A Haunting Personal Connection

So at this point I believe, I have acquired all of the research that I need for my final paper. I have well over seven sources, and at this point more than anything I think I may have to many sources, I tends to overwrite papers. I’m not sure exactly where to go from here. But I know one thing I can do is create annotated bibliographies of my sources that I have currently. If nothing else, it might help me sort out what I do and don’t not want to use.

Cho, Grace M. “Eating Military Base Stew.” Contexts, vol. 13, no. 3, Summer, 2014, pp. 38-43, Ethnic NewsWatch, https://evergreen.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.evergreen.idm.oclc.org/docview/1555639492?accountid=11199, doi:http://dx.doi.org.evergreen.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1536504214545759.

In this article Grace Cho utilizes her personal ambiguous feelings about a “traditional” Korean meal to inform the reader both about the meal itself, as well as the awkward history around it. Cho explains the way in which Koreans were forced to first began making this meal and why it continues to persist as component of Korean food culture as well as Korean-American food culture. Additionally, the pieces and exploration of how her own family and life is a reflection of the story of this dish. An additional point of note about this piece is that it is written from the first-person perspective and stylistically is much like the example essays given for our final project.

I’m not really sure if this piece is going to have a place in my final paper. It has however been very significant to me because it has shed light on the culture that my father was a part of during his deployments to Korea. While I can think of some ways to integrate the ideas of this article into my final paper I think more than anything it is likely going to be utilized as an example of how to write in the style. I am going to have to spend some quality time trying to figure out where this piece fits in.

spining

This past week has been a bit of a blur. But in saying that I realize I really have to expand out to a month. The biggest problem I am currently having is trying to be able to keep a single thought in my head for long enough to actually write it down. Whatever you do kids don’t end up with epilepsy it will rob you of everything you’ve ever tried to do in your life.

I am trying to get a grip on what I need to finish, and just the world in general. Spend most of the day struggling with vertigo or a migraine and I have forgotten a lot of things. At this point, I know I need to catch up on these blog posts. I think I need four of them, yes! I need four of them. I know I need to finish some book annotations. Those are more complicated. I still don’t know what I’m needing to do to make up my classwork. That terrifies me. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I’m also not sure what I need to do about my final paper. But I can write blogs!

A New Source!

Here is the annotated version of the bibliography entry for this new article I utilized in my rough draft. I think this work is going to be really relevant to my final draft of my final paper. While my progress this week has been quite pathetic in many ways, the fact that I found this article is really made up for it. This article likely going to make my paper work.

Katz, Elihu. “Evaluating Culture: World Music And Fusion Food.” International Journal Of Cultural Sciences, vol. 18, issue 2, pp. 155-165, Oct. 2014. Evergreen State College ILLiad, https://clio.evergreen.edu/illiad/EVER/illiad.dllAction=10&Form=75&Value

=411399. 

In this article, Katz explores the challenge faced by music and food critics in attempting to reconcile globalism and ethnic origins of dishes/music forms. Katz points out that for food/music critics, multiculturalism has created a unique situation when it comes to determining evaluation criteria as it’s not clear by what standards each creation should be judged by. Katz utilizes the examples of fusion food and the so-called world music genre as examples of the confusion that has been introduced into evaluation efforts.

I am likely going to rely heavily on this article because it directly addresses both issues of Asian pop culture that I am wanting to discuss (food and music). Katz’s article is a next level explanation of one of the points I am trying to make in my own paper. I am interested in looking at the interaction between multiculturalism/globalism and attempting to define what is and is not a part of any single ethnic group’s pop-culture. That is exactly what this article is doing as well.

An Interesting Bit of Local History

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.

Cutting One, Two, Three

My experiences over the last week have really shaken me. To provide a working background, I had a seizure in the middle of Rite Aid and as a result have been diagnosed with epilepsy. I know that many people who have the condition I do are mistaken as mentally ill, addicts going through withdrawal, and many other negative stereotypes. Combining these thoughts with the topic of the class, has resulted in some dark ruminations.

