tayaid11 – Aiden's A-Pop Blog

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Writing Workshop 11-29-17: Kris’ notes on revision

December 3, 2017 / tayaid11

Revision is the most important step.

Writing is different than studying something more concrete like math; don’t assume that the teacher has the answer or knows the best way to write your paper.
My academic statement should be a tool for choosing my direction forward and reflecting on where I’ve been. Sometimes where I’ve been is hard to justify.
Revision is far more than a means to getting a better grade or more praise. Revision offers a deeper, sharper understanding of my subject. I’m not writing for the teacher, I’m writing so I can look back on something that I’m proud of: a job well done.
My biggest focus in writing should be my ideas and how well I communicate those ideas.
Revision = making it sound better; cutting, adding, and clarifying.
Editing = more superficial than revision, making it look better on the page
Adding is the hardest part. Adding is developing and growing an idea, making further connections.
Cutting is refining. What don’t I need? What part of this is fluff? What is unnecessary? This is NOT a conversation, conversations go on tangents, writing is clear.
Clarifying is rethinking. How can I make this more accessible? Can someone outside of my context or program understand my essay and walk away with it’s main point?
Never worry about drafting “too much” it is always easier to cut than it is to add.
Rhetoric is simply leading my reader to my point through successful composition.
*Tip* Every time you have a draft, save it and continues in a different document. Don’t save over your old draft because then you won’t be able to see your progression and how far you’ve come. This technique is both helpful and good for tracking your creative thought process.
*Tip* You can’t please everyone.

My Ideas on Culture

December 3, 2017 / tayaid11

Taking the lenses that this class has given me and using them to examine the world around me has lead me to adopt some new working philosophies. I have come to believe that no one is the product of any one culture and that since every culture seems to draw from other cultures I think it’s safe to say that we all possess large amounts of cultural hybridity; though some more than others. Some might debate this hypothesis with me but since culture is so messy and hard to define, almost to the point of being subjective, I doubt that a debate could produce anything more conclusive.

Culture could be as broad as an entire nation’s norms or as minuscule as the way a husband and wife interact with each other from day to day. If this is true then I, as the son of my mother and father and recipient of the cultural legacies of both their families, am multi-cultural from childhood. If I am a member of a little-league soccer team and after Monday night practice I go to play Dungeons and Dragons with my friends then I am being shaped by the two group’s different and sometimes conflicting, perspectives and norms.

In my own life music has been my primary vehicle for accessing other cultures. I grew up playing metal and punk rock but everything changed for me when a group of black and Latino musicians took me under their wing and taught me a southern style of playing traditional gospel music. They turned me on to a lot of new music and helped me learn how to “break” the rules of my conventional style in order to give way to something that flowed and made people want to dance. Today my way of interpreting chords and music has their DNA that they passed down to me infused in every note. I never would have become the musician I am today without this cultural crosscurrent that I was privileged to take part in.

Culture, how humans choose to interact with the world, the style and character that each of us brings to the table, is one of the best parts of being alive. I’m grateful for the further awareness of other cultures that taking this class has brought me and I intend to continue being a responsible and astute observer of culture for the rest of my life.

“Birth of the Dragon” Review

December 3, 2017 / tayaid11

Birth of the Dragon must have been painful to watch for die-hard Bruce Lee fans, and many people gave it terrible reviews on the basis that it was nothing like the films that made Bruce Lee a legend. I wasn’t raised on Bruce Lee films and have never really taken the time to study him so I had no expectations going into watching the film. To the annoyance of many, Birth of the Dragon portrayed Lee as flashy and confident almost to the point of rudeness; from what I’ve heard however, this might actually be pretty close to the truth, especially when Lee was younger.

The weirdest part about Birth of the Dragon was that Bruce Lee and his rival, Wong Jack Man, took back seats in the plot to Steve McKee, a white student of Lee who falls in love with a woman from a Chinatown restaurant run by a Chinese-American crime syndicate. The plot, which one assumes would revolve around martial arts and the feud between Wong Jack Man and Bruce Lee, takes a sort of left turn when it begins to focus on Mckee and his love interest. I’m not necessarily saying that this way of doing the movie was a bad choice by the director, I just think it might have been a bit uncalled for. On one hand the film through Mckee’s perspective gives Lee and Man an opening to explain the mentalities and styles of their two branches of Kung Fu to an audience who might not have otherwise understood what was going on but it also serves to distract us from the development of the two martial artists and make them seem like one-dimensional background characters in a martial arts-themed love story.

In general the movie was just a little too out of touch to make an impact, the acting wasn’t bad, the fights were good, and even the plot had some redeeming points, but none of it was what I would consider great. The fact that the role of main character was split between Lee, Man, and a random white dude was my least favorite part. I think that the white protagonist with no real reason to be there served to unintentionally erase Lee and Man’s human aspects causing them to be fixtures in another character’s story about themselves.

