We Grown Now-Minhal Baig
When I was living in Detroit during the year of 2009 I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with and had managed to cultivate a decent little group of friends since I had arrived in the area two years earlier—which says a lot for a Buckeye transient. But the only problem was that everyone I had come to develop a kinship with worked at the casino and had completely different schedules than me.
Monday and Tuesday nights off in a major city at the abyss of its century-spanning demise (where my social circle was the size of a dot) such as Detroit, led to fleeting searches for anything that was the least bit entertaining to fill my void of loneliness during alotted leisure time.
The only bars around where I lived in Allen Park were lame geriatric watering holes and I could only spend so many hours at Lifetime Fitness before that grew to become boring.
I don't know if it is still the case in the Motor City, but when I was living there, it was legal to run poker rooms in the banquet halls of bowling alleys. Most all of these rooms featured tournaments with modest buy-in's and deep structures that were more appealing to the frugal gambler (such as myself) and I decided to play in one on a Monday in some westside suburb I had never heard of before called Garden City.
I got on I-94 W and drove for about twenty minutes until I got off at Exit 200 for Ecorse Road then made a right on Inkster Road.
It wasn't but 500 feet later that the signs began to appear...
A base head, shirtless (during March) with Saran wrap skin stretched tight against the ladder of his ribcage, wandering around in circles, sputtering incoherent sentence fragments and gibberish—a soliloquy to an audience of ghosts at the corner of Van Born.
OK, that'll happen. I surmised.
Char-broiled houses.
Garbage strewn like vomit across front lawns.
Small hills of rubber tires.
The unique and classic hallmarks of Detroit's blight greeted me a long the way to arrive at the corner of Annapolis and Inkster Road to come face to face with Demby Terrace—otherwise known as "Little Saigon."
I was twenty minutes west of Hart Plaza, yet still, I found myself knee-deep in some outpost of Detroit filth.
*In the dirty D (as anyone can attest to) this is not difficult to do. One missed exit to Third Street or Livernois and you could end up in Highland Park, Hamtramck, or even Delray where the desolate landscape of urban prairies and windowless tenements appears like the aftermath of a bombing raid. And for those rabid Marshall Mathers fans wishing to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of 8 Mile and get off early at 7….God help you.*
Gradually the blight decreased as I continued going North until I reached Warren Road and made a left to find the bowling alley shortly thereafter (where I proceeded not to cash in the tournament).
I couldn't help but be a bit intrigued by my little misadventure and when I got to work that Wednesday to sit across from my friend Joe, I began to inquire further about Inkster.
"Hey man, what do you know about a city called Inkster?"
Evidently, this sobering inquiry was tantamount to a glass of water thrown in his face, as he shot his head in my direction with eyes as wide as china plate saucers.
"You didn't go through there? Did you?" He interrogated harshly.
"Well…yeah. To get to Garden City."
"You don't go through there man. That area is worse than Detroit. Certain parts of Taylor too. Wayne also. All those cities suck."
"What the hell is with this metro? Are there any nice spots?" I wondered out loud.
He only laughed and went back to watching the television screen before we began our shift.
I dove into Google when I got home to see what I could dig up on the city of Inkster and why the local townsfolk had given the housing projects, Demby Terrace, such a degrading nickname as "Little Saigon". After a little research, I found out that—during a more primitive chapter of American history—in order to appease frightened townsfolk in neighboring Dearborn, Inkster was where Henry Ford originally housed all the African American workers who labored at his main factory.
The work-well eventually dried up and poverty struck the area like a plague. With no work and idle time crime began to spread. Coming to a harrowing apex on July 9th of 1987 when the unfortunate moniker of Little Saigon emerged from an incident on Michigan Avenue where a family staying at a motel that was being served a court summons for a bad check opened fire on the officers and ended up killing three of them.
While this didn't happen at Demby Terrace, the stigma stuck to the area and floated down through time to attach itself to the housing projects and spurn urban legends that last until this very day.
As time went along and I wandered about that station of my life aimlessly, I found myself driving back to that area during the winter and making geographic circles around the projects. Going West on Annapolis then North on Henry Ruff to Michigan Avenue and then rounding back South on Inkster Road.
There was something about the desolation that left a haunting stamp upon my mind's eye and drew me to return several times. A strange habit, I admit, but one which would serve to be the impetus for my first novel.
I moved away from Detroit in 2010 and since then have never ventured back to Inkster. But, oftentimes, when I feel the need to walk down memory lane, I'll do a Google hike down around Demby Terrace to see if things have changed.
These are only personal reflections of my limited perspective with housing projects. I no longer view Demby Terrace with the twenty-five year old goggles of morbid wanderlust, but, with a sort of detachment of bittersweet memories. During a time where I was a bit lost in life, and found a strange solace with the area.
In a more infamous spotlight are the Southside Chicago projects of Cabrini-Green.
Before seeing We Grown Now, I had already heard of Cabrini-Green thanks to the movie Candyman, which was featured and filmed at Cabrini-Green.
Cabrini-Green and the ABLA projects are about as rough as it gets.