I am a white woman so in some ways there’s a slight chance that such stereotypes might not be the first destination of bystanders of the next event I have, but the fact that that makes a difference and the fact that it is such a dramatic difference is a little depressing to me. What would happen if I was Asian American and had a seizure in the middle of Rite Aid like I did the other day? Admittedly my friend was with me and knew what was going on but what if they hadn’t been? Would the onlookers have given me the benefit of the doubt and assumed that I was having a seizure because of a medical problem, or would they have called the cops assuming that I was an addict going through withdrawal or having some kind of mental health breakdown?

The intersection of race and disability is one that ends up shorting so many people. The church that I go to here in Centralia runs a soup kitchen and intentionally conducts outreach to the homeless populations in the area. It is terrifying to me how many people I have met at the soup kitchen who are on the street and turning to illegal drugs because of disabilities such as mine. It’s also disheartening that a significant proportion of homeless people I have known both through my current church and from my experiences these last three months on the public bus system are not white, and are also disabled. The idea that my inherent appearance, something that I can not change gives me an advantage in my disability makes me feel slimy.

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And here is A snip it that was in the “paper” section.  This week is full of choping.

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My efforts in making an entry in the “paper” category this week are going to require some inventiveness on my part. I missed every day of class this week because of my new health diagnosis of epilepsy. I still can’t deal with this. But what I can do is some independent self evaluation of my rough draft.

Writing my rough draft actually was a little bit easier than I thought it was going to be. In many ways that made me nervous however, as I’m still not sure if I’m doing it right at all. But I’ve definitely figured out where I’m going with this paper now. The article that I found and that I talk about in the “rock”section this week really gave me a solid direction. Before the site really been struggling to find a way to put into words some of the ideas that I was thinking about, but having read that article the connections that I was making my head between two seemingly unrelated topics started to make slightly more sense. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep everything I have currently, but I have to admit what I have created so far is usable and I think at least parts of it will end up in my final draft. The exercise at any rate has not been without purpose.

So while this is not what I really wanted to be putting into this entry this week, I guess this is better than nothing. I will continue to attempt to keep up and I will continue to try to find relevant things to put into this category even if I have to keep missing class. Even without direct input from my peers, I know that I can at least evaluate myself and take notes on my own progress.

A New Day And A New Project Topic….. Or Not.

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?

An Old Topic of Discussion.

In high school I had the same teacher two years in a row for my advanced English class, and she made us take the class with the other teacher the next year, rather then take all of our required high school English education with her. We needed diversity in our teaching styles she said, and then promptly reminded us that not everyone teaches like she does. In retrospect, she would have fit right in at Evergreen, but the teacher that we then had to take the next two years would not have. The first day of class as we were all grudgingly trying to conform to more conventional class expectations, we were asked to write down what we thought constituted the American Dream. I will never forget how naive my vision was, and how while at first all of us thought such as discussion was pointless make work but by the end of the year understood what the point had been. It was also depressing to realize just how few of us would ever, be able to obtain what had been sold to us as the American dream and this was in the college track class.

Then my vision had been the rights to economic betterment, the right to own an home, the right to own land, the right to move beyond one’s parents in class development. This matched up with most of my classmates visions. Over the year this vision expanded a little, but not much. One thing that influenced this slight expansion, was to look at what had been considered the American dream in the past, and the idea of Henry Ford’s melting pot came up. I still don’t know which version is the one I buy into, or which is less depressing. But looking at Ford’s vision, while it is clearly flawed, it has none the less been really influential on what makes up a lot of people’s vision of the American dream. The question that lucks out a at me form the dark of my mind is what on earth is left if we all dissolve into a big melting pot? Is there a single American culture that can develop out of this or, is this just an effort by the people in charge to create a more cooperative and docile work force? Ford’s intentions were motivated directly by his efforts to create the optimized American worker. This vision was created as a means of control, and it is very effective. If you have no were to go back to, you have to play along with the game of employment and survival or unemployment and death/failure. You don’t refuse to work because you feel your rights are being violated, you keep working, because work is your new culture, your new home, your new leas on life.

So what is the American Dream? Is it really just a lie? I still can’t answer this and I don’t know if I ever will.

The beginnings of a draft?

