• Kumu Hina
  • Hina Wong-Kalu
  • Māhū (embracing both masculine & feminine) (American colonizers wanted to outlaw this, among other facets of Hawaiian culture)
• Aloha (dignity + respect)
• Hina’s worry about filling role of feminine wife for her husband
• Hina’s husband’s expectation/jealousy in their marriage (cultural difference?)
• Documentary structured to show both Hina’s feminine and masculine side (life with her husband, her role at the charter school)
• The husband referring to Hawaii as “America” after moving there
• British flags in background (heavy presence) – (presence in the performance at the end by the school, the blanket on the bed)
• Hina – “having a relationship for the sake of having one”

some Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers annotations:

• Shirley Temple movies to the main character, like Fred Astaire movies were to Donald Duk – source of escapism, an idealized life, a happy ending, although the main character never got to see the endings and had to make them up with Jerry (pg. 3-4)
• contrast between the main character living in poverty vs the well of kids of Honolulu, through the lens of pop culture (seeing them on tv) (makes the gap seem even wider, the idea of ever escaping poverty and being wealthy surreal?)
• The main character’s English teacher dismissing pidgin, promotes that the students speak “standard English” in order to be “perfect little Americans”, pidgin makes them sound “uneducated” (pg. 10) (theme of assimilation)
• Theme of shame of culture/ethnicity and once again striving for the “American Dream”: “Sometimes I secretly wish to be haole. That my name could be Betty Smith or Annie Anderson or Debbie Cole, wife of Dennis Cole who lives at 2222 Maple Street with a white station wagon with wood panel on the side, a dog named Spot, a cat named Kitty, and I wear white gloves. Dennis wears a hat to work. There’s a coatrack as soon as you open the front door and we all wear our shoes inside the house.” (pg. 11-12)
• vivid depiction of the “American Dream” contrasted with Lovey’s poverty, through description of name brands (pop culture), colors, clothing and Christmas (pg. 23-25)
• same contrast between poverty and upper middle class through food: “The butter dish gets passed from one person to the next, each one rubbing lots of butter on their rice. And when the butter comes to me, I want to be a Beckenhauser so bad, I rub butter all over my rice and swallow each bite like a mouthful of Crisco.” (pg. 27)
• Ginger nicknames Lovey “Jenny” after her friend from Kenosha (pg. 30) – similar to Forgotten Country where the girls’ names where “American-ized” for the convenience of everyone else, although this one comes off as more narcissistic, as if Lovey is just a doll for Ginger
• the effect of media influencing a romanticized lens of upper middle class culture to those in poverty: “Then he convinces Mother to go along with his new wage-earning weekend idea. A Magnavox console stereo with wonderful carved wood engravings of elephants like it came right from Taiwan. Like the ones you see the Raggedy Ann and Andy couples win on Let’s Make a Deal. The Family Money Pot will pay for this new stereo system.” (pg. 39) – slaving away for expensive commodities, to align with the idea of the American Dream?
• “Her first egg, the one with no name.” (pg. 81) – connection to Katy and Lovey discussing baby names (Lovey’s fascination with names in general, her naming all of her bunnies, and this chicken laying an egg with no name – deprived of being a mother.
• Lovey shooting the Japanese blue pheasant – indicative of her feelings about her ethnicity?
• people becoming birds when they die – (birds were a huge symbol in Otsuka’s book, part of Japanese culture?)
• Lovey’s decision to go as an Indian princess for Halloween – influence of seeing Native American women as “exotic” through the pop culture that she obviously consumes a lot of
• Lovey being embarrassed of her period for feeling “dirty” (pg. 136) – does she have a want to be considered pure because that’s how she perceives all of the pop culture icons she looks up to ?
• Lovey brings up ajaxing a lot, going to that idea of purity, but also something she wants to do only out of affection whether through her Barbies or in this case for her teacher (pg. 145)
• “Now tell the truth about Bruce Lee. He wears makeup, eye liner and lip liner, and he’s five foot three, and I swear he cannot speak a word of English, but Fu Sheng, he knows English like “Okay, cowboy. Wanna rumble?” And I saw him say “Cigarette?” which matched with the dubbing. Not “Ciga-lette,” like most Chinese who cannot say the r, but “Cigarette.” Now that’s talking English.” (pg. 160) – Bruce Lee not as popular with Lovey because he wears makeup (aka not masculine) and isn’t as proficient in English (therefore Fu Sheng can kick his ass)
• “Animals, they know when something is not right. And Nanny, I could feel her heart beating, I knew her so well. I knew she didn’t want to live here. I knew she was scared. And I knew that she knew we were leaving her.” (pg. 178) – Lovey is actually sympathetic towards animals, and is only desensitizing herself to what her father does to live up the masculinity (to toughen herself up? influenced by something in the media? to gain his affection?)

