week 8 notes

  • 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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