Author Archive

week 9 notes

Friday, December 1st, 2017

Birth of the Dragon

  • WWE Studios (foreshadowing of the hokeyness to come)
  • ‘Real life’ fight scenes play out like stereotypical martial arts movie fights
  • Movie ostensibly about Bruce Lee, focuses more on Steve with his plot being the main driving element
  • What exactly is it that this movie is based on? (what happened in real life surrounding the fight?)
  • Steve doing nothing, getting credit for everyone else’s work

Paper Bullets annotations:

  • The narrator outlines that he stores different facets of popular culture into his brain, as they become the key component of contextualizing the period of time in which his recollections/stories take place in. They also inform his reality – creating “one big fiction”. (pg. 3)
  • “People meet my father and respect him. People meet my mother and lover her. I’m more hit-and-miss. More love-or-hate.” (pg. 11) – because he is a Hapa child, he is in the middle between these too – seen as hit or miss?
  • “While my father loves the sun even as it burns, my mother hates the sun even as it tans. My father, like me, sees a tan as beautiful. My mother sees it as primitive.” (pg. 14) – point of view of the father and mother? is it an exotic thing with the father? influence of western beauty standards on mother? also notice how the narrator doesn’t fit in the middle of this opinion, as he sides with his dad
  • The narrator sees marriage as tolerance and dependency – reflected in the scene where his mother and father are in the same bed, but he characterizes them as looking like an awkward family photo that is only projecting the image of happiness (pg. 16)
  • The narrator inviting a girl over to watch Enter the Dragon, where he loses his virginity, which he describes as “entering his first woman.” (pg. 18) “She said she had seen it before, but she came anyway.” – the narrator then compares his romantic relationships to the production values of martial arts movies, where once they were low budget and cheesy, they only get better produced with age (experience) (pg. 18)
  • The narrator’s mother yells in Chinese in panic when he jumps into the deep end, but after he is out and the panic has subsided, and the mothers are discussing “if that were my child..” she scolds him in English – trying to maintain an image, not wanting to give the other mothers a reason to make judgements of her parenting based on her race/ethnicity? (pg. 20-21)
  • The language men (fathers?) use in communication with one another to hide vulnerability/anxiety/fear – posturing for the sake of masculinity at others’ expense, everything is a joke (pg. 24)
  • The newspaper articles slowly start to trickle away and Chinese Americans start to focus on pre-pubescent figure skaters and violinists again. I’m still fast in the water, but no one really talks about the Olympics anymore.” (pg. 28) – tendency in America for certain ethnic groups to be associated with certain sports/activities
  • The narrator’s fascination with going fast, not just in his swimming, but his idolization of Speed Racer (pg. 29) (which is two tiers above the other Japanese cartoons that play on weekday mornings in his mind) – “It’s like as long as the end counts, it doesn’t really matter how you get there.” (pg. 30)
  • “Perfectionism is a way of life. A way of interacting. A way of expressing and showing love and respect and gratitude.” (pg. 39) – the narrator also expresses that through this, he had to relearn how to experience things naturally and with passion – a symptom of living in the “model minority” lifestyle
  • Contrast between the narrator’s enjoyment of the Chinese restaurants vs the restaurants his father wants to go to – his enjoyment is based on the speed of the atmosphere of each restaurants
  • balance of Hapas being simultaneously ignored and scrutinized (especially in terms of their personal romantic relationships) (pg. 50-51)
  • “Think about something else. Bio paper due Monday. 10 percent of your grade. Venomous replies and marine life.” (pg. 72) – reminds me of Better Luck Tomorrow where the main character always went back to going over his vocabulary cards, even when he was getting into all of the crime.
  • “I’m waiting for wisdom. I’m waiting to put a first love, a first sex, and a first white-woman fantasy to bed.” (pg. 94) – before Kip started seeing Carly he fell for the idea of her, probably due to being a white woman. what happened in their relationship was the stripping away of the masculinity that he took part in with his friends, and that even led to his fantasizing about her in the first place.
  • Kip is asked about the turning points in his life, they all include near death experiences with water –  “Water will never hurt me” (pg. 134) – goes back to the protection he felt from water as a child, being able to dive into the deep end very young. what does water symbolize? his sexuality/the masculinity that informs that? while working at raging waters he basically only remembers it through his sexual thoughts – raging waters/raging hormones??
  • “How can you cast me in some random role while pretending you’re neutral. (You’re not.)” (pg. 139) – what makes Mandy “neutral” in the first place, compared to the other two women? is it because one was Hapa, while the other was “more Chinese” shown by her affinity for the Buddha’s feast? but again, why is Mandy “neutral”?
  • “Baywatch it’s not. You learn to treat Mexicans as second-class citizens and you learn blacks can’t swim. You learn to smile at your women co-workers and to talk about what they’d fuck like when it’s just you and the boys.” (pg. 149) – I wonder if this was meant to parallel when Kip said he liked his life through high school better because he didn’t have to learn about the intricacies of being Hapa, where here he’s graduated from Raging Waters to ocean lifeguard and is finding out that that world is ugly – “I want to find a better way to be around the water.” (pg. 149)

