All good things must come to an end, I’m afraid – happy evenings with friends, critically acclaimed sci-fi series Firefly, and of course, this course. As we look back on ten or so weeks of history, movies, novels, discussions and lectures, what have I learned? What have I still got left to learn? With next quarter being my last as an undergrad, how have my experiences here shaped my direction going forward?

Well, that’s a lot of questions, and I’m only one girl. I will say this – the courses I’ve taken in college that I’ve remembered the most are the ones that taught me things I didn’t realize I needed to learn. Studying the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Learning about the Pedagogy of teaching English Language Learners, and now having the opportunity to be immersed in the colorful and tragic history of Asian Americans.

Sometimes I think it’s easy to only think of what is coming towards us as we move throughout our lives, from job to job, or goal to goal. I’ll admit I was never much of a history person. I DID take AP US History in high school, but all I remember from it is what the Gadsden Purchase was. But what I’ve learned is that as gruesome and unjust as so much of it is, without knowing the history of not just this world, but the different people within it, a fundamental part of learning and living will go unrealized. You begin to connect the dots; to see how things cause and effect, even to see how history does indeed repeat itself from time to time. But it’s something that you owe to your fellow Americans, and your fellow humans to at least acknowledge. Only by seeing where we have been can we hope to understand where we are going.

I’ll also say that as stressful as it was sometimes, I’m grateful for how much this course made me read, because I remembered how much I love reading! Not only that, but the discussions we’ve had and things I’ve learned from the ten novels we studied would have been sorely missed, and wouldn’t have been able to reinforce the heavy amount of material we covered in this class.

I love Pop Culture, and after this class I have an even more thorough concept of it, which I am eternally thankful for. I hope my fellow classmates come out of it feeling the same way.

Forgotten Country, by Catherine Chung, was a rollercoaster of emotion, if nothing else. Filled with everything from filial betrayal to traumatic childhood memories and a less than satisfying conclusion, it still stands as a fascinating and more than anything, realistic account of an APIA family in post-war America.

• Our narrator Janie (Jeehyun) , the older sister of other main character Hannah (Heihyun), is at first depicted as a rational, fairly sympathetic hard-worker who only wants to be there for her family. As our story progresses, we begin to see how she ticks – her motives lie largely in the obligations hoisted onto her from a very young age and are only reinforced by her sister’s disappearance and father’s eventual illness/death. Part of you feels sorry for her – far too much was expected of her, and sister or not, to be shackled with the task of finding her sister in the middle of PhD work seems more than a little unfair. Yet Janie begins to show some cracks as the story goes on and we see just how dysfunctional every member of this family is.
• At our storys conclusion, Janie and Hannah are planning to go their separate ways, perhaps never to meet again.  After all, Hannah initially left her family behind in an attempt to gain independence. Their father dead and their mother broken, the story doesn’t exactly fill you with hope about the future. But at the same time, it makes an important point : family stuff is messy, and even when things don’t go horribly, it doesn’t mean things end up great.
• Komo was initially my most despised character; the heavily Christian aunt of Hannah and Janie, she foisted shame and disapproval on not just their Father, but on the family as a whole. It’s interesting how Komo is one of the characters most directly responsible for upholding the misogyny and shame placed on women in Korean society. She claims that by not having a boy, their family has failed.
• At the same time, Hannah’s refusal to accept the consequences of her selfishness are just as much to blame for rending the family apart. After all, while she eventually rejoins them after the advent of her father’s illness, she never gives a substantial explanation for why. Why had she assumed her family knew about the molestation if it happened outside of their view? It could be a simple case of leveraging her experience into the rest of her resentment towards her family.
• The constant use of stories within stories helped give the impression of Janie speaking to an invisible confidant; it reads quite a bit like a personal journal, which helps draw the reader in and become invested in the fate of Hannah as well as Janie.

When that ending came around…

Here we have a pretty typical teenage drama gone a little over the deep end, but notable because it features an all-Asian cast and Asian director. Let’s take a little look see at what we’re dealing with here.

• Intensely emotional and really very unsettling – while there were funny bits of the film, overall it was really rather disturbing in it’s depiction of violence.
• Here’s a first – there were almost NO white actors in any significant roles – and one of the few who was ended up being a sex worker (a role often relegated to a POC.)
• Despite the presence of obvious wealth and class privilege, there were no appearances by parents or other adults in the film.
• THE ENDING was bonkers, but honestly more gripping than a definite conclusion
• Almost no specification of actual national origin among the main cast – only the female lead is given a definite ‘ethnicity’.
• Virgil using the N word was both shocking and thought provoking. Mostly shocking.