Behnam Riahi is writer for public relations, advertising copy, and even prose. He's the editor of two short story collections: "Twilight of the Idiots" and "Big Venerable." He's currently studying at DePaul University to earn his master's degree in PR/advertising, in addition to working on his first novel.
Join the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography on July 22nd for the second edition of its new reading series and open mic, the CCLaP Showcase. This month’s show features the popular local writer and professor Eric Charles May, reading from his Chicago-set social realist novel “Bedrock Faith,” and will open with six open-mic slots of five minutes apiece (strictly timed). The show will take place at City Lit Books in the Logan Square neighborhood (2523 N. Kedzie), starting at 6:30 pm, and will be recorded in its entirety for rebroadcast on the CCLaP Podcast the following week. To sign up in advance for one of the open-mic slots, drop us a line at cclapcenter@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you there!
This should be a lot of fun. If you’re in the neighborhood or you just want to hear some great readings, I encourage you to stop by and support us.
Join us at City Lit Books as we welcome Ben Tanzer. He’ll read from and sign copies of his newest book, The New York Stories.‘
In 2006, celebrated author Ben Tanzer began working on a series of short stories all set in the fictional upstate New York town of Two Rivers, most of them published in various literary journals over the years and eventually collected into the three small volumes Repetition Patterns (2008), So Different Now (2011), and After the Flood (2014). Now for the first time, all 33 of these stories have been put together into one paperback edition, highlighting the long-term planning of themes and motifs that Tanzer has been building into these pieces the entire time. Featuring dark character studies of childhood, middle age, and (lack of) grace under pressure, these stories are considered by many to be among the best work of Tanzer’s career, and voracious fans of his short work will surely be pleased and satisfied to have these small masterpieces collected together into one easy-to-read volume. So take a stool at Thirsty’s, order another Yuengling, and be prepared to be transported into the black heart of the American small-town soul, as one of our nation’s best contemporary authors takes us on a journey across space and time that will not be soon forgotten.
“With great humor and the natural voice of your closest confidant, Ben Tanzer brings us stories set in our shared fictional hometown of Two Rivers, NY. With tenderness and heart, Ben brings us real people and their poignant, messy struggles, reminding us of the folly of our youth and the beauty in even our most mundane histories. Though my family left when I was small for the big city, Tanzer has given this reader the gift of a sliding door here, and I think you’ll feel the same way, wherever you’re from.” –Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much
“Ben Tanzer’s stories are both familiar and surprising, a scarf and a knife. Stories full of people we know, love. People we don’t want to know, don’t want to love. Stories full of desire and sadness and almost. Stories over beers and tequila, stories inside sex and storms. Ben! He is one of my favorites for all sorts of reasons and one of those reasons is yes and another is hell yes.” –Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Every Kiss A War
“The millions of unseen things that happen inside the heart finally start to come clear in Ben Tanzer’s The New York Stories. Everyone here – from the teenage girls to the grown men trying to sleep with them, from the guy in therapy to the therapist – is filled with a desire so painful it will make you ache. Come to Thirsty’s and drink a Yuengling because it might be all there is. Ben Tanzer knows that what we love most is what destroys us and what makes us feel most alive. He’s reached into our music collections and pulled out the soul and the funk and the loud guitars and set it to prose that pulls us all across the page. Be prepared to laugh and cry and be swept away.” –Dave Newman, author of The Factory Poems
“In his beautiful and deeply American The New York Stories, Ben Tanzer returns to the upstate place where it all began: childhood, adolescence, the buds of adulthood. Caterpillar guts ooze out on the pavement, as do restless hearts. ‘Thirsty’s still serves beer, the Susquehanna River still flows, and you are here by the window, watching, waiting, wondering how you got here at all.’ Characters may come and go and circle back in the fictional town of Two Rivers, but through it all Tanzer’s voice is a transporting constant: intimate, immediate, full of wisdom and grace. Spanning three masterful volumes, brimming with lust and longing, humor and heartbreak and a healthy helping of what-ifs, this collection is for anyone who has lived and loved or loved and lost or any whirling, churning combination of the three. In other words, it’s for all of us.” –Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace
“Tanzer’s growing to become one of my favourite non-genre writers working today. He’s a domestic tragedian, an author who 'gets’ the peculiar melancholia of getting older and kissing goodbye who you once enjoyed being. …The quiet nimbleness of Ben Tanzer’s writing is not something that translates well through a review, it’s something you have to experience for yourself. Please do. You can thank me afterwards.” –Benoît Lelièvre, Dead End Follies
“The New York Stories is a three volume set, each published as separate books across a span of nearly nine years and because of this, the book builds a wonderful grand arc, narrative hindsight in a way that allows the whole thing to function as a story greater than the sum of its parts. We see not only the long protracted march of Two Rivers and its inhabitants, but, because of the time between when the volumes were written, the development of Tanzer as a fierce and world-class writer. This development is a beautiful thing to watch.” –Atticus Review
“Ben Tanzer’s New York is not the New York of Ellis Island or of Times Square. It’s not the New York of Warhol or Scorsese or Giuliani. It’s not the New York you know or have ever known. It’s the New York you should know, the Tanzeriian New York of twisted invention, hilarious compassion, and intricate irony. Ben Tanzer has impossibly written yet another version of the great city, one that’s a welcome addition to the proud canon of this salty berg.” –Michael Czyzniejewski, author of I Will Love You For the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories
“Long before the floodwaters start to build in Ben Tanzer’s New York Stories, we sense their looming presence–the characters themselves drift and swirl about this dying town, trapped in the eddies of past indiscretion, borne along by longings and regrets, snagged upon their betrayals and petty resentments. Yet while one might be tempted to write them off as premature ghosts, here they live on, and like Carver’s, these characters call to us from across the barstool, the pool table, the couch, the car seat. And by the end, Tanzer has made a convincing case that a deluge of stories might be the very thing to save us.” –Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Circulation
Featured readers include:
Matt Rowan, author of Big Venerable
Joseph G. Peterson, author of Twilight of the Idiots
Bedrock Faith, written by Eric Charles May and published by Akashic Books, is a third-person novel written primarily from the point-of-view of Mrs. Motley, an elderly black woman living in a predominantly African-American, middle-class neighborhood of Chicago. More than ten years prior, Mrs. Motley’s neighborhood, Parkland, was terrorized by a young miscreant named Gerald “Stew Pot” Reeves, until he was arrested for allegedly raping a white woman on the north side. But Stew Pot leaves jail a changed man–the first thing on his agenda is going to Mrs. Motley to apologize for the terror he caused her and to ask, with genuine sincerity, to borrow her bible. But just when it seems like this thug finally wised up and turned a new leaf over, he starts using the bible to condemn the sinners of the neighborhood as a zealot for Christ, forcing one after another out in an effort to purge Parkland of the devil. Using their secrets against them, the block’s denizens dwindle little-by-little and Mrs. Motley is forced to admit that maybe Stew Pot hasn’t changed at all.
Eric May and I go back some ways–I never took his class, but I had every intention to. At Columbia College Chicago, I was a regular character among the students actively committed to making a presence. Eric, himself, was just as present, though he had a much better reason for being there than I did. He was already a writer with a lot of accolades and found just as much meaning in writing as he did in teaching writing. He remembered my name and made casual conversation in the hallway, greeted me whenever we ran into each other, and took time out of each day for a lot of us, like we actually were his students. To this day, people like me who never even took his class remember with a fondness reserved for past friends or mentors. However, thinking about my own mark on that school, I remember all that I hoped to accomplish for legends like Eric, like getting published in the school lit magazine or getting published at all (something I actually like, I mean), but people generally remember me because I wrote some asshole sex stories and framed them in a comedic light. Truth was, I wasn’t really writing for myself back then–just for a quick laugh, and certainly putting no effort into my short stories while I worked on one novel or another in an effort to discover my, “voice.” Always the long form for me, though to this day, I regret never just pushing one good short story to its fullest capability. However, I succeeded well at the business end of writing and started working with a literary magazine publisher before I even graduated, which has given me a bigger name in the Chicago literary scene than I could have earned through the skill of my work alone–though I hope skill had something to do with it. As a result, Eric and I ran into each other regularly–either at a lit event I helped throw or a reading that either one of us might be reading at. The business end of it used to be easier, because I wanted to rub elbows with all the authors that I looked up to. Eric just so happened to be one of those authors.
