Canton, Licia. Almond Wine and Fertility. Montreal: Longbridge Books, 2008.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviews 195 gives great depth to the Italian-Canadian experience, helping to dismantle stereotypes just when it seems that he could easily confirm them in a rush of sentimentality.Carley celebrates the charm and uniqueness of Italian-Canadian culture but does not ignore its human realities-a feud between mother and son, the despair after a loved one's death.He recognizes the tension between Italian immigrants and their Canadian-born families; enchanted by his time in Angelo's yard and Lina's kitchen, he wants to rescue "the old ways" and teach them to his own children (15).Carley's position in relation to his Italian-Canadian subjects is probably the most intellectually interesting element of his book.Not only is his book an immense pleasure to read, it also offers a unique, sympathetic and valuable perspective on Italian immigration and Italian-Canadian culture.Polenta at Midnight documents the joyful struggle of a Canadian man with a language and culture that are alien to him but with which he has fallen in love.Carley feels enchanted by the Italian traditions that the Molinaro family has brought to Canada: "The cycle of seasons, the efficient current of life, the immensity and choreography of souls" (22).His ability to synthesize these great-hearted feelings is matched by his eye for detail -from his father-in-law's rebar and Vin Bon containers to his wife's subtle modulations between "Mary" and "Maria."He transmits even the most mundane of images, like pasta swirling in a pot, in a magical light.It is a book that is full of humour and poignancy and is, above all else, completely human.It is a fine entertainment, and is sure to reward any readers who are interested in Italian-Canadian literature, the philosophy of immigration, or good books.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.128 | 0.036 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".