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I’m sitting in the airport right now, with about 3 hours to kill until my flight boards, which means it’s time to generate blog content.

I realized in seminar yesterday that there’s a lot of nuance in the books that we’re reading that I don’t catch on the initial read. We spent a while discussing the section in the book about the weird teacher that Lovey finds herself enamored with. It was a really fulfilling discussion in which we were able to look at how Yamanaka structured the chapter in relation to the narrative of the chapter. On second glance, it actually read like a horror movie after the kids go to see the Exorcist. Which raises a lot of questions, especially in regards to the communication between Lovey and her mother, as well as the haunting experience with the teacher. I thought this was really interesting, and I wish I had caught it when I was initially reading and annotating.

But, I’m one of those people that doesn’t find annotating necessarily helpful for retaining and analyzing information. At least with novels. I really prefer just to read it through, uninterrupted. For whatever reason I feel pressure to just put things on the page, even if I don’t necessarily read anything that I think really needs to be pointed out. I do see how annotation is a useful tool, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t made some significant connections through it this quarter, but I think it caters to a certain type of reader or student. Maybe I’m not allowing myself to look closer, and to be fair I should probably give myself the time to look closer because I often squeeze the reading into a whole day or two, whenever I’m not swamped with my other class.

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I didn’t really make any progress on my paper this week, due to it being a pretty busy week and also because I feel run into the ground mentally. I still need to come up with a way to integrate my research in the second half in a non-contrived or clunky way. Hopefully a few days off will do me well, and I can do some supplemental research and writing towards the back half of the week. My goal is to have it done by the middle of week nine, and hopefully I can get someone to read it for some late game feedback. Until then, I’m going to bed.

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Again…. I don’t really know what to write for this section this week. It was nice having a long weekend, I’ve felt pretty burnt out this quarter, but that’s probably more due to me taking twenty credits than taking this class in general.

The week after next I’ll be going to Vegas for Thanksgiving, which is a city I have a weird relationship with. My family just relocated there this year from Indiana, and I’ve always had family there and have been there a number of times, but it’s always felt weird and isolating to be there. It’s probably because I don’t do well in heat, and I’m not generally interested in the things Vegas has to offer. I plan on moving there after I graduate this year, mostly just to take at least a year (or nine) off from school and to work and save up money for whatever comes next. Or maybe I’ll take the big dive and become a blackjack dealer and stay there forever. What does this have to do with anything?

Sorry for the Low Effort Content.

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I finished the second draft of my paper, and I’m having some mixed feelings about it. I tightened up the first half, and I’m feeling pretty solid on that for the most part. For the second draft I wrote the second half under the technique of writing the personal/creative narrative stuff first, and then seeing where the research/connection to APIA pop culture fit in. Unfortunately, it didn’t really click with where I thought my research could be implemented, so I just put a small placeholder paragraph with some important points on the musician I was wanting to make connections to. For the final draft, that’ll be the big challenge for me, as I’m having a hard time seeing how my personal narrative and the research I’ve done could fit together. I don’t think it’s a total lost cause, I’ll just have to be as *~creative~* as I possibly can be.

Other than that, I’ll have to spend some time tightening up how the paper flows so that my overall message isn’t murky. It’s one thing for it to make sense to me, but I want to be as clear as possible for whoever might read the final product (even if it’s just Kris). I’ve been kind of weary about the format I’ve chosen to define home, because it’s not as cut and dry as “it is this physical location”. Although, that’s ostensibly what my paper is supposed to be about. It’s more of the experiences I had there that are linked to finding things to do, which is pretty necessary if you live anywhere in the Midwest and don’t want to go nuts. So it’s more of sub-homes within this larger physical home. I don’t know. That’s the only way this assignment could have made sense to me, I guess.

