Hurrication in NYC

Just wanted to post a few pictures from NYC post-hurricane. A beautiful time of people coming together to share resources. One of the reasons I love the Lower East Side. No where else like it. 

The few places that had generators offered neighbors electricity to charge their phones, at least until they started running out of gas... This charging station was at TNC. There was a constant line of at least ten people, I was told.

Free tofu at Commodities!

Free ramen at Rai Rai Ken!

Free curry at Sapporo!

Jeff and I chow down on some free curry. Delicious.

The lit-up deli is like a beacon in the dark East Village.

How gorgeous the restaurants were, all quiet and lit by candles.

Avenue A in the dark.

Avenue A restaurant Flea Market in the dark.

Blackout Tourists: Halloween Adventures in Darkville

It was already dusk when my friend Sheridan and I climbed the ramp onto the Williamsburg Bridge, walking in the opposite direction of most people, who were headed to Brooklyn for power and a shower. "Why are they going to the East Village?" I heard someone say. But I had been feeling  cut off for days, obsessively keeping track of friends in Loisaida as the East River overflowed and turned Avenue C into a river. Emergencies bring out the best in the East Village and I was really missing being a part of the neighborhood's beautiful big-hearted spirit. As my friend Joel said, "It's like Burning Man meets a Rainbow Gathering!"

It was also like the early 1800s. We were on our way to meet Joel on the darkened corner of Avenue A and 10th Street. Buzzers didn't work, he said, and neither did cell phones, so we were back to those days when you made a fixed appointment to meet up with someone. Of course, we were already half an hour late. As we passed the halfway point on the bridge and there were no more lights, my cell phone rang. Apparently, Joel had scrounged up a phone and plugged in his moribund landline, which he had kept for emergencies just like this. But the phone cut off just as he told me to meet him at his home instead.

A dark lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge. 

Delancey Street without lights. 

I repeatedly tried calling him as we got off the bridge but the phone refused to cooperate. Apparently, in Darkville, there were no phones. There were also no traffic lights. A policeman in a yellow slicker with reflective stripes was directing cars as they came off the bridge onto Delancey Street. We turned up Clinton Street while I continued to dial Joel's number. But when I finally got through to him, a friend answered the phone and said that he had gone out on the street corner to try to meet me.

So I gave up calling and concentrated on getting to Avenue A as quickly as possible. As he had told me, the Lower East Side seemed peaceful and beautiful, bathed in darkness. A few restaurants were open, serving dinner by candlelight. No music, limited food, lots of wine. I had heard that earlier, restaurants were giving away food for free. It made me think of the novel Germanie Lacerteux by the Goncourt Brothers, which begins with a description of a lavish communal dinner on the streets of Paris at the height of the horror in the French Revolution.

When we got to Houston Street, I was surprised that there were no policemen at all. It certainly wasn't like the blackout in 2004, when cops swarmed around everywhere, putting red flares in the middle of each intersection. A few cars crept by warily as we scurried across the avenue, Sheridan frantically waved her blinking light like a kid trying to do tricks with a yoyo.

Only one restaurant was open on Avenue B and on the normally busy strip of Avenue A between 6th and 10th Street , flickering yellow candlelight could be seen in only three establishments  - the bar part of Sidewalk Cafe, Niagara, and the relatively new taco joint La Lucha. Most of the familiar old bars and restaurants that had been there since the 1980s were dark and shuttered - Benny's, 7A, Lucy's, Odessa, Ray's. Tompkins Square Park was shut tight. But as we passed by, there was the unmistakable rustle and squeak every New Yorker knows. The headlights of a passing car revealed that behind the park gate at 8th Street, a generous misguided soul had scattered birdseed that was being consumed by a hundred hungry rats.

Joel was not on the corner of Avenue A and 10th, so we proceeded to his apartment. But the buzzer didn't work and neither did my phone, so we milled around outside uncertainly until someone who had been walking his dog let us in. "Joel?" I called when we got to the courtyard of his rear building. "Vicky?" he responded from somewhere in the dark. We heard footsteps and saw a light weaving around in the dark, as he descended from the third floor to open the door.

