Tuesday morning was spent watching the documentary Twinsters. The film followed a young woman who was adopted from Korea named Sam. She was an actress living in Hollywood, and one day she received a message on Facebook notifying her that another young woman had seen one of her Youtube videos and thought they might be Twins. The other young woman, Anise, hailed from France, but was living in London and going to art school to become a fashion designer. This documentary in particular was interesting because it was almost a study in nurture vs. nature, and how separate cultures can effect personality traits. Although they were separated for so long, the twins maintained quite a few similar personality traits. The main difference between the two was their level of outgoingness, Samantha being far more extroverted than her sister. The two also have far different ideas of what family is, mostly due to the way in which their families functioned for them growing up, and it was pointed out that many of their traits were gained from their foster parents while they were still in Korea.

Tuesday afternoon session centered around Asian Americans in comedy. We watched clips from All-American Girl, and Fresh Off the Boat, as well as part of a Margaret Cho Stand-Up Special. In terms of media representation, we discussed that before All-American Girl there was no media representation of Asian-American families. Because of it’s status as the first representation of Asian-Americans on television, the show depicted the family as an incredibly Americanized version of an Asian-American family. They made it accessible to a white audience, playing off of the fact that white-Americans wouldn’t notice a difference. Fresh Off the Boat, being the second pop culture representation about twenty years later sticks more closely to an Asian perspective, but also has some issues with representing Asian-Americans as Asia-Americans, depicting the main young man as trying to assimilate to another culture to fit in with his peers.

On Wednesday we spent our time working on drafting our final projects. We were told to put together a “Shitty First Draft.” I’m still trying to get my ideas to fit together, so I ended up in a group that wrote about the progression of our relationship with our topic to how we feel about it looking back now. I thought this exercise was very helpful.

Friday morning seminar focused on the book “Forgotten Country” by Catherine Chung. This book centered around the struggles of a Korean American immigrant family, both due to family dynamics and the struggle to adapting to a new culture. The story is told through the eyes of the narrator Janie, one of two sisters born in Korea and brought to America during a time of political unrest.The discussion surrounding this book raised questions of the importance of allowing citizens to maintain their own culture. The main characters had to struggle against erasure while trying to fit in with their white counterparts. It was eye opening to look at this book through the filter of different perspectives and come to a collective understanding of each others voices.