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.

When I first read the title “We Should Never Meet” for this week’s reading, the immediate first question that popped into my head was “Why?” It’s definitely an attention-grabbing title, making the reader curious by what exactly it means. It wasn’t until the very end when I realized what it meant

This title resonates with all the characters. For example, the more obvious example would be the last two examples given in the book, Huan and Mai. I think that Huan helped me realize that they should never meet their biological parents. I have mixed thoughts on why exactly they shouldn’t meet, though another fellow student mentioned in our conversation about this that it would be disappointing to them. These kids have held such high expectations for their parents, expecting them to be perfect individuals, but in the end, they would only end up disappointed by reality. They keep doing the blame game as well, blaming their “perfect” parents for abandoning them, blaming the adoption centers for whatever reason, but realized that no one is at fault in the end. Before this, I was thinking about how it would change the characters as a whole if they met their parents; how this would alter their personality, their relationships, and overall their whole life. But that doesn’t mean it’s for the better. Their struggles have led them up to the modern day, and meeting their parents would be taking away from all of that, as if the first 20+ years of their life had been for naught. Another example would be Kim and meeting the lady who ran the Vietnamese shop, with whom she developed an emotional bond to within just a couple of weeks. Once she was hit with the reality that this lady barely knew her, and she barely knew the lady, it affected her mindset in the long-run; throughout the book, it seems that she is vulnerable to forming close attachments, some unhealthily quick, with people that she considers to be like family (as she did with the lady, likely suspecting it was her mother). It’s also shown that she dislikes change, as implied by Mai who called her a child after Kim told her to stop acting older than she was. Eventually, Kim gets married to Vinh, a guy she says that she has been leading on and has been breaking up with multiple times, and has many children with him. But I definitely do not think it was out of romance; rather, I believe that it was out of not knowing what a true family feels like, thus making the decision to keep everything the way it is and live out a life with Vinh.

I also really loved the set-up of the book and how it takes multiple POV’s and gradually merges all of these stories together. The beginning definitely confused me, making me think that Kim was Lien’s child rather than Huan, but as it went on, it started to become clearer and clearer on what the narrator was doing.

Speaking of Huan, I really liked how this character, who is mentioned very little up until the final chapter, turns out to be the center of mostly all of these stories. It is implied that he is Lien’s son, he was taken to the bigger orphanage by Phuong and Truc, he is nearly adopted by Bridget, and he has a poor relationship with Kim and close relationship with Mai. It’s like the reader unknowingly learned about Huan’s life in Vietnam before Huan himself did. And it clicked together so nicely, I loved it.

Out of all the books we have read so far, I think this one is definitely my favorite. I thought that having all of these stories would make me hate it, having to keep up with every single character and their story, but the merging definitely helped. And, while I dislike cliffhangers, this book made it feel satisfying to have it, rather than full conclusion. In the end, there will never be a conclusion, as life only goes on, for both the characters in this book and people in real life.

Throughout the past 5 weeks, I have enjoyed all of the books we have read so far. I’m not typically one who is a bookworm/reads on my own time, but I do feel like, after reading these books, I’d go back and read them again, in an attempt to spot details I may have missed.

Sadly, Dark Blue Suit didn’t quite cut it for me.

Like most of the other books we have read so far, this book was just a bunch of flashbacks, leading up to the last few pages being present-time, where Buddy looks upon the graves of loved ones. I don’t feel like Buddy had any sort of primary struggle, and rather described other’s struggles without knowing the full details (since silence and secrets played a big part in this story). It focused on how Buddy was lucky to be able to accomplish bigger dreams (as also stated by Rico), such as his mother being fully prepared to give her children a great life, allowing him to enter law school. This, in-turn, did not allow him to understand the full struggle of Filipino-Americans in the United States, and how they got where they are today. Also, unlike the other books we have read, Buddy fully embraces both his Filipino and American heritage, not facing some sort of identity crisis. Which is an interesting perspective, especially since it makes Buddy, the main character, more like an observer in this sense, really putting into use the first-person limited perspective.