Joel was in the middle of washing his dishes. We opened a bottle of wine as he told us that a friend was going to be cooking a huge dinner on 10th Street. At 7:30, he ran downstairs to let another friend in. "I'll finish washing your dishes," I volunteered and went into his kitchen. After a few minutes fiddling with his faucet in puzzlement, I realized that the dishes had to be rinsed with water that was boiling on the stove since nothing but cold water came from the tap.

Joel came upstairs with Monica, who was wearing eye make-up that looked like an expressionistic mask. I couldn't tell what she was - a sexy raccoon from the 1920s? - but I wished I had a costume. So far, she and Sheridan were the only two people whom I saw dressed for Halloween. Sheridan was a Zoo Creeper from Killema Zoo, a costume she had created for a haunted house in a park she works at.  I hadn't had time to put together a costume before the storm hit and I felt rather lame in their company. "Would you like a trick or a treat?" Monica asked archly. "A treat!" Sheridan squealed. Monica instructed us to rummage through a giant brown leather bag and pick something. Sheridan pulled out a glittery skull made of styrofoam. I got a tampon.

Joel finished washing his dishes and began to put on his Halloween costume, a dapper outfit from the early 1900s. I wanted to say hello to a few friends whom I hadn't heard from and Monica also had a friend she wanted to visit, so we all told Joel that we would meet him at his friend's place for dinner in about fifteen minutes. "Just holler Bianca when you get there," he informed us.

We parted ways with Monica on Avenue A and set out for my old apartment building on 11th Street and Avenue C. When we arrived, we saw that a generator was running, apparently pumping water out of the basement of the building. The door was open, so we entered and immediately noticed how damp and musty the building smelled. The first floor had quite obviously been flooded. Later, I heard that there had been a river between 8th Street and 14th Street on Avenue C, which was quit natural since it was all landfill on marshy ponds here anyway. Picking our way up in the dark, we knocked on Apartment 16 and spent a few minutes catching up with my old friend Sense, who was huddled in the dark with a few candles. He told me his wife and daughter were in Brooklyn.

Then we walked down Avenue C and found a cook-out happening in front of C-Squat, one of the remaining squats in the neighborhood and the only one that still hosted raucous semi-legal punk rock shows. Jerry the Peddler was outside with a bunch of the usual punks and crusties. I asked about the museum that had just opened on the ground floor of the squat and he confirmed that the basement had flooded and they had lost some artifacts. We also stopped at my friend Chip's apartment, but he wasn't there so I left a note for him on his door. Then we doubled back up Avenue B and ran into a group of my son's friends in front of Sheen's Deli, which apparently is selling candles in the dark for twice as much as usual.

Sheridan the Zoo Creeper in conversation with Jerry the Peddler in front of C-Squat. 

On the corner of 8th and C, Darkville. 

Making a call  to Chip the old-fashioned way. 

As we arrived on 10th Street, we heard someone yelling, "Bianca!"  It was Joel, outside with a friend, who was on her way to the alternative Halloween Parade. Monica had not yet arrived. I was intrigued with the idea of an unofficial Halloween Parade but we were hungry. Bianca came down eventually and led us up to her apartment, where we had a fantastic dinner of coconut shrimp and fish with two other friends. When they found out that Sheridan and I had come from Williamsburg they said, "Oh, you're blackout tourists!" We all moaned about eating so much in the past few days but that didn't prevent us from polishing our plates. Dinner was punctuated with Joel occasionally leaning out the window shouting, "Monica???" She never showed up.

Joel in costume at Bianca's for dinner. 

We eat like kings in Darkville. 

A Darkville dinner. 

After dinner, we hitched a cab back to Williamsburg and found normality rather strange. People were in costume and bars were full. Halloween as usual. I wished we had seen the alternative parade but it was fun going to the Monster Mash at Glasslands, where the top costumes included a guy dressed as a bloody vagina and a girl in a giant lobster costume made of red felt. I still felt stupid for not having a costume. Someone asked, "What are you?" I brandished my camera and said, "A blackout tourist!"

Alana Amram on Halloween.  

Halloween at Glasslands. 

Lady and a lizard. 

Mary and Jesus DJ-ing. 

Outside Glasslands at the Monster Mash. 

Breakfast in Taiwan

It's weird that I am so nostalgic over Taiwanese breakfasts. I just realized that maybe this is because it's pretty much the only meal I consistently had with my family. Now that I'm in Taiwan to finish the film, I find myself on the hunt for the perfect traditional Taiwanese breakfast, although since I'm alone, it won't be the lavish meals I remember with congee, fermented tofu, pickles and Taiwanese sausages from the man who sells them in the street.

