Film: Twinsters (2015)
Before watching this movie, Chico gave a mini lecture on music and it was cool to talk about the connection between the song “Footsteps in the Dark” by the Isley Brothers and the dark corridors in history that people choose to ignore and not turn a flashlight to.
The movie Twinsters was fun to watch and really heartwarming. I love the sister connection and feel a similar way between my sister who is four years older and me. We laugh the same and have a really similar voice. It was cool to see the cultural traditions in South Korea of the foster mothers taking the ladies out to eat after they met.
Writing Workshop
Just some reminders to myself from this low steaks writing day are to go through this writing process as peacefully as possible. I enjoyed our meditation at the start of the day because it did help to focus on letting go of big stress and pressures that get in the way of the writing process and helped to remind myself that I am human and I need to be good to myself. I also want to keep challenging myself to think about my rhetorical intention throughout this piece that I am writing and what message I want to leave my readers with. See the blog post titled Writing Process for some structure for the paper I got out of the free write during this class session.
Book: Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
Gah! These books we get to read are so good and so intense! I am very thankful this book exists for a lot of reasons. This summer, one of my good friends Soyeon was expressing how she wanted to read more books by Korean/American experiences and perspectives. Also, Katsu recommended Please Look After Mom by South Korean author Shin Kyung-sook.
I am noticing themes throughout all the books we have been reading and fathers have very distinct roles in all the books. In When the Emperor Was Divine the father was torn away from the family and when he returned he was never the same again. In Donald Duk the father seemed more distant from Donald Duck himself. In Forgotten Country the book documents the father dying. In all of these books, the father was a highly important person that in some ways, the book revolved around.
It is interesting to look at the civil war happening within the family as well as the history of Korea. I did not know about the Japanese occupation in Korea and the number of deaths in the war between North and South Korea. The book title captures how the history of Korea is hidden as well as the experiences the family members went through. There were great amounts of pain.