I noticed one of the biggest themes being mentioned in the first two paragraphs of the book: the American dream. I think that was my favorite part of the book, how it uses the flashbacks to disprove the American dream speculation that they learned in the Philippines. For example, I think it definitely accomplished its goal in disproving that moving to America is a “fresh new start”, by using his father and his cousin as examples. Both of them moved to America in hope of a better life, only to have Leo be arrested upon their first day of arriving, and being told “Welcome to America” even after being told that Leo wasn’t drunk.

The two also had to give up on their dream job in Alaska upon having children and working at a cheaper job. His father wanted to go back to doing that job again even after Buddy was born, often discussing it with Leo, but in the end never got to work there again. In the end, this applies to the many Filipino-Americans who moved here, hoping for the same dream-like results his dad and Uncle Leo searched for, only to come empty-handed. This is the reality of Asian-American immigration.

I also expected the book to cover boxing more than it did, perhaps describe the father’s experience, or perhaps let the son obtain some sort of career in it. I was surprised about how little it was covered, only having one chapter dedicated to it, Rico’s experience, and one memory of it with one of his Uncles, who was a big fan of the sport. I can understand why the son didn’t get into it; it seemed like an unhealthy way to relieve stress (as he noticed from his father, who often picked fights), but the cover has pictures of boxing. Boxing is definitely some sort of symbolism for Filipino-Americans finally being equal to white people, or even better, but I found the cover rather misleading. Unless I am just missing something here.

In the end, I feel like covering Filipino-Americans and their struggle was fine, but… I don’t know. I expected more? I think the boxer on the cover definitely mislead me to believe that this would be about a Filipino-American’s boxing career, so that’s why I feel somewhat disappointed.

Not going to lie, I teared up a couple times due to this book. Many may deny it, but we’ve all had that thought cross our minds at least once in our lives: “What will I do if my parents die?” This book brings about a realistic perspective of how death is treated, as well as how it should be dealt with.

Throughout this book, the number one goal the family has is to find one professional that will say the father’s cancer is not terminal. That everything would be okay, and everything would be taken care of. That was not the case. This book didn’t dance around the topic of death, it didn’t allow this family to witness some sort of “miracle” and have the father’s cancer suddenly disappear. He didn’t get to say those final last words that people in movies typically do, right before they die. He only sat in agony, wanting death to come and take him yet also wanting to stay alive, in this world, with his family. I think the book’s realistic approach to death is what got me emotional; most of the time, with deaths in movies and other books, I don’t get emotional. In fact, I actually criticize it; if a book or movie doesn’t make a part emotional to the reader where it should be emotional at, what’s the point in including it? I feel like the build-up of the relationship between the sisters and their parents definitely helps the reader form some sort of sympathy for the characters, or even empathy, knowing that they all care for one-another, and that they have little time to show this. Something that, again, people fear.

However, despite the characters not accepting that the father was going to die soon, the book also provides a couple of alternatives of how to deal with the death of a loved one, such as the Monks suggesting that one lives and lets go. Really, that’s the only thing one can do at a time like that; enjoy the company of the loved one, while also accepting that death is nature in and of itself.

I also feel that the layer of complexity the characters have also adds onto the greatness of the book. One specific example I remember was how, during seminar, one person mentioned how the father’s sister was “a bitch”. While that is the first impression one gets from her no doubt, the train-of-thought in that instance was analyzing her from the outside, rather than going in-depth on her personality and reactions to certain subjects. For me, I have a bunch of mixed opinions on the sister, mostly due to the fact that her complexity as a character doesn’t only simplify her as a “bad” character. For example, the environment she was raised in encouraged the superiority of men over women, so it wasn’t surprising that she was so lenient with her boys making a ruckus. It’s definitely not acceptable, but she is in the mind-set that this is okay, that this is how things should be. She also saved her brother from a massacre when they were both children and raised him on her own, showing that she does love her family. However, this does not mean she has negative aspects of herself, such as how she keeps trying to convince the family that the father has strayed off god’s path due to his life choices. And, while I did defend her on her mind-set of men > women, she still did not do anything even when the girls came to her about the boys bullying them. It’s so hard to say whether I like or dislike her, since she has so many contradicting traits about herself that make her both a likable and unlikable character.

As with the other books we have read so far, I definitely enjoyed reading this one as well. I had expected Hannah’s disappearance to be the primary conflict, but instead the reader is given insight to how a family that’s torn apart still came together to help care for and love their father even until his last breath.

