Category: Paper

I was not able to get any of the films from this week, but I did some web searching, found Kip Fulbeck’s web site and found out that I have encountered some of Kip’s work before. I was intrigued to find out that his work was a part of the American Anthropological Association and The Science Museum of Minnesota’s work Race: Are We So Different?. The exhibit website was utilized as a thinking and talking point though out of my class on race that I took at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Having read Kip’s work, his involvement makes a lot of since. The exhibit website deconstructs many of the same topics that Kip did in Paper Bullets, and I understand why his work was included.

While reading Paper Bullets I often thought of the way’s in which Kip’s account of his identity and how complicated it is, meshed with and enhanced what I learned from my study of Race: Are We So Different?. I have again had to reassess my understanding of race and the impacts that the concept has on individual lives. In the past I bought into the colorblind ideas that were taught to me as a child. The idea that we are all who we are and race is an invention that is not real, and no longer matters. I had friends of all races as a child and I did not see how anyone’s life was any different because of their skin color. I did not understand why some people made big issues out of who my friends were. I just did not get it. I thought everyone was playing with the same rules. I now have a way more complex understanding of race, and that complex understanding has expanded further because of this book.

References

Fulbeck,Kip. Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography. Seattle: University of Washington Press,               2001.

Fulbeck, Kip. “The Hapa Project- Links”. Kip Fulbeck. 2011, http://kipfulbeck.com/the-hapa-                   project/links/. DOA: 12/28/2017.

S2N Media, Inc. Race:Are We So Different?. American Anthropological Association and The Science        Museum of Minnesota, 2007, http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html. DOA: 12/28/2017

This week’s book and general topic of Hawaii have been very enlightening to me. As a child I was taught that life in Hawaii is very similar in many ways to life in Alaska. There are even whole books about the connections between the two state’s political, economic and cultural struggles that I have been assigned to read in my college classes on Alaskan history. What I did not know was how the AAPIA components of Hawaiian life fit in. In all honesty, I had not considered the way that even in Hawaii’s melting pot culture, issues such as race, gender identity, language, and class are still things that can create separations.

In the assigned reading, as well as the two films of the week, these issues that are used to divide people in mainstream American culture take on a new light. The Hawaiian traditions of using differences to make their society stronger stand out in stark contrast to the American tradition of xenophobia and segregation. In Hawaii, people of different races intermix throughout all levels of society, in spite of efforts by Americans to change this. While this is now not as unique, for many years it was a unique quality of Hawaii, that scared Americans. Native Hawaiian cultures use of non-binary gender identity is something unique, that American’s are scared of. Hawaiian Pidgin is something unique, that American’s are scared of. Hawaii’s tradition of accepting that poor people are real humans who are unique individuals that have dreams, a since of morals, and even pride- scares Americans as it breaks down the traditions of classism which make up key components of American society.

Hawaii is a place were the dishonesty of what are presented as the American ideals becomes very obvious. Because if Americans really did support the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then the Hawaiian way would fit right in and there would be no need for the US to try to systematically wipe out key components of Hawaiian culture. Sadly, however this is not the case and much of Hawaii’s history is the evidence of this contradiction. Understanding the lengths that US efforts to make Hawaii “fit in” went to and comparing these efforts to the history of Alaska that I have learned makes even more sense out of these connections.

References

“Kumu Hina”, 2014. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80038909trackId=14277281&tctx=0%2

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“Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai‘i”, 2009. Kanopy, https://evergreen.kanopystreaming.com/video/pidgen-             voices-hawaii.

Yamanaka, Lois-Ann. Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers. New York:Picador,1996

The books chosen for this quarter have panted an interesting picture of what it is to be of AAPIA descent. Starting the quarter with reading the history of AAPIA immigration really helped set the scene for many of the books that fallowed. In the past, I have taken courses that looked at the legal issue of immigration and it is an interesting parallel to many of the cultural challenges for immigrants. It is chilling to think of how truly xenophobic American culture is. It is also interesting to see how different peoples have reacted to this. In the past I have learned about European immigrants lives, both because of a want to know of my own history, and because that is what is taught in school when the idea of immigration is introduced. It is good to see the other stories and to see how much of a different experience so many AAPIA peoples have had in immigrating to the US. Even with in the AAPIA community every group of people’s experiences are different, an idea that is often left out of many efforts at describing AAPIA experiences in immigration. This course has provided much food for thought.