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Mississipi Masala 

• Indian kids playing cowboys and indians
  • (someone says “send them back to the reservation” )
• Comparison to The Debut – the two parties, the Indian family party, and the black night club
• Someone asking Mina if she’s Mexican
• British brought Indians to Africa to build railroad
• Ethnicity and home – Demetrius saying he’d never been to Africa, Mina saying she’d never been to India
• Recurring theme in some of the movies we’ve seen: Mina’s father wanting her to go to college
• Africa’s dismissal of Asia and the stereotypes they used in broadcasts to justify it to the people
• “Your brother thinks he got a white chick” – referring to Mina
• Mina saying Demetrius’ family felt more home-like
• Demetrius saying that Asians come in to the US and act white but in the US there is no difference between brown and black

“South Asian Representation in the Media + US Pop Culture”

• Muslim Bengali peddlers first arrived in New Orleans
  • integrated with communities of color in Detroit (and other cities)
• Targets of anti-Asian sentiment, many of these early migrants left Canada for the US, communities along the Pacific coast
• Model minority idea- linked to assimilation
• Yogananda
  • crossover with beatnik movement with South Asian philosophy (+ Dylan, Beatles, Jobs)
  • Fascination with mysticism (which Yogananda sort of perpetuated)
  • Influenced sci-fi
  • Hindu philosophy influential on media, but often not referred to outright
• Misrepresentation (since the 70’s)
  • Associated with cultural artifacts or practices
  • a source of comic amusement
  • Peter Sellers and the Indian character trope
• Effect of 9/11
  • Rise of Islamophobia, hate crimes rise against South Asians
  • Moved from more mystical/orientalist stereotypes into more menacing ones
  • Confusion of Sikhs with Muslims
• Malala attacked by Al Qaeda – US cultural icon as opposed to the girl attacked by the US who was largely ignored
• Norah Jones + Freddie Mercury (downplaying of South Asian ethnicity)

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I just wanted to include this really great article by Katherine Nagasawa on Chicago’s unofficial Japantown, and how it all but vanished and why. (There’s also an audio version if you’re so inclined.)

Going forward with my paper, I’m going to implement this information into what I wrote on Kosuke Fukudome, who was quoted as saying that he thought Chicago had a great Japanese community, but by that time it had been pushed out into the suburbs of Chicago. I also want to tie it in to how I didn’t even know that community existed as a kid when I was around Wrigleyville (apparently the community mentioned in the article was about a half mile south of Wrigley).

I’m going to spend tomorrow writing and listening to Tatsu Aoki’s music so I can move forward with the music portion of my paper. Hopefully by the end all of this makes for a cohesive paper.

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In seminar this week, it came up that the books we are reading don’t generally have a sense of closure in their narrative. It was pointed out that the implementation of closure in narrative is largely Western. It was something I never really considered before, just how much emphasis is placed on the happy ending or a sense of closure in the media we consume in this country. We have been so conditioned to expect it, which is really sort of disturbing when you think about it. It reminds me of this music theory class I took in high school where our teacher was playing the major scales and would leave out the tonic note (the first and last note in a scale) to make us feel uncomfortable without that closure. People were squirming at this, and begging that the teacher finish it. When he finally did, there was a collective sigh of relief. It’s really a fascinating/terrifying thing.

I’ve noticed that generally some people have been put off by this lack of closure in the books we’ve read, and that it has seemed to impact their overall opinion of the book. I think it’s important not to let that overlook what the author was trying to say throughout the book, though. There’s a reason for that lack of closure, it’s not just there to provoke. The subjects we’re touching on are messy, to say the least. History is messy. I think we need to sit with that messiness and lack of closure, not only to challenge this weird thing we’ve been conditioned to expect, but also to be able to fully take in the meat of the author’s writing. Or else, what are we really doing here?

I hope this wasn’t too soapbox-y.

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(Not as many notes as usual due to the schedule this week but..)