Today I just might have found the go-to amazing Taiwanese breakfast hole-in-the-wall. Attracted by a little mark on the map that I received from the hostel, I made my way down Tingzhou Road (汀州路) past a bunch of motorcycle chop shops. I walked right past the place the first time, but when I doubled back, I sighted a tray of crullers and some sesame cakes outside a cluttered place with a U-shaped counter. 

Great hole-in-the-wall traditional Taiwanese breakfast.

I ordered cold soy milk and a rice roll (fan tuan, 飯卷). It might not look like much but wow, it was incredible. Soy milk in Asia is so different than those boxes of Eden Soy in America, thinner in texture, more subtle in taste. At this place, the soy milk tasted like the soy milk I remember making with my grandmother. And the fan tuan was fantastic - the cruller on the inside perfectly crisped, pieces of salted pickled vegetables providing just the right amount of briny crunch, the rice just the right stickiness to hold together without being too moist.  A bunch of high school students came in right after I did and ordered taro bread and egg in sesame bread (dan bing, 蛋餅), which I will try next time. 

Home-made and delicious.

Then I crossed the road to Shi Da, thinking I would get myself a cup of coffee. The market was in full swing - glad it's still there, since I've been hearing about official efforts to clean the area up. 

Guavas, plums and other fruit.

Shi Kia and Japanese pears.

Fruit is the other thing I am always nostalgic over since I seem to be allergic to nearly every fruit in America. I love those green guavas from Taiwan and I nearly bought a shi kia, in the Bahamas it's called a sugar apple, but the fruit vendor said that they needed a day to get ripe, so I demurred, thinking it would be disaster if I had to carry one around all day. 

After walking through the market, the straps for my camera bag were digging into my back and soaked with sweat. No coffee shops seemed to be in the area except for Starbucks, which I will avoid even if I am about to die of heatstroke. I decided to try Grandma Nitti's Kitchen,  a place I've been to before and liked. Unfortunately, their coffee is pre-sweetened and I can barely drink it. Ugh. Must. Find. Coffee. If I am to be semi-articulate for my second interview with Peng Ming Min. 

More about my trip to Taiwan is on the website for ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN - this is a personal little sidebar that didn't seem fitting to add to the film website.

No More Nice Nightingale

The Nightingale is about a nondescript little grey bird who wows the Chinese court with its song but is replaced by a bejeweled mechanical wonder that can only sing waltzes. It's actually pretty fitting that the controversy at La Jolla Playhouse should be over the casting of a musical based on this fairytale.

In case you've somehow missed hearing about it, out of twelve actors, only two are Asian. The Emperor of China is being played by a white guy; there are no Asian men. It's supposed to be 'multicultural' and set in a mythical not-necessarily Asian land. It's also supposed to be a workshop production. But let's face it, for a play set somewhere vaguely Oriental, all the people in power are white guys. Instead of taking on the real deal - Asian actors for a musical set in China - La Jolla Playhouse has opted for the artificial bird. And it sings the old familiar tune. I mean, can we say The Good Earth?

I'm a little late on the bandwagon for this because it's really depressing to me. As if being in the arts isn't hard enough, if you're Asian-American apparently you can't even get cast in a musical set in China.

What's worse is that this play is in San Diego - home to over 400,000 Asians. I think it's the 10th largest population of Asians in the country. UC San Diego, which is in La Jolla, has a student body that is 44% Asian and only 24% Caucasian. Has La Jolla Playhouse never had a discussion as to how it might appeal to this demographic? Do they just assume that Asians aren't interested in theater? Or maybe they think Asians would be too meek to complain?

And the play is directed by Moises Kaufman, a director I really like. I remember him way back in like 1988. He directed one of his first plays in New York at Theater for the New City, back when I lived in cage in the basement. You would think a Jewish, Romanian-Ukrainian maricón from Venezuela would be a little more sensitive and inclusive.

Plus this comes right on the heels of the Knicks giving up Jeremy Lin. I mean, jeez, this kid plays on a level that electrifies the entire world, makes the cover of Sports Illustrated twice, instigates a rush on tickets at Madison Square, gets the most unlikely people to watch sports (including me, yes I confess), and even with that much game, he doesn't rate more than one offer.