—- Note:

I was unable to obtain the film for this week.

The Beautiful Country is a hunting film. In so many ways, this story is something an effort at trying to shed light on something that needs to come out of the dark. The era of the Vietnam war bread many many demons that continue to haunt the US to this day, but of all of them, I think this one in many was is the worst. Its something that is not talked about openly, but yet everyone form that time knows about. It is left out of history when it can be because it is just too shameful to admit. The war went on so long, that people involved in it made a life for them selves in Vietnam. It happens in every war. Yes, there was also the usual trail of war baby’s from lonely men and poor women, but there was also people like the family in this story.

But something just really stings about the situation when the war is lost. People on all sides are told to just forget it all, to pretend it never happened, to just assume the parties from the other side of things are dead. But their not, and everyone knows it. Which makes things even worse for the people “forgetting”. How many of us who have fathers or grandfathers who fraught there have family there still? How many of us have family among the evacuated “orphans”? How many of our family who “never came home” are that way because of this? They can’t even tell us, and more then anything that is is what is so chilling about this film. It could be any of us who has family who “never came home” from that war. It could be those of us who’s family did. How many people will take these secrets to their grave? The whole thing is just such a mess everyone wants to just forget it, but how can anyone forget that?

Resources

The Beautiful Country. Directed by Hans Petter Moland, 2004.

While reading Peter Bacho’s Dark Blue Suit I realized that references were being made to historical events in Seattle that I was not familiar with. I know this from my previous studies that Seattle has always had interesting history especially when it comes to the issue of civil rights and race relations. So I chose to look up some information about different events mentioned in the book. I found a website run by the University of Washington that specifically documents these issues, that is called the Seattle Civil Rights And Labor History Project. The site had a lot of really fascinating information about many of the events mentioned in Dark Blue Suit.

The page I spent the most time on was about the union that the main character Buddy describes his Father being a part of. The title of the page is “Filipino Cannery Unionism Across Three Generations 1930s-1980s”. This page had some very interesting information about the union that the Filipino workers created and I learned a lot about this truly fascinating labor organization. I am going to have to spend more time looking through this website and general, as I suspect it will help me better understand the history of the place where I live; something that is always been important to me.

Resources

Bacho, Peter. Dark Blue Suit. University of Washington Press,1997.

Gregory, James. “Filipino Cannery Unionism Across Three Generations 1930s-1980s”. Seattle Civil Rights And Labor History Project. University of Washington, 2004, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Cannery_intro.htm, 10/31/2017.

This is from the in class exercise from Kris’s work shop on Monday. I was in group 2 and was asked to rewrite my project proposal on a note card. This is a slightly more polished and  longer version of this new vision.

Metaphorical or otherwise, my home has always had food and music and both have always been multicultural in origin. The food is best described as fusion – or Cajun depending on the day and the dish. The music I have most closely associated with home has been jazz. Asian American and Pacific Islander American (AAPIA) people’s are a part of both the world of fusion food and jazz but only come up in most mainstream American’s (white or other wise) minds when fusion food is brought up. AAPIA peoples have contributed to the world of jazz just as much as they have contributed to the world of food, and yet its not in the conventional story’s and history’s of jazz that is taught.

An additional component of my home has also always been the study of the social sciences. Even as a child, studying history and anthropology was just something that was done as a pass time on the weekends. What I want to do with this project is to combine these interests all into one, and look at how different acknowledgments of ethnic origins are between food and jazz as a microcosm of the larger issue of race relations in America. In food, creating a dish that has mixed origins and specifically an AAPIA influence is something that is (currently) an asset and a positive attribute. In jazz, there is not even a clear acknowledgment that AAPIA peoples have made any contributions to the development of the style in the mainstream history. Why is it that AAPIA people’s contributions are cool in food, but out of place in jazz and what have I been missing because of these ideas?