(Damn, we look good.)
Community. That’s the best way to describe our literary scene and that’s the best way to describe this novel too. May has so many characters that, at first glance, it’s difficult to keep track of them, but he quickly establishes a unique tone for each character in the way they speak or look or how they behave, setting them apart from the other characters by leaps and bounds instead of just letting the mere minutiae differentiate them. But this isn’t a novel about solitary characters–this is, in fact, a novel about community. Each character has thoughts or feelings about every other character in this story, often with story-in-story to explain how those characters grew to become friends or enemies. So long as they interact with someone, even if they never interact with each other, everyone has an opinion on everyone else. It’s this element that makes the story so goddamn real, because it creates a web of interpersonal relationships that you want to follow, since each new event affects each relationship differently. As a result, you can’t help but grow to love Parkland’s citizens (except maybe Stew Pot) and care about what will happen to them as chaos ensues, because you know them better than you know the people in your own goddamn neighbors. I did, anyway.
I was supposed to take a class with Eric May actually, well after I graduated. Columbia College Chicago used to offer story workshop (the method they taught, invented by John Schultz) sessions to alumni and I went out of my way to sign up for Eric May’s workshop session. Only I missed it. Why? I had a date with Heather, a Suicide Girl–those counter-culture, tattooed models who drop trou on the web. I didn’t really care for this girl’s personality much, but she wrote–not all that great, but it’s better than nothing sometimes. Either way, she dragged me off to some Suicide Girl midwest meet-up and it happened to fall on the day of my workshop with Eric. Being one for chaos, I took to the road with this girl instead of following something I actually felt passionate about–I liked her though, because she made me feel like I wrote better than I fucked and I thought I fucked pretty well, but I didn’t like her enough to regret missing that workshop. In fact, we had a terrible time, and if it weren’t for the sex, I would’ve thought it a huge fucking waste. The sex was all right, at least. Though my time with Heather did make for a hell of a story and provided me with sufficient chaos for a while, I yearned for the opportunity to learn about what made a good author’s work stand out. Luckily, Eric and I found plenty of time to fraternize since I worked a press that published one of the first excerpts of this novel, Criminal Class Review. We even had him read at our show: Naked Girls Reading, an event where burlesque dancers stripped into the bare and read stories from our newest publication. Eric May, like the other authors we invited, stayed clothed though.
(I’ve been naked on stage once. That’s a different story though.)
Chaos is what moves this novel forward too. You have to keep in mind–even if everyone in Parkland has a negative perspective on every other person, at least they put up with each other–that is, until Stew Pot comes back. Stew Pot is just that–a mix of elements that stirs trouble up. He doesn’t literally force anyone to leave Parkland–he shows the secrets of his victims to his neighbors, embedding their remaining time there with a deep, overwhelming shame. The premise of this novel is that Stew Pot isn’t actually doing anything illegal–at least nothing that the police can prove, but he is making trouble in a big way, thus acting as an almost invulnerable catalyst of chaos for an otherwise quiet neighborhood. It’s this chaos, that sees no resolution until the end of the novel, that stirs up conflict and continues because May knew what strings he could realistically pull, showing us how not all trouble is the trouble that we expect. With each new chapter, he pushes the limit of Parkland and the worry of his readers further by giving Stew Pot some new crusade and not a damn person can stand in his way, without submitting to the illegal activities themselves that drove Stew Pot to jail in the first place. It’s the Story Workshop chapter on opposites, but everyone is Stew Pot’s opposite–only as the story progresses further, the people of Parkland just start to look uglier and uglier until they’re one in the goddamn same.