So yeah, I've been pretty discouraged, with these events corroborating what I've been feeling about the deck being stacked. I mean it's hard enough being poor and a woman, but being Asian-American too, I'm a triple nightingale. An overlooked bird, an outsider to the palace. It doesn't matter how well we sing. Or play ball.

So with all that, I drank a glass of wine tonight and watched the entire hour-long panel discussion at La Jolla Playhouse that took place yesterday. I swear, in my curmudgeonly old age, I'm turning into a wino. And a cat lady. But the panel was actually a lot more hopeful than I expected.

After a brief upset when it seemed the creative team might not even attend, Moises Kaufman and writer Steven Sater were indeed present, as were casting director Tara Rubin, and Christopher Ashley, the Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse. On the other side of the room were the angry Asian-Americans: Cindy Cheung and Christine Toy Johnson, both of them representing AAPAC, and Andy Lowe, founder and producer of Chinese Pirate Productions.

The moderator started things off by asking the Asians what they thought about the play. Christine struggled with emotions as she said, "To see this production....which clearly to me looks like it was set China...with so few Asian-American faces... reminds me how invisible we still are and how we are so often not invited to sit at the table. And to not be invited to sit at the table in a play that takes place in an Asian country, is like a knife to the heart."

Cindy added, "I'm still getting over the shock of seeing it and having so many people being okay with this. It was disturbing."

This made me think of a strange experience I had two years ago when I went to Governor's Island on a balmy night with one of my closest friends. There was something Dutch going on that day and we stayed late and danced to a band from Holland. Then the singer announced that it was the last song of the night and launched into something that went (I kid you not), "There was an old man from Hong Kong and he once said something very wise... ching chong ching chong chong ching chong." Not only was everyone expected to dance to this, but they were encouraged to sing along to ching chong ching chong, which the entire crowd of over a hundred people did. Gleefully. Even my friend, who is one of the smartest guys I know, obliviously enjoyed himself while I tried not to be horrified. I am still flabbergasted by this experience.

But I digress. There was a previous panel that was instigated by AAPAC, which I didn't manage to attend, partly because I had a bit of an issue with how it seemed they were knocking at the gate of the elites, can we come in pretty please? But I guess that was my curmudgeon talking, because after watching the entire panel, it did seem that something crystallized.

First, the Artistic Director, Christopher Ashley, conducted the discussion with grace, unlike Guthrie Theater's Artistic Director Joe Dowling, whose televised response to a question about the lack of women and minorities in the theater's 50th season was, "This is a self-serving argument that doesn't hold water." In contrast, Ashley apologized, "We did not intend to offend fellow artists or the Asian-American community. We did so and we are sorry."

But change doesn't just come from the ones in power - it has to come from the ground too. And there did seem to be a rumble of something shifting during the (mostly unfortunate) audience comments, which began inauspiciously with an old lady who wondered if there were enough talented Asians out there and also what did it matter. Sigh.

After she spoke, the audience seemed to be sharply divided between angry Asian people who shouted and had to be shut up, and non-Asians who rambled in circular platitudes that only illuminated their confusion at why everyone was so upset. Why can't we all get along? I really liked what one angry (Asian, male) audience member said before he was shouted down for going on too long, "When the Asian play comes along, it's suddenly 'mythical' and 'multicultural'... It's incredibly irritating to hear terms like 'multicultural' and 'color-blind' used to reduce the number of minority roles."

But Cindy had already laid it all out on the table and it was a royal flush, "There was a point in history when it was acceptable to have a white person play Othello... and at some point, the community stepped up and said this is no longer acceptable.... The Asian-American community is saying it now. That we find it unacceptable as well."

She was even bad-ass enough to throw down an extra ace in her sleeve, "We know [the play is] not a finished product and it's why we are here, to influence. We don't want to see this anymore. If it were a finished product, we would be outside with pickets. And we will be if it keeps going." 

So maybe a sea change really is occurring. As both Cindy and Christine said, it's no longer the way it used to be back in the prehistoric age like twenty years ago, when the Asian-American theater community really was like a small high school. Now it's like a dozen high schools who have play-offs and debates and dances together. After which they get on the Staten Island Ferry and make out. While I go home to my cat and a glass of wine.