• The Beautiful Country (2005, dir. Hans Petter Moland)
  • Bui doi – “less than dust” (referring to Vietnamese children with American fathers left behind after the war)
  • The Amerasian Homecoming Act (1987)
  • Scene where Binh is working at Chinese restaurant after getting to America – dumps out a full plate of food, contrast to the ridiculously small amount of food given to the passengers on the ship over
  • Binh finds out that GI’s children fly for free after getting to America (misleading of Vietnamese people by Americans during the war, not making information well known, seen also in We Should Never Meet)
• Ken Burns – Vietnam
  • April 21st, 1975 – bombs on Saigon
  • 60,000 refugees were picked up
  • Kissinger misinformation about attack on Saigon
  • April 29th – North Vietnam bombs an airport
  • White Christmas playing after report of 105 degree weather in Vietnam (not the Bing Crosby version)
  • 10 to 12,000 people surrounding the US embassy trying to evacuate
  • “Let’s hope we don’t have another Vietnam experience.” – Kissinger (also how US wanted to sweep the war under the rug as soon as possible due to defeat) – “Put Vietnam behind us” – Kissinger
  • Active misleading by US radio messages to South Vietnamese people about being able to leave
• A common theme in all of the works this week was gross miscommunication on the part of the US to the South Vietnamese people. How much of this was due to the shame of defeat in an already largely unpopular war? How much of it was not seeing the South Vietnamese as human beings?

Some annotations on We Should Never Meet:

• Kim posting out that there isn’t a difference between Vietnamese orphans who finish and don’t finish high school as far as their futures go (pg. 44) – “For her eighteenth birthday, her foster mother gave her a fifty-dollar bill and an old suitcase. You’re an adult now, she said. Don’t do anything stupid. (pg. 44-45) – this seems like a contrast to when Lien was leaving her family for the city to work and they reiterated to her not to bring shame to them
• Kim’s wanting to assure herself that she is tough and in control due to her upbringing, much like Lien’s want to be powerful (pg. 51) – same with the motivations behind Vinh and his gang (pg. 51) – “For years they had been denies so much from their new country and government-issued families. They robbed these buses and stores to break even, to survive. They believed they had no other choice.” (pg. 52) – being a gang the inevitable manifestation of the social workers/teachers/foster parents telling them they would be nothing (pg. 53)
• “That’s why Vietnamese gangs robbed their own people. Gangs knew their people wouldn’t trust the police to protect them. Police in Vietnam were a step below street merchants, they were so corrupt. They had no reason to believe the Americans, who couldn’t understand their accents anyway, would be any better.” (pg. 107)
• Vinh’s gang members ending up having more of a conscience about Vinh beating Bac than he has (pg. 111) – the relationship between Vinh and Bac not only parallels Bac and his son’s relationship, but also shows a generational gap between young and old Vietnamese in America
• Steven’s initial eagerness about getting to work a sign of his blind patriotism — believing that the States is doing the right thing? –  “At first she found their chat dispositions intrusive, but eventually understood that their curiosity indicated a genuine concern. She tried to remember this with Steven, because of all the Americans entering her country, his intentions, like those of many of the center volunteers, were unselfish.” (pg. 119)
• Desensitization to death for Vietnamese workers, especially in the orphanages, contrasted with Stephen’s (and Americans like him) sensitivity to death due to their eagerness to help: “He was grieving. He was in shock. It was not the time for Hoa to tell him that the place he regarded as death was what she still considered home.” (pg. 127)
• Sophie and the staff marrying the Vietnamese staff to get them over to America, Sophia insisting that Hoa marry Steven even though she is already married (pg. 138) – goes back to this idea of thinking you’re doing the right thing – preferential treatment for Vietnamese working with Americans, not the average Vietnamese citizen
• Hoa’s decision to stay after learning that her son and husband were alive, albeit in prison. The decision to stay in a place in turmoil, after being promised a way out, showing the dedication to family over politics that Bac mentioned in the previous chapter.
• “Colleges liked essays on triumphing over adversity and learning important values from a life lesson.” (pg. 146)  – does this capitalize on adversity, rather than celebrate overcoming it? – her life ended up being “too good” for her college essay due to her moving in with a stable family (pg. 147) – Mai embellishing the rest
• “He didn’t understand how lucky he was already to have a set of adoptive parents waiting for him in America. There were still unassigned children at the center who would leave for America unsure of their future homes.” (pg. 181) – this concept of the children being lucky also came up when Mai was reading her speech and someone referred to her as lucky for earning her scholarship
• The final part of 208-209 shows that Bridget is insecure about her trip overall, and wants to use Huan to ensure that what she did was valid, and that once they see him they will instinctually know that this was the right move and that all the time was worth it, instead of feeling more alienated by Bridget.

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