I still see Eric Charles May out and about. He recently did an event with the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, and though it’s not necessarily official, I do have some ties with that organization. He’s also a regular at Reading Under the Influence and has read there a number of times and shown his support. In fact, that’s where I bought his book and where he autographed it for me. “To Ben, Happy reading, and many thanks for carrying on the RUI tradition.” It’s just one small role we all play as we evolve throughout our lives, our communities, and our careers. It didn’t take Eric May to show me that, but seeing him and talking about his novel at the CCLaP event recently really did show me how much things have changed over the years and how, in so many ways, things haven’t changed at all.
(Sheffield’s, on School and Sheffield in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.)
It’s change that makes this novel fantastic–because as it progresses, we not only get to see how people changed as a result of Stew Pot appearing in their lives again, but how they changed as a result of confronting their own secrets they dreaded to share for the first time. Illustrating character evolution can be so contrived, but it’s fluid for May–since he understood who his characters were from the onset and where they were headed by the end. Mrs. Motley’s evolution is, no doubt, the most poignant as she confronts her own mortality and makes distinct effort to admit the truths she neglected to attend to for her whole life. While some characters in the book presume that Stew Pot hasn’t changed, there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that he changed before the narrative even began–and that his changes to come will be paramount to the novel.
Knowing your characters is one thing, but knowing your setting is another. In addition to having the neighborhood mapped out in words, May doesn’t submit to the audience’s expectation of what a cultural author is supposed to write. The characters speak colloquially, but without an accent or dialect that’s become synonymous with culturally exploitative writing. He lets every audience in and makes this novel a home to themselves, because he writes it truly as he perceives it and not to string the audience along on some exploration into a different world. These are our people and though May claims that this book is meant to capture the African-American middle-class culture, it suitably captures the American culture.
(The Q&A portion of this was awesome, by the way. Check out the podcast.)
There’s nothing I can find in fault about this novel. It ended quickly and in some ways, I don’t feel like everyone’s story was necessarily tied up, but the pivotal characters reached the end of theirs. One could argue that we should see how everyone turns out in the final chapters, but I’ll be blunt–I look forward to May’s next novel, to see if any of them come around again. I already miss them.
The Riahi Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 stars.
About the publisher: Akashic Books is a New York based, small-press publisher with a focus on Urban Lit. Like any good small press, they give a lot of support to there readers, including flying out to Chicago to help coordinate literary events that their readers take part in. In fact, I think I met their editor-in-chief once, back stage at a lit reading at the Chicago Metro. I drunkenly asked him about why he published one book in particular and, probably to my distinct disadvantage, criticized him for it. At least, that’s what I think happened. I really need to cut back to a three-drink minimum at literary readings from now on. Anyway, though they’re not frequently accepting new submissions, they do keep their eyes open for new talent. Show them you got the stuff and you might get their attention.
Between heaven and hell, there’s life to kick you in the ass toward one path or another. Whether hedging your bets on faith or preparing your soul for brimstone, there’s always another drink and another story to get you through.
Bedrock Faith, Akashic Books: “After fourteen years in prison, Gerald "Stew Pot” Reeves, age thirty-one, returns home to live with his mom in Parkland, a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. A frightening delinquent before being sent away, his return sends Parkland residents into a religiously infused tailspin, which only increases when Stew Pot announces that he experienced a religious awakening in prison. Most neighbors are skeptical of this claim, with one notable exception: Mrs. Motley, a widowed retiree and the Reeves’s next-door neighbor who loans Stew Pot a Bible, which is seen by Stew Pot and many in the community as a friendly gesture.