"The editors’ indifference is understandable. In CHA towers, babies have been tossed out of windows and teenagers shoved down elevator chutes; intruders sometimes bust right through apartment walls to rape and murder tenants. So what’s so unusual about a medicine cabinet murder?"-Steve Bogira, Reader, September 3, 1987
When I sat down to watch We Grown Now, cognizant of the aforementioned violence attached to Cabrini-Green, I was prepared for a Veitnamesque tale of survival featuring two kids trying to emerge from one of the wildest concrete jungles ever to exist in modern history.
I foresaw children dodging bullets, drug dealers, and sadistic Bigger Thomas bullies while enduring the traumatic scenery of domestic violence and crack binges.
But that was not what I got at all.
As I watched Malik and Eric make the best of their surroundings, I was instantly catapulted back into my youth—where tapping into your imagination was done with much greater ease and regularity than it is now.
Where I grew up, along the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks of Westlake/Cleveland, there was a flattened area where construction crews would place their bulky materials for future use. Rows of waxed metal, plastic coils of pipe, stacks of wooden skids, street signs, and various other materials. To the adult eye: nothing more than the storage area for a construction firm. But what we had at that age was a seemingly endless configuration of mazes and obstacles that kept us entertained from dawn to dusk. Games of manhunt and hide-and-go-seek would last for hours between the stacks of wooden pallets and metal under-bracelets, dodging imaginary bad guys and boogeymen lurking around every bend. We would do front flips and back flips from the crest of plastic piping onto felled stacks and not feel a thing. Combine these elements with an abutted woods and you had paradise on earth.
While Minhal, the director, acknowledges the challenging surroundings of Cabrini-Green, it is not the focus of the film. It more or less serves as an indifferent third character to Malik and Eric. The unseen and unspoken third musketeer of their trio, providing endless hallways, staircases, and discarded toys for the children to play with. As an adult, we could walk into the derelict bedroom of any number of abandoned apartments in Cabrini-Green—layered with discarded mattresses and other furniture—and see nothing but blight. But those limitations for the boys don't exist. They possess the ability to lay on leftover bed springs and gaze beyond the cracked plaster of the ceilings and see far-off constellations in space. Or, much like I alluded to earlier, any visiting adult may see a pile of dirty mattresses in the middle of the basketball court and feel nothing but pity for the children, whose play area has been reduced to a landfill. But for the kids who had created that tiny hill, they see a magic springboard that can turn any one of them into Michael Jordan.
You just have to believe.
They utilize these imaginary skills to navigate their way through the challenges of everyday life in project housing without trying to add too much to their parents' plate (often coming up short in the process). Eric's dad is widowed and Malik's Mom has only her mother to help tend to the children. The strife of life for the two families only increases with time and pressure, some induced by the children—like skipping school to go to the art museum—and others by the Gestapo-level Chicago police, who raid apartment dwellings indiscriminately after a young boy is shot and killed by gangland crossfire and then—as a precautionary measure—issue Identification cards to everyone in order to enter/exit the building.
Despite these odds, the families persevere as best they can and I found it beautiful to watch resilience emerge victorious in the face of incredible obstacles set against them.
The boys experience the ups and downs that accompany any friendship at that age and come to a crossroads of obstinacy over choosing to harbor a silly grudge or learning to forgive each other.
What path they ultimately end up taking is for you as the reader to find out.
This film right here was fantastic.
I found myself repeatedly saying over and over in my head "I wish they made more films like this. I wish they made more films like this."
*On a minor digression, I have to admit how disappointed I was to see, after the credits began to roll, that I was the only person in the theater that afternoon to watch, what I thought, was an amazing piece of art. Here I was wiping away tears from the final scene, and nobody else cared to give this little independent feature a chance. How disheartening that is and what a sad commentary on the hypocritical public in general. The trumpet of virtue-signaling crybabies blasts the loudest over blatant injustices inflicted upon the lower-class, and here was this brilliant film, a beautiful voice for the downtrodden, trying their best to swim up to the rim of an economic system beset against them, featuring two black children who acted their tails off in front of the camera, and nobody even bothered to go and see it. As of this moment at 4:08 PM on May 7th, after looking up local showings on Fandango, I saw that it has dwindled to only one showing at Cedar Lee theater. And after this week I expect it to fade off into irrelevance. The movie-going public should be ashamed of themselves for bypassing a gem like this. If you wonder why Hollywood prefers to churn out remakes and unnecessary sequels for quick bucks instead of investing in the little guy, this is exactly why that is.*
Scathing diatribe aside, I enjoyed this film a lot and was emotionally stirred at the end enough to feel the need to gather myself before I exited the theater.
Great work!
*On another side-note. Please, for the sake of the artists, take a chance on films you don't know anything about. The common cry among audiences is that nothing but shit is playing at the cinemas. Well, how do you know that to be true when you never go? Play a little roulette at the box office. Films like this make it worth the risk.*
Stars: *****
Verdict: Watch
Cousins: Stand By Me, Boyz In The Hood, The War, Close, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wizard