But okay, Asian-American theater community, now in addition to prying open the gentry's gates a little, how about some support for Asian-American producers so we can survive and come up with more work for everyone? I might even make out with you on the Staten Island Ferry then.

Rating the Dating Game

I don’t date. I find the whole concept ludicrous and rather unsavory. Yet two weeks ago, I suddenly decided to put up a profile on OK Cupid. 

What precipitated this strange impulse was my shocked realization that it’s been nearly twenty years since I was last alone. And everything I used to do twenty years ago no longer exists. The new East Village doesn’t have any more second-hand bookstores and vintage shops to hang out in. That scene is long gone and I’m gone too – transplanted to Brooklyn, where I don’t know any shopkeepers by name, where I never run into people I know on the street. 

So it’s been lonely. And I sort of fell for a guy who isn’t available or that interested in me. Maybe so I could stop being so angry with the guy whom I had been with for ten years and also finally get over another ridiculous infatuation. For nearly a year, I’ve been trying to stamp out every pesky smoldering flame in my badly charred heart. I suppose OK Cupid was my next line of attack. 

Not that I'm sure that I am cut out for another long-term relationships or god forbid, marriage. For so many women, success in life is contingent upon landing a guy like a giant floppy six-foot fish. “Don’t worry, you’ll be married one day,” my friend’s mother said to her once, as if she was to be pitied for being single. And that’s the attitude of many women who are otherwise so independent. Researchers were surprised that in a national study of 1,000 female college students, 91% agreed to the statement, “Being married is a very important goal for me.” [1]

Of course it's not just women. Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin theorizes in his book The Marriage-Go-Round that Americans idealize marriage because of their deep-seated religious heritage, but they also have a contradictory belief in individual freedom and the right to self-fulfillment, which results in Americans getting married and divorced at twice the rate of other countries. [2]

I can’t think of anything more horrifying than a big church wedding with six women wearing the same dress. It always makes me think of the phrase “a fate worse than death.” I suppose I’m more European in this regard. The World Values Survey, a study of sixty countries in 2000, reported that 26% of the British and 36% of the French think that marriage is an outdated institution, compared with just 10% of Americans. [3]

But love? I can’t seem to help it. Love strikes me like lightning. I remember once being in an acting class and a guy whom I had known for three years and hardly ever noticed turned in my direction and BAM. We both made some lame excuse to leave early and once out on the street, we got as far the corner before making out by the mailbox.

He was my second big love (my first love also happened instantaneously) but he was weirded out by my lack of rules or expectations. “It feels like I could just walk all over you,” he once said to me in disgust. I had a nervous breakdown getting over him. Mysterious red blotches erupted on my face and I couldn’t get out of bed for weeks, not that I would have wanted to even if I could have, since I looked pretty mortifying. Maybe love doesn’t strike me like lightning; it's more like a recurring case of bubonic plague. 

The only time I had ever been on a date was when I was fifteen. Every time I pass by the 8^th Street subway station, I see my teenage self leaning against the pizza shop in a way that I hoped would look nonchalant, wearing a slit satin skirt and slouchy grey sweater that I had borrowed from my best friend. But even that wasn’t really a date since we both knew perfectly well that we would find our way to some corner where we could make out. His message was clear – he had been flipping rubber bands at me in math class for weeks. 

I know I’m a pretty strange phenomenon, like a time traveler, or someone who came from an alien planet. I basically make up all my own rules, since I didn’t grow up with any. Or rather, shuttled in between New York City and Taiwan, I grew up with two sets of rules that sort of cancelled each other out. I learned social conduct not from my absentee immigrant workaholic parents or even from television and magazines, but from the classic novels that I devoured. Dating was consequently not part of my understanding of the world. Heathcliff and Cathy definitely did not go on dates. Daisy and Gatsby didn’t either. Not even the odiously plebian Elizabeth Bennet and stuffy Mr. Darcy went on dates. 

Dating is mostly a post-war American phenomenon. Teenagers in bobby socks sipping Coca Cola together at a soda fountain. Groping one another in a movie theater. Exchanging school rings. There is something very juvenile and Norman Rockwell about dating. 