 

paper bullets

Friday, December 1st, 2017

Since seminar this morning, I’ve been thinking a lot about the title of Paper Bullets, and all the things it could possibly mean within the context of the novel. I think it mostly just refers to all of the different dualities relating to Kip. One idea I had was that it refers to the balance between Kip’s sensitivity (paper, soft) and his masculinity (bullets, hard). In the novel, Kip conditions himself to keep his emotions locked up from other people based on his experiences with abusive relationships as well as indulging in his own masculinity. One one hand, he’s really insecure and sensitive, and has a ‘people pleasing’ complex (which his therapist tells him is a common Asian trait). On the other, he wants to assert his own strength through his relationships, using sex as a tool for that.

The masculine side of him always seemed like more of a projection, or a defense mechanism to me. Maybe an idea of someone he ideally wanted to be, or thought he should be. It could have also been his own insecurity about his identity in regards to Asian stereotypes, particularly ones associated with passiveness. But, this side of him had this certain abrasive quality to it, and it was reflected in his writing when describing his moments of masculinity. I think that mostly has to do with his frank and detailed descriptions of sex, and by extension his feeling towards the woman he was with at the time.

With his sensitive side, I noticed how eager Kip was to have that be brought out, despite his efforts to keep it concealed. With Katherine, she says something about him being a “sweet lover” and he immediately is more taken to her than he was before. He wants to settle down with her and have children, or at least he thinks he does, despite her being a despicable human being (which he acknowledges). It could have to do with his own need of approval, which was probably rooted in his relationship with his father, but I don’t want to psychoanalyze that too much.

I just thought it could be another duality of many that make up his character. It also makes me wonder how many more dualities I missed in this book while reading it.

I can’t even think of a title for this post either wow (last final project thoughts)

Friday, December 1st, 2017

Welp. The paper’s due date is upon us, and I still am having some mixed feelings about my paper, mostly the second half. Also I guess I’m worried that the direction of my paper doesn’t feel seamless or cohesive, particularly in the balance of research and personal narrative. I’m worried of one overshadowing the other. But, it’s too late to worry about stuff like that, I’m just going to write the fucking thing. Hopefully I can power through it tonight and tomorrow, and end up with something that I feel more than at least 70% satisfied with. Maybe 75%.

During Wednesday’s workshop, I cut my paper up and sharpie’d out parts that I didn’t feel were necessary (including my entire opening paragraph). It was neat to physically edit my paper in that way, and gave me a little bit more clarity on where to move certain things, or where to put sentences I haven’t even written yet.

I still need a title too. I just realized that. Maybe I’ll just keep the placeholder one I hastily wrote on Wednesday: “The Midwest or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace My Home”. I could go minimalist and just say “The Midwest”, which kind of just sounds like a Ken Burns documentary. But, it also doesn’t hint towards any of the APIA connections I make in my paper, so that’s out.

I was never good with titles.

 

week 8 notes

Saturday, November 18th, 2017
  • 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?)

 

 

 

looking closer

Saturday, November 18th, 2017

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.

paper update: there is no update

Saturday, November 18th, 2017

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.

????

Sunday, November 12th, 2017

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.

Final project thoughts: Week 7

Sunday, November 12th, 2017

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.

week 7 notes

Sunday, November 12th, 2017

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)

 

Research log: week 6

Saturday, November 4th, 2017

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.