Fusion food is something that I have found is just the food that I cook and eat. I do not think of it necessarily as being a mix of different peoples ideas of what is good I just think of it as different ways to make what I am making more yummy. I can’t stand boring food. I hate the idea of falling into a routine of always having the same thing every day for food, and even when it comes to the dishes I cook, I almost never cook the same thing twice. The idea that food is some how a result of one specific ethnic group is an idea that I some how missed or forgot at some point. Even when I cook things that are traditional dishes from one place or another, I can’t just keep with the ingredients from there, I add in things form all over the place. Take my spaghetti for instance. It was always a very non traditional spaghetti, I like to add things like Tarragon, and Thyme and Sage along with the more traditional spices of oregano and Basel. Then I favor malt vinegar over balsamic vinegar, I add Worcester sauce. And its not complete with out soy sauce and/or teriyaki sauce. It just does not taste right with out it. I also usually add some other exotic (to Italy) spices. Nothing is pure Italian about my Italian cooking.

But my “Asian” food is no better. I add oregano to my teriyaki sauce, and red wine to make a vegetable dish with Italian noodles instead of rice. I add Mexican spices like cilantro and chilies (chipotle or Jalapenos) to it too. This is not pure Asian food any more then the Italian food is pure Italian.

Jazz is the same way. There is the beet, which can come from African music, or from Latin music and then melody that uses the pentatonic scale, which is what a significant portion of Asian music is based off of. The melodic sounds that we associate with Asian music forms are from the pentatonic scale, which is also the basis of blues and jazz. While there are other people who use these scales in the world (lots of them) it is interesting to note how this connection is always left out of the conventional history’s of jazz. The art for its self is so broad that it seams crazy to do so. And yet it is.

In one of the sources that I have for this topic there is a discussion of how labeling things as jazz is a means of labeling it as undesirable. As some how being not a part of main stream American music. (Lee 71-72) I have to admit, I could see how this is a viable idea. Jazz as a genre is so broad that I have often wondered why it is all considered related. Sometimes there are stylistic relations, and it is clear why a piece has been grouped as jazz, and other times its not really clear why this is jazz and not something else. The accusation is that this label is used as a means of racial segregation. (Lee 71-72) And I could see it. The thing is that historically Jazz has been labeled as a music of rebellion, a music of America, a music of mixed heritage and origins. It is inherently minority, even when it is representative of the majority. The idea being that it is some how tainted by its mixed origins, and thus is the landing place for artists who don’t fit the mold-aka are not white but are writing music that is associated with whiteness.

The question becomes, why this acceptance of a mixing of origins in food as a positive attribute but in music as some how negative or not worth appreciating? Why is the acknowledgment of the mixing a thing in food? Why are the AAPIA origins/contributions not appreciated in Jazz? The history is there, Jazz shows the influences, and there are even artists who have been doing “jazz” that fuzzes the sounds of Asian music with the sounds of jazz. And yet, it is not a part of the history and stories that I learned. I did not learn about this part of jazz in school. I learned that it was a black and white fusion. There was no brown or red contributions to the roots. Which in retrospect is absurd.

Lee, Daniel Y. “Don’t Call It Jazz: An Interview With Vijay Lyer.” Asian American Policy Review, vol. 26, 2016, pp. 70-75, Ethnic NewsWatch, https://evergreen.idm.oclc.org  /loginurl=https://searchproquestcom.evergreen.idm.oclc.org/docview/1898059508?accountid=11199.

 

Not All Who Wander Through Research Have A Destination.

Attempting to sort through my thoughts this week has continued to prove quite difficult. So many different streams of ideas at once, and I am still sick so I am having trouble concentrating. I have been struggling to find a way to define my topic for my final project now that I am trying to do research. I thought I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I am not so sure now. I have some research, but I do not know exactly what to do with it, or how it fits, or if it is any good. I hate pop culture. I don’t want to leave the library so to speak. Ya I have interests out side of my work, and my academic pursuits, but I have kind of forgotten what they are over the last few years. I have had to. Attempting to keep up with school work, working a full time demanding job, being involved in my children’s homeschooling, managing my dad’s issues, helping manage my mother-in-law’s issues does not leave a lot of time for my own life in any form. So thinking of pop culture, and of my own not strictly academic interests with in it is just hard. And I am totally lost again. Oh well, I will research until I find the way again!

A Dark Reflection

     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.