Winter break is just outside my grasp, but I have to wait just a little longer…

I felt exactly like this when reading this week’s book as well. Sadly, due to having mountains of homework for both my classes, I wasn’t able to finish it all. But, nonetheless, I found it to be interesting from what I read.

I think the number one theme that stood out to me in the book was the hyper-masculinity the narrator constantly talked about. Moments like father giving him condoms and forcing him to do sports definitely left an impact on the author later on in life in both good and bad ways. The narrator describes this feeling as being that of being uninformed; for example, his dad gave him a box of condoms and walked away without giving him “the talk”.  The narrator also goes on about how he never wanted to be into sports, but his dad forced him. However, there was no reason as to why he forced him; he just did. It seems that men avoid this sort of topic for some reason, and the narrator seems to point to the idea that it’s just passed down through the generations. His grandfather did it to his father, and now his father did it to him.

The lack of sex talk is definitely shown to affect the narrator later on, as he is shown with many lovers, to the point of even nearly accidentally having a child. However, despite this, the narrator also seems to try and push away the ideas that his father and his surrounding implemented in his brain, such as the objectification of women. He becomes a self-proclaimed feminist, becoming pro-choice and the like, only to have his ideas challenged by the women he dated. Was he forcing this mindset; did he truly believe what he claimed he did?

I think all of this was my favorite part of the book, as well as how the narrator doesn’t let his current opinions in the present time affect his writing. He only describes what he thought and did at those times without saying things like “I don’t believe that now!” I feel like it adds a layer of truth, owning up to the shitty mindset he had in the past without trying to defend or cover it up. Really shows that difference between the author and narrator, despite them being the same person.

I just want to start off by saying that the title is rather weird. While the chapter does go over it, I can’t help but wondering how that influenced the title of the book.

I had a hard time reading this book, mostly due to it having so many hidden meanings and poems. However, I did find it interesting that the main character, Lovey, was a Japanese-American Hawaiian, a group that (from what I have experienced) is talked about even less than native Hawaiians and white people living in Hawaii. Throughout the book, she is bullied due to her heritage, her pidgin dialect, and other aspects of herself. This in-turn makes her want to live more of a haole life, to be able to escape this poverty and discrimination and live a more “normal” family life. She befriends only haole people, she daydreams about marrying a haole and changing her last name, and even plays pretend and acts like she is a haole herself. It isn’t until the end of the book that she learns to love who she is and where she comes from.

In my opinion, the most interesting chapter was the one with the Jahova’s witness teacher. And I feel like it was the most interesting since I couldn’t understand a majority of it. In this chapter, Lovey and her best friend, Jerry, go to see an R-rated horror movie, as well as are seeing their teacher on a regular basis. In the beginning, the teacher gives off some questionable vibes, such as telling Lovey to give her a kiss, though it didn’t have any horror-like theme until after they saw the movie. After, their teacher seems to be like a demon herself, with glowing green lights, her baby crying at exactly 12:07 a.m., and her menacing laugh that the kids equated to the laugh in the movie they saw. I do believe that the story was altered a bit due to their movie experience (and their child-like minds saw it just like a horror movie), but it gets me wondering about what exactly happened. The laugh especially stood out to me since it had been referenced before; was their teacher’s preachings about God make them think like this? Or is there a much dqrker theme in play? In the end, it’s really up to the reader.

After reading this book and hearing the lecture given on the Pacific islands, I am really happy to have learned more about Hawaiian culture and the people. I also feel like it was a small bonus that it related to a country that relates to my major, Japan. In the end, I have a much bigger thirst for knowledge when it comes to the Pasifika.

I typically write about the books we read each week, but due to not having an assigned book this week, I decided to go over the movie that we watched on Tuesday: Mississippi Masala.

I don’t typically research into India or its history, due to my main interests being more directed towards eastern and southeastern Asia, but I couldn’t help but be amazed by how there were Indians who were born and raised in Africa for generations. As the movie depicts with the main characters, they have never been to India; the only home they know of is Uganda. However, after dictator Idi Amin declares that the Asians be forcibly removed from the country, the main characters Jay, Kinnu, and Mina (along with the many other “non-black” Africans) leave the continent of Africa and are sent to unfamiliar countries. Jay and his family originally went to England, but soon moved to Mississippi in the U.S.

The number one theme from this movie that stood out to me was how it addressed racism between minorities. In most movies, it’s black people vs. white people, and, while this should be covered, it often overshadows other forms of racism as well (you could say people are seeing this from a “black and white” point-of-view). In this movie, it covers African-Americans and Indian-Americans as they both struggle to make a living in Mississippi, as well as Ugandan-Indian’s (?) treatment and unnecessary removal from Africa. Though they do include snippets of racism from white people, it is not the focus of the movie.

The most blunt example of this is, as mentioned before, Idi Amin’s declaration that Asians be removed from the country. In the movie, he states that Indian people live much better lives than black Africans, going on to say that they are rich while the black Africans are poor. Jay’s brother, who is a black African himself, tells him something similar to this: Uganda/Africa is for black people. I believe that he meant these words, though it wasn’t his own feelings; it was what was happening to Uganda under Amin’s rule. I don’t believe that he wanted his brother to go but believed that Jay had to, for the safety of both him and his family.

Another example that stood out to me was Mina and Demetrius’s break-up. Before meeting Mina, Demetrius had worked very hard to start his own carpet cleaning company and was living decently. However, after people discovered his inter-racial relationship with Mina, everyone started to close their doors to him, making him flatout poor and out-of-business in a matter of weeks. Something as simple as a relationship managed to make him lose everything he worked hard for, all because he was in love with an Indian girl (who, to add on to this simplification, had never been to India and was born in Africa).

Overall, the struggle of self-identity, as with a majority of the other books we have read and movies we have watched, is a major theme in this movie. It shows us that this question can bounce around in one’s mind for a very long time, as seen with Jay and his fruitless attempt to sue the Ugandan government and  go back to Uganda and live his life there. He only realizes that “home is where the heart is” upon realizing that Uganda has changed a lot since he has been gone (especially with his brother’s death), and that he wants to spend out the rest of his days with his loving wife who has been with him since the very beginning. The same could be said about Demetrius and Mina as well; they decide to just book it away from this town instead and head to California for a better life, where they can be free to love each other and live a better life.