With uncompromising fervor (and with a new pit bull named John the Baptist), Stew Pot appoints himself the moral judge of Parkland. He discovers that a woman on his block is a lesbian and outs her to the neighborhood, the first battle in an escalating war of wills with immediate neighbors: after a mild threat from the block club president, Stew Pot reveals a secret that leaves the president’s marriage in ruin; after catching a woman from across the street snooping around his backyard, Stew Pot commits an act of intimidation that leads directly to her death.
Stew Pot’s prison mentor, an African American albino named Brother Crown, is released from prison not long after and moves in with Stew Pot and his mom. His plan is to go on a revival tour, with Stew Pot as his assistant. One night, as Stew Pot, Mrs. Reeves, and Brother Crown are witnessing around the neighborhood, a teenager from the block attempts to burn down the Reeves home. He botches the job and instead sets fire to Mrs. Motley’s house. She is just barely rescued, but her house is a total loss and she moves in with a nearby family. Neighbors are sure Stew Pot is behind the fire. The retaliations against Stew Pot continue, sending him over an emotional ledge as his life spirals out of control with grave consequences. Through the unforgettable characters of Stew Pot and Mrs. Motley, the novel provides a reflection on God, the living and the dead, and the possibilities of finding love without reservation.“
Brimstone IPA, Church Street: "Some traditions are newer than others. Church Street is proud to present our take on the American IPA with this dry-hopped Yakima Valley tribute that’s brimming with Cascade aroma, giving this tangerine-beauty a fruity and refreshing nose–don’t be surprised if you find yourself sniffing more than sipping! Large quantities of late addition hops contribute to the high IBUs, creating a bold bitterness that’s rounded out by notes of citrus and grapefruit with a slightly dry hoppy finish. Cheers!”
Reading Under the Influence celebrates their one hundredth show tomorrow night. Y'all should join me to hear readings from Laura Krughoff, author of My Brother’s Name; Eric May, author of Bedrock Faith; Johnny Misfit, host of Two-Cookie Minimum; and Emily Roth, coordinator of 7 Stories.
RUI is 21 plus. Three dollar entry fee, but I’ll wave it if you send me a message on tumblr.
Hope to see you there, tomorrow night at Sheffield’s, 3258 N. Sheffield Ave, Chicago, IL (the Belmont red-line stop)
It’s official! I’m the short story editor for the Chicago Center of Literature and Photography. Check out this week’s story: Ripped Burgers, by Matt Rowan. More to come soon.
Sad Robot Stories, written by Mason Johnson and published by The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), is a science-fiction novella told from the third-person point-of-view of Robot, an urban manufacturing robot from the not-too-distant future. Robot isn’t like other robots–sometimes, he seems a little too in touch with humanity. All for the worse when the apocalypse happens and everything dies. Everything but robots, that is. When Robot has nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, he recaptures his humanity through story, in recalling the same stories his human best friend, Mike, told him. However, not all stories have happy endings.
Mason and I have known each other for ages, probably. Back in our college days, it felt as if everyone weighed their hopes on either one of two writers in in our class. Mason and myself. Of those two writers, only one of us has successfully published something at least novella length. Yay, congratulations, Mason. When I modestly asked Mason for his autograph, he signed my book, “To my favorite anime character.” Finally, someone gets me. However, despite my affection for Mason, I’m also rife with jealousy, so expect a fair and honest review.
I actually enjoy CCLaP’s novellas. This is not the first one I purchased–although this one does have a few typos that were over-looked. Not an abundance–certainly not as many as, say, Shogun, but enough that I noticed them and have chosen to introduce them as my first lash against Sad Robot Stories. I understand that Columbia College’s fiction department didn’t put a huge emphasis on spelling and grammar, but c'mon, Mason. You edit stuff for work.