Home and Changes

November 19, 2017 / tayaid11

I started this quarter assuming that I would write about music as my “home” in our final essay; it seemed so logical considering the huge role that it’s played in my life and the way it can flavor any of life’s myriad seasons and circumstances, helping me to catalog my experiences. I switched to writing about father figures because it felt like something I could dive into deeper in my rhetoric rather than having to rely solely on writing about something (music) that had to be listened to in order to be understood. Since then I’ve been realizing that even though my father is a huge part of what home is to me, home is not so simply described.

Home is something that for me changes with the passing years and what feels comfortable, safe, and familiar in this season might not in the next; I can only imagine what someone who’s been displaced from their geographical home goes through in that respect. The texts that we’ve been analyzing over the course of this quarter almost all deal with characters that have been displaced from their countries and homes and who struggle with defining themselves because their origins are complicated and hard to sum up in any way that is neat and tidy. Home is a hard topic to write about for this very reason, because it is so fluid and nostalgia leaves such a different taste in each of our mouths.

All this being said I think that I made the right decision sticking with family for my topic because even if we aren’t all connected with our fathers almost all of us have a family whether biological or out of close ties that are beyond blood. Home can be our connections to people as well as a physical place, I think that most of us would say that we feel more at home with our closest friends than with some of our own blood relatives. Many of the characters in our texts also struggle with this aspect of home as well, being unable to relate to the people in the new country that they’ve arrived in because they share no common history and having no close friends or family in their new environment. Reading their stories just makes me more grateful for the deep roots that I have and the relationships that give me balance no matter how removed I become from my starting place.

Notes on the “Mahu”

November 19, 2017 / tayaid11

We watched the short film “Kumu Hina” in class on Tuesday which gives us a glimpse into the life of Hina Wong-Kalu, a trans-gender Hawaiian hula instructor. Chico described it as a movie that deals with “fluidity and hybridity” so I tried to keep those themes in mind as we watched.

Traditionally someone who is Mahu accepts both the feminine and masculine sides of gender equally and considers themselves someone who is “in the middle.” Mahu were healers, caretakers, and teachers of ancient tradition, history and culture. With most of the Pacific Island cultures having only oral histories and nothing written down, those who passed on culture and legends like the Mahu were very important.

Hina Wong-Kalu started as Collin Wong (male) and then later in life made the transition to being fully in the middle. Hina is married to a Tongan man, they both face a lot of stigma from their own cultures because of this. Wong-Kalu gets an estrogen shot once a month to make up for lacking a biological menstrual cycle.

*Side Notes*

Ku = male energy
Hema = husband
Aloha – love, honor, and respect.
Wong-Kalu considers herself both male and female, not just female.
Wong-Kalu sees her role as molding young kids into the best that they can be.

Tuesday Presentation Notes

November 19, 2017 / tayaid11

What most people usually refer to as “Polynesia” is actually three sections – Polynesia (the largest), Melanesia, and Micronesia.

“Moana” is not considered an accurate representation of Pacific Islanders by many APIA peoples because the culture of the characters in the movie do not specifically refer to a particular real-life Pacific culture but instead, borrow from roughly 20 of them.

“Tatu” culture in the Pacific Islands is a right of passage as well as for cosmetic purposes. Many Pacific islanders believe that theses tatus should be earned before they are put on one’s body. Some of the presenters asserted that it would be cultural appropriation for any white person to get these tatus on their own bodies.

American Samoa is the American Military’s number one recruitment region. Some question whether or not American society allows for a Pacific Islander person to “make it out” of the islands and succeed in American society through success in a non-physical occupation.

Right after Pearl Harbor was bombed American-occupied Guam was bombed as well. What followed was a two year Japanese occupation of Guam; all the U.S. soldiers anticipated the bombing and evacuated their bases, leaving the Guamanian and Chamorro people behind.

Often times racial uprisings in Hawaii were painted by the media as “against the spirit of aloha” taking the native Hawaiian culture out of context and using it as a weapon to discourage sympathy for the upset Hawaiian people.

*Side Notes*

Tutuila is where Lani grew up.
Guam is in Micronesia. Samoa and Hawaii are in Polynesia.
The Philippines are NOT a part of Polynesia, Melanesia, or Micronesia; they are a part of South East Asia.

Arguments and Division

November 12, 2017 / tayaid11

In the wake of my Draft #2 I’ve been continuing to “surf” EBSCO and other search engines designed to help students research. I realize that my topic being about both father figures and Asian-Americans is a tall order for any research database, but I must admit that I’m surprised at just how hard it is to find applicable research on this topic. Perhaps it is telling of how unnoticed APIA peoples feel in our Western society.

∗∗∗

More arguments continue to erupt on my Facebook feed, over politics, sexuality, race, religion, etc. In the past I have always written these unofficial debates off as nonsense and moved on without so much as a second thought, but with the increasing frequency of these arguments, the state of our country’s political climate and the perspective of this class under my belt, it’s becoming hard to not take notice. The outstanding themes that I see in all of these debates, no matter the subject, are that they are always about social issues and neither side seems to make any headway with the other because neither side is after the truth, but rather the victory which will never come (because it’s a Facebook argument).