For those who can't picture life otherwise, dating as we know it came about from the rise of both youth culture and the entertainment industry after the first World War. For the previous hundred or so years, courtship had taken place at home, with men coming over to have some tea and listen to women play piano. [4] That's what Tennessee Williams was writing about with the Gentleman Caller in The Glass Menagerie. But in the 1910s, courtship started to become a public event, relocated to movie theaters, dance halls, and restaurants. Dating became marked by competition and consumption, fueled by new magazines that advised sorority girls who didn’t have a date to turn off the lights in their rooms and pretend that they did.

The new online dating scene also taps into latent voyeurism. I confess that I rather like being able to secretly check out what people are interested in, how they write about themselves, what they think is hip and sexy and hot. But with the shoe on the other foot, I'm not so comfortable. I guess having been exposed to the public for half of my life, I'm pretty cagey about what I am ready to reveal to perfect strangers. I tried to write something about my age and the kid, but I finally just ended up saying, maybe I'll tell you if we meet in person. 

But privacy issue of online profiles aside, what really bothers me about dating itself is that it's intrinsically calculating.  Underneath dating culture, sociologist Martin Whyte sees a “marketplace learning scenario,” in which “people date a large number and variety of others to acquire experience that will enable them, it is hoped, to make prudent choices.”  Paul Hollander notes in his book Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Love in America, “American-style dating … incorporates two not entirely consonant goals: the pursuit of romance and intense emotional involvement on the one hand, and on the other a deliberate, self-conscious rational, trial-and-error procedure of sampling potentially available partners.”[5]

It’s very strange to me, this notion of being so prosaic about forming a partnership. One sociologist said in a July 1953 New York Times Magazine article that ideally, everyone should date 25 to 50 people before deciding who to marry. That kind of assembly-line dating sounds like another fate worse than death.

But I’ve given it a go and so far, I’ve been on four dates. The first was a jazz musician. We ate at a Thai restaurant, after which we went back to the jazz club where he was tuning a piano. The second was to a bicyclist and photographer recovering from his own ten-year relationship. We had dinner and walked around a little. I brought the third guy, a writer who teaches creative writing at NYU, to a party where he knew a few people. I met the fourth guy for tapas and we talked about his animal rescue work. 

They're all quite nice and maybe in other situations, if we had met at a party or on the subway, we would be friends. But with the OK Cupid set-up, this seems somewhat unlikely.  And I don't know if I like the position it puts me in. Maybe other people who are used to this sort of set-up know what to say or do, but it just feels like I'm inviting random guys to hit on me over drinks or dinner. This already happens to me plenty enough without me needing to go looking for it. Do other women like this? I find it rather uncomfortable and I never know how to react to it.  I would much rather be struck by lightning. Or wait around for the next bout of the plague. 

But maybe my attitude is rather childish. Maybe I would be more likely to aggressively pursue a relationship if I wasn’t so ambivalent about it all. But what is this need to have a mate? Why isn't it a group of friends enough? I mean besides the sex issue, which does get pretty difficult at times.  Maybe I am from some other planet after all.

The whole thing is making me feel that it's not fair of me to have a profile up on OK Cupid since everyone on it has a set of expectations that I don't know if I share. So I’ve been thinking I will shut down my profile after this brief sociological experiment. But, just to keep an open mind, I'll finish go on dates with the guys I've already been corresponding with: an actor, two artists, a random guy from Kentucky whose picture I like, and an Italian doctor who wrote me twice, the second time in Italian begging me to write him back, so I did. While we don't have much in common, he did mention that in the Italian language, there is no equivalent to the word “dating” – it’s not a concept they have there. 

Hilariously, the day after I set up my profile, OK Cupid sent me an exultant message about a great match. It turned out to be my ex-boyfriend of ten years, who unbeknownst to me had also put up a profile on OK Cupid a few months previously.  “We're a 96% match!" he messaged me, "Will you go out on a date with me?” I laughed until I cried. 

Maybe I should move to Europe.

---

[1] Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt. “Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today.” Institute for American Values, 2001.

[2] Andrew J. Cherlin. The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (New York: Knopf, 2009).

[3] Ronald Inglehart, Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross Cultureal Sourcebook Based on the 1999-2002 Values Surveys (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2004), 158.

[4] Beth L. Bailey. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989).

[5] Paul Hollander. Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Romantic Love in America (United Kingdom: Ivan R. Dee, 2011), 25.