That aside, I have very few other complaints about this book. The descriptions, though brief, acknowledge the most honest details about each character in order to portray accurate, extraordinary pictures of the lives they live. And though most of the characters in this book meet their end as a result of the apocalypse, from Robot’s non-sentimental point-of-view, those characters contrive a sentiment unique in its own way as they muse about their lives, their pasts, their “futures.” In a strange way, despite how short-lived some characters were, I grew very attached to them and spent each page waiting for them to come back again. I won’t give anything away, but Johnson is very imaginative when it comes to surprising his audience.
Though Robot lacks sentiment, the narration, despite being from Robot’s point-of-view, is purposefully unreliable. What that means for this book is that, despite all hope and pain the audience feels, it comes a lot sharper because of the narrator, who chooses to include herself in spite of playing little role in Robot’s story. This sharpness is perpetuated by the narrator’s own distance from the characters and their fates, allowing us to perceive struggle in a way that’s almost objective, even in all of its subjectivity. Johnson doesn’t pound an idea into us to make us give a shit–he merely tells it straight through a point-of-view with fictitious admissions, leaving us to wonder whether that very straightness is as accurate as the story that Mason himself conceived or if it became mired heavily by the perceptions of his characters as they filled the shoes of other characters. It’s like if Catcher in the Rye were told from the point of view of Holden’s little sister, Pheobe. Except, in this case, Holden is a non-emoting robot. Or Salinger. No, Holden.
I think the most marvelous part of all is the titular moments of the story. These instances, in their own way, are the story. Sad Robot Stories is the story of a sad robot telling sad stories, sad robot stories. I thought, at first, Mason was just fucking with me when I heard the title of this book, but no moment, not even the book’s title, is wasted. Each word is carefully chosen in order to move the story quickly, at the pace of a novella, while telling the story as fully and meaningfully as possible. Whenever each line is cast out into the literary sea, they all seem to be hooked in the same fish’s mouth as the book builds to its paramount ending, one so profound with emotion that I almost shed a tear, despite imagining Mason’s handsome face smugly grinning at me after I remembered the author.
I suppose you can overlook typos. I know that when the quality of the work shines through in spite of them, I can. Though the editorial system may not have been quite so robotic, the story wasn’t either. It’s carefully littered with meaning, emotion, and character, pureed into one beautiful, imaginative, powerful, sad, robot story. I have no other alternative but to give Mason the rating he deserves.
The Riahi Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 stars
About the publisher: CCLaP, or the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, is a small-press publisher that’s been hitting hard on getting emerging writers out there, to share their voices with the world in a very underrated medium, the novella. Their first work I read was by Lauryn Allison Lewis, called Solo/Down, which I very much enjoyed too, so the quality certainly shows. I recently had the opportunity to chat with their editor-in-chief on facebook, and while I don’t have a transcript on hand, I can say that there’s big things coming for this company. If you’ve got the work and you think it’s worth a shot, pay them a visit, read their pieces, and send them some of your own. It may take you further than you ever anticipated.
Twilight of the Idiots, written by Joseph G. Peterson and edited by Behnam Riahi, is now available for domestic and international pre-orders at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography’s website.
Mason Johnson, author of Sad Robot Stories, built up quite a repute by hosting a literary reading across the street from Revolution Brewery. Hence, the choice of beer–and what better choice? A hometown beer paired with a hometown writer will bring the Chicago side out of you.
Sad Robot Stories, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography: “Robot is one of millions of androids on an Earth that recently saw the extinction of human life. While Robot’s mechanical brothers and sisters seem happy, Robot finds himself lost and missing the only friend he had, a human named Mike whose family accepted Robot as a piece of their personal puzzle. Without both the mistakes and the capacity for miracles that define human civilization, is civilization even worth having? Explore this question in the hilarious yet heartbreaking full-length debut of popular Chicago performer Mason Johnson. A Kurt Vonnegut for the 21st century, his answers are simultaneously droll, surprising and touching, and will make you rethink the limits of what a storyteller can accomplish within science fiction.”