I don’t think that I necessarily have any better perspective on the subject, which is why I never argue on the internet and intend to keep it that way, but I do know that I have never seen progress come of these debates. In taking this class and others in the past like it, I think that my biggest take-away has been that all people are pretty similar: we all want love and affection, security, peace, etc. we just all express those things in different ways and that often causes trouble.

Part of the problem of a social media debate is that it is very public and therefore it is impossible for egos to not play an overwhelmingly huge role in the disagreement. I often wonder how different these arguments would turn out if a discrepancy arose and one party invited the other out to coffee in order to find common ground privately and in good faith. I realize that this is wishful thinking and wildly out of character for our culture that gorges itself upon dramatic entertainment but perhaps one day it will catch on.

Social problems will always affect our lives because we are social creatures, I just genuinely pray that I can be a person who helps to bring progress and healing rather than division.

Mississippi Masala and New Perspective

November 12, 2017 / tayaid11

Missippi Masala was another great movie that showed me a slice of life that I cannot relate to at all; a perspective that has never been and may never be mine. For any one who didn’t grow up in the deep south, this movie may seem foreign. I think that it’s hard for people from the Northwest (especially someone who hasn’t experienced much discrimination) to even believe that tensions of this caliber exist in our country but I think that’s why I’m in this class: to hear a new perspective.

It’s unfortunate but also interesting to me that if a white person had chosen to romantically pursue either Mina or Demetrius then their would have definitely been some of the same cultural backlash but it may have also seemed like a progressive and encouraging thing to others. In the case of Mina and Demetrius there was little acceptance and definitely no glamour, Mina being a bit of an outcast even among her own people already and Demetrius having to overcome hard stereotypes from both families.

None of our books in class so far, to my memory, have done more than touch on the topic of interracial relationships. In the future I would like to explore this topic further and be exposed to more texts so that I can better relate to my friends who have interracial marriages.

Movies like “Mississippi Masala”, “Beautiful Country”, “Better Luck Tomorrow” and others that we’ve watched in this class, although works of fiction, help me to learn to listen to the perspective of marginalized and erased peoples whose struggles I have never been exposed to before. It gives me an opportunity to look in to the lives of others so that I might understand and be conscious of what people around me are going through. I believe that in order for this world to find more peace, we must take on a posture that seeks to listen and understand before it speaks out. I’ll let you know how that theory turns out.

Connecting Home and APIA Pop Culture

November 12, 2017 / tayaid11

The most powerful discovery that I made last week regarding my final project was that my “home” and it’s relationship to Asian-American culture wasn’t something that I had to go out and find, it was something that already existed that I just had to take the time to observe. There was no need for me to go and synthesize random bits of APIA culture in order to try and make some coherent whole; my life has already been affected by these cross-currents and I just had to approach the project from a new perspective in order to see them.

For example: my father and I often bond over martial arts movies (him being a student of the martial arts himself). I usually don’t even think of these movies and shows as a part of a foreign culture, and perhaps that is the essence of cross-currents: they have become my own culture as well. When I took a step back I realized that I was surrounded by Asian and Asian-American influence from the shows and movies I watched, the music I listened to, and the books I read.

The Hayao Miyazaki films from Studio Ghibli like “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” and “Ponyo” are a huge part of my family and all of us still watch them today. My brother and I have very little in common and often have a hard time connecting because of it but Studio Ghibli films were something that we could always agree upon and it brought us closer together without us ever even considering that we were taking part in a cross-current. One of my current best friends and I (who is also not Asian-American) bonded over the anime show Naruto when we were fourteen. We began trading the books back and forth and years later we are still best friends.

I already find myself becoming more aware of my cultural surroundings in my daily life because of the texts that I am being exposed to this quarter, my hope is that this new perspective will enable me to connect more easily with people from other, not-so-different, cultures and to build stronger friendships because of it.

Draft #1 Feedback

November 5, 2017 / tayaid11

My peers noted that I didn’t really have any Asian American pop culture connections in my first essay (honestly I hadn’t really figured out my angle yet so I bypassed them) this is something that I’m trying to really focus on while writing my second draft.

My first draft felt a lot like fluff because that’s pretty much what it was. Writing meat into this essay has been hard because I run the risk of getting a little too personal but also of being too vague and just writing words for the sake of words (even I got pretty bored with the last draft).

Kris mentioned that I should try to make my father more complex. Because I love my dad so much I might have just gushed about him in my original draft while not even thinking about his flaws resulting in a rather one-dimensional portrait of my father to those who don’t know him. As I think back I have a hard time recalling his flaws probably because at this point they seem very normal to me, but maybe great writing is taking a step back and introducing the reader to a character I know intimately like I’m looking at him with a brand new set of eyes.

This essay has been tricky for me, I didn’t really get the prompt at first and had to have it explained to me several times; slowly. I think that I’m used to arguing in my essays and to not have anything to argue about is more confusing to me than I thought it would be. In general I’ve finally realized that I don’t have to argue a point necessarily for this essay but rather, make lots of observations and then simply point them back to my idea of what home is. Simple right?

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