersey to attend the funeral of a college friend. After a vertiginous climb, he staggers in clogs across the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In a trattoria in the hills above the Adriatic, he ruminates on the history and glories of beans, from Pythagoras to Thoreau, from the Saginaw valley to the Province of Urbino.
Bailey is a bumbling extra in a college production of Richard III. He is a college professor losing touch with a female student whose life is threatened by her husband. He is a father tasting samples of his daughter’s wedding cake. He is a son witnessing his aging parents’ decline. He is the husband of an Italian immigrant who takes him places he never imagined visiting, let alone making his own. At times humorous, at times bittersweet, Bailey’s ultimate subject is growing and knowing, finding the surprise and the sublime in the ordinary detail of daily life.
Author: Rick Bailey
My Goodreads rating: 2 stars
Average Goodreads rating: 4.22 stars
Language scaling: B2+
Recommended audience: Those interested in short-form nonfiction writing, whether for its own sake or for the sake of improving their own.
In-depth thoughts: Essays! Cross-cultural marriages! Everything I should love! But this collection fell a little flat for me. There was no “surprise” or “sublime” for me in these rambles through the details of the everyday; just a sort of mild interest. The only essay that really got close to something for me was “For Donna, Ibsen, Pepys, Levitation,” which touches on one of his “non-traditional” (read as: single mother returning to school after a long absence) literature students who was trying to balance her passion for the class with raising her kids and trying to stay safe from her abusive ex-husband. But even that doesn’t hit the mark entirely. After a seemingly innocent lefthand turn into levitation, Bailey fails to bring it back around to the central moment in the essay: Donna, the mother and abused woman and eager literature student. Here’s the jump Bailey makes, once you take out the long, extended aside on levitation:
“I saw Ghosts on the syllabus, you know what I thought of?”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Patrick Swayze?”
“In school, like in ninth grade, we did this thing called levitation.” She gives me an embarrassed look. “Did you ever levitate?”
Seeing Donna in class, reading and thinking and sharing, was like witnessing a levitation.
There’s probably over twice as much material spent on the history of the parlor trick, dead Englishmen’s thoughts about it, and Bailey’s memories of it than on the living, breathing human in front of him, and it just feels off. While none of the other essays were this off for me, they were all equally detached and disinterested from their subject matter, except when it concerned Bailey’s own reminisces. Maybe he should have just written a straight-up memoir?
I was also a little confused over the title, or rather the title in connection with the description. I went in expecting a lot more about cross-cultural marriages, about immigration, about adapting to new cultures (or being around those who have to adapt to a new culture), and everything else that comes with those huge life milestones. And yet, nothing.
I majored in English in college, specifically creative writing, and sometimes I wondered if I should have taken myself and my writing a little more seriously by pursuing an MFA afterwards. But the writers my professors brought to campus to give readings or to guest lecture, and even what they wrote themselves, had an American University Workshop-y sameness to the writing (even if it was good) that I could maybe pretend to like but never be able to bring myself to write. There were ideas in here that I liked, but they were painted over with that workshop-y sameness to the point where it was hard for me to maintain my interest.
While I might be tempted to point to one of these essays if I ever tackle personal essays or memoirs in a lesson, American English, Italian Chocolate was just not my cup of tea, and I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend it to EFL students.
JUNE 30, 2017
Book review: American English, Italian Chocolate, by Rick Bailey
English professor Rick Bailey writes a sweet, soft memoir in vignette-style essays stretching from the American Midwest to northern Italy.
Musings include high school dramas and levitation parties, medical issues humorous and otherwise, death, home insect infestations, historical perceptions of beans, how Nutella might taste better in Italy than in America, and, a favorite: observations on espresso making in Detroit. It’s all over the place, which makes it a fast read – it feels like no time passes at all between subject jumps, and that translates to reading in a breeze.
With essay titles like “Wisdom Teeth and Encyclopedia Britannica”, “Boy Scouts, Ringworm, and Paris”, and “Ravioli, Richard III, and a Dead Bird” you can get a pretty good idea of the kind of rambling (usually in a good way), meandering walk Bailey takes the reader on, through his swiftly-traveling trains of thought. Not every essay was stellar, I lost interest in a few (I may also be a teensy bit younger than the intended readership), but the bright side was the vignette-length means that if something doesn’t appeal, it’s over quickly; and his fickle attention means that the next essay’s topic will veer in an entirely different direction.
When forcing his wife to discuss (over breakfast no less) a kid at her church (the author attends only as a “spectator”) who constantly picks at himself, distracting Bailey immensely, she counters, “He’s probably bored. Doesn’t your mind wander?” Does it ever, he responds, and every reader says “We know.”
Bailey writes with a certain “dad”-like sense of humor; sometimes a little grouchy or baffled by unfamiliar concepts but well-meaning. He makes silly, safe-but-softly-implying-something jokes that you can imagine a dad or grandfather making. He uses a wry, dry tone, and even when poking fun or in exasperation there’s never any lurking meanness or bitterness. That’s refreshing to read sometimes.
The effect is light, summertime beach reading for those who can’t bring themselves to turn to anything mindless, even for a beach read.
Sometimes the humor surprises with how far it goes. I hated one piece discussing exterminating honeybees (I’m sure homeowners deal with all kinds of terrifying problems like bee infestation, and the big scary ones I can get behind exterminating, but for the love of Al Gore don’t poison honeybees), but he redeemed himself when he moved on to his housefly problem, which eventually reached biblical proportions, leading to his horrified research and discussion of how flies work and what they do:
Thirty-six hours after emerging from its pupa (a word I do not like and hope never to write again), it is ready for sex…Humans evolved some two hundred thousand years ago and have been full-blown Homo sapiens for around fifty thousand years. Flies have been around for some sixty-five million years. When they buzz, they buzz with a kind of confidence we can only imagine.
I never thought I’d laugh at a passage that mentions flies emerging from pupas and mating, and yet here I am.
His wife grew up in Italy, and the country features as backdrop in several pieces, whether they’re getting locked out of their vacation rental apartment, talking down traffic tickets, or figuring out the proper way to give a Bongiorno greeting to the villagers.
I particularly liked one essay when he shops for underwear, on the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend, at an Italian outdoor market where a vendor recommends a pair of briefs emblazoned with “SEX. KISS.” It was so typical of an American-in-Europe experience, and he told it so well and even somehow classily, considering the subject.
There’s a healthy dose of cultural, literary and scientific references, plus accessible analysis/pondering of the English language and linguistics thrown in, as the title indicates. It’s not heavy-handed, instead he interestingly points out things like the modern phenomenon of depicting characters vomiting or thoughtfully, stressfully showering in films when they’re distraught, comparing this to Shakespearean plays, where words are used to emphasize strong emotions. He manages to take unattractive or unpleasant topics and muse about them thoughtfully and without being gross. That’s a not insignificant interesting talent.
The summer release suits this collection well; it’s a light, readable companion for some amusement and summertime distraction.