Bottom Up Wit, Revolution Brewery: “Our interpretation of this classic and refreshing Belgian style ale is brewed with organic pilsner and wheat malts from Canada. Freshly ground coriander and Curacao orange peel, along with a special Wit yeast strain, contribute wonderful orange and citrus aromas and a crisp, yet silky, mouthfeel.”
When working with Matt Rowan, I learned a lot of things that every writer ought to know. Mostly, no matter how narrow your perspective is on quality literature, there will always be those writers–the ones who truly make art–that break that notion and convey ideas and emotions more complex than the page should allow for. Today, the pieces that Matt wrote and that I simply struggled to keep up with are out in print. If you’re looking for brilliant writing that’s built on a foundation of both whimsy and the serendipitous, you need not look any further.
Bodega, a tech company started by two former Google employees that’s already accrued $2.5 million in venture capital financing and opened as many as 30 ‘stores’ in the San Francisco area, places vending machines within apartment buildings and offices. Using your credit card and connected app, you can access these cabinets filled with nonperishable items, where a camera will scan and automatically charge you for items you pick up. However, Latin Americans find the use of the word “bodega” offensive, as well as the implication that this new service will replace family-owned corner stores across the country.
This controversy came right off the heels of the Google memo, when one Google employee called diversity into question and was subsequently fired. In similar suit, when initially asked by Fast Company, Bodega founder Paul McDonald stated that he “wasn’t particularly concerned” about what the response from Hispanic Americans would be to the name, though he changed his tone after the uproar against Bodega on social media and in the news.
On September 13th, Paul McDonald, apologized in a post on Medium.com. He explained that his intention wasn’t to put the corner store out of business, saying, “We want to bring commerce to places where commerce currently doesn’t exist. Rather than take away jobs, we hope Bodega will help create them.” He also explained the onus of naming his app ‘Bodega,’ saying, “We did some homework — speaking to New Yorkers, branding people, and even running some survey work asking about the name and any potential offense it might cause.” Though we don’t know what market research was done in testing the name, he followed up with this statement: “But it’s clear that we may not have been asking the right questions of the right people.”
Reaction:
According to Latino USA on NPR, Bodega is loosely translated from Spanish for wine-cellar or the hold of a ship. However, it’s become ubiquitous with the family owned corner stores that populate urban areas, usually started by immigrants. A stereotypical New Yorker usually defines his identity by knowing the name of the cat that frequents his local bodega. As immigrants, bodega owners face many challenges–everything from overhead to ICE.
The response to McDonald’s apology has been met with great cynicism. Mentions of the company escalated quickly–so did negative sentiment. Frank Garcia, chairman of the National Association of Latino Chambers of Commerce is quoted as saying, “The ‘bodega’ name is a very important name in the Puerto Rican and Hispanic community. It has always been a house for immigrants to buy in. With all of the anti-immigrant issues, I think using the name 'Bodega’ is an issue.”
Many questions remain unanswered. Did the founders of Bodega actually do any research into their name? Will they change their name? Their failure to communicate since their apology has left a lot of consumers wondering if they’re already finished. With articles still coming out accusing Bodega of trying to close corner stores, it appears that there is no resolution in sight for the company.
Page Principles:
Prove it with action. It’s one thing to apologize, but if you need to change what you’re doing wrong. Though consumers can appreciate their explanation of why they named their app “Bodega,” the apology falls on deaf ears unless you do something about it.
Listen to Stakeholders. Bodega (the app) certainly heard the outcry in social media and in the news, but failed to address their central issues. Since their apology, the dialogue has been one-way–not the conversation that they need to have toward creating a more appropriately named app.
Realize that an enterprise’s true character is expressed by its people. Admitting error takes a lot of guts, but the apology seems insincere. Even though Paul’s partner, Ashwath Rajan, is Southeast Asian, Bodega appears to be yet another example of white privilege, and of Silicon Valley taking away employment opportunity.