     This up coming week’s reading, Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung was an especially difficult work for me to read. As a child my mothers father battled cancer repeatedly, until it finally killed him when I was ten. He wasted away, and while we did not live close, I still saw what dying of cancer looked like. My sophomore year of college my dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I up rooted my new family and moved back home to be with my dad. It nearly derailed my college efforts, and it did derail my husband’s chances of graduating. Dad survived physically. We stayed there one more year and then left for here to help my husband’s family, because they were in need of help, and at the time it looked like dad was doing well. During my first quarter at Evergreen in 2015, after we had been here a while, dad tried to take his own life and failed. My brother was still in Alaska at the time, and had to take time off to come back down to were dad lived and help. I could not get back up there from here, and had to help my brother deal with things by distance. Only now is dad really recovering. My dad as I knew him as a child is gone.

    Chung’s work hit so close to home that I am glad I chose to read it all the way through first before starting to annotate it, because it gave me time to really think about how it related to my own experiences. My dad did not have the advantages of still having a wife, and a close extended family. If he had, how different would my experiences been? How different would my brothers have been? Would the dad I knew as a child still be here, or would it have made matters worse? I know that there are reasons that we do not get along so well with dad’s family and as an adult I have learned more about that then I ever wanted to know. Would that have been different if our family had kept the closer connections that are more traditional in Norway were my dad’s family is from? What if dad’s military family (his friends and colleges that made up his surrogate family) had been more cohesive and functioning on their own?

      There are so many questions this brings up. I have no idea if any of this will ever become a part of my final project in my descriptions of home, but here it is. One of the ugly truths about my home, and one of the haunting realities of my life. I am my dad’s oldest child, and now the only child that is even on the same sea board as him. He has named me as the person who will have to make his arrangements when the time comes, and I know I am on several of his accounts and other things like that. This is a part of home for me, these obligations and this looming doom of how long will dad be ok?

Chung, Catherine. Forgotten Country. Penguin Books, 2012.

Notes from the Field Trip to Tacoma

Takuichi Fujii’s art is an interesting window on his life, as all good art should be.

It was interesting to look at how his styles changed through out his life, and it was significant to note the medium changes as well. I found it very significant that there were very few pieces with faces in them. While there are people depicted in his art, they very rarely have faces, so when they do, the faces really stand out. For instance, his work “Grieving Women” creates an even stronger haunting impression when this contrast between his other works is taken into account. I like this artist, and I think that his works will be of great significance in the future.

The idea that efforts have been made to erase the Chinese rail worker from history is really quite disturbing to me. In retrospect, I never did learn about any of this history from a history book. I did learn about it from family stories of how this country has not been a fair place to everyone, something that in retrospect makes this effort to remove such things from history even more disturbing to me. Zhi Lin’s efforts at documenting this history through art, are thus note worthy. I approve of the way that his art was done in such a way to involve the audience as it creates a stronger impact of the message of the work.

The Reconciliation garden is an interesting place, that I will have to spend more time at at some point. This place is built in such a way to facilitate some serious thinking. Which at this point I am still doing. I can not help but think of the timing on when the Chinese were expelled from Tacoma and the timing on the massacres of rail workers that happened in various places around the state. I also can not help but think of the relationships between immigrants and the communities they immigrate to in general. Many things to think of.

This is a testing of how to write a post. This allows us to edit the post and to make new posts. To use distraction free mode click the expand thing in the right hand corner.  The input box auto saves. yipie! Drafts are not posted, and you have to push publish to make them appear in the blog. When you do click publish, the post is made public, but there are other ways to publish a post. If you want this as a non public post, change the visibility settings to private, or create a password and share the pass word with who you want to read this. To get images at the heading of the post, chose featured image, and to get them in the text chose add media. When you use an image make sure to add a citation if it is not yours. In this class we are using MLA format.

Includes: class notes as well as observations on program readings and a synthesis of ideas across program texts