For week 3, we moved from the previous topic of WWII Japanese-Americans to Chinese-Americans living in the modern-day time. In “Donald Duk”, a boy named Donald Duk absolutely despises his name, due to always being compared to the Disney character “Donald Duck”.

While his family poked fun at it in good jest, a majority of the jokes came from people making fun of his Chinese name, causing him to gradually hate his name more and more (as he went on about how much he hates it for the first two pages). Ironically, I found Donald Duk’s personality to be similar to the cartoon character’s; both are often jolly, but have a quick temper. Both are also often getting into trouble and acting overall immature. However, in the end, the jokes were used in a harmful way, affecting Donald’s viewpoint on Chinese people, as well as himself, in a negative way.

His school did not help in relieving this “hatred” about his Chinese heritage. In fact, Mr. Meanwright instead paints Chinese people as “passive”, “introverted”, and overall weak compared to the Americans. While Donald knows the oversimplification of these types of statements, he nonetheless feels embarrassed to be partially Chinese due to the fact that this is how typical white Americans view the Chinese, as well as Asians in-general. He doesn’t want to be viewed as weak, or passive, or even different. This is why he tries to push away Chinese culture: to try and be like a “normal” American.

Throughout the book, Donald struggles with his self-identity, not understanding who he truly is. He meets a few different characters in this path of self-discovery, even including people who are already long dead. By using his dreams, he learns more about how Chinese people worked very hard on the Union Pacific Railroad, only to have the white people take all the credit from them. The press even purposefully ignores the Chinese workers, not learning any of their names while asking Crocker for the names of the white, European workers. Going through all of this definitely helped Donald understand that there are many points in history where Asian accomplishments are covered up (to the point of his teacher not knowing the facts), and this slowly helped him become more proud of who he is, both is Chinese and his American side.

During our discussion in class, we brought up the theme of racism, and how the book describes some different types of racism, and how many of these does not make a person evil. For example, a little white after Donald starts having his dreams and realizing how white Americans treated the Chinese-Americans, he started to say things like “I hate white people.” This, in turn, offended his friend, Arnold, making him believe that Donald disliked him due to his race. Donald’s father later mentions how not all racism is meant as bad, and that people who spread purposeful hate upon a race are the bad racists. He describes how people can be racist due to their current society, and that they are doing it unconsciously. A great example of this is with Donald’s teacher, who asks for Donald’s input upon explaining false (or rather, oversimplified) information. He wants to learn and did not know that what he has been saying was discriminating against Chinese people. I really enjoyed the way we broke it down as racism vs. prejudice, defining the split between discrimination that is not on purpose vs. the discrimination that is. A good example of purposeful racism were The Big Four during Donald’s dreams. At the end of one chapter, when one of The Big Four explains that the Chinese were not a part of the company thus do not need the credit, another member states something along the lines of “… While I appreciate what they did, we will let the white men take credit.” (will add in actual line later), going on about how the “white” will be remembered. This is purposeful erasure of history, in an attempt to make white people look as though they had more of an impact on history than any other minor group.

There were also a lot of symbols for multiculturalism in the book, though there were three in particular that stood out to me: Lee Kuey; King’s restaurant; and the airplanes.

Lee Kuey was an odd character overall, having adverse effects of Agent Orange from back in the Vietnam War. Lee was just like Donald, wanting to push away his Chinese heritage and “become an American”, and I feel as though this was to show Donald of just what happens when one tries to push away who they really are; they suffer. Even Lee points out the similarity at the end of the second-to-last chapter, stating that he originally thought that Donald and him were very much alike, only for Donald to finally love himself for him.

King has traveled all over the world and has learned from the best cooks. However, one in particular stood out to him, being a Cantonese chef. This chef barely ever cooked actual Cantonese food, and instead cooked many foreign foods, to allow foreigners to feel like they are at home when eating his food (plus, they barely ever ordered Cantonese anyways). King was inspired by this, and so he established a restaurant that served a whole bunch of food as well, from American to Cantonese. This shows that a mix of cultures is not bad at all, and instead allows one to feel in their most comfortable state, as though they are “home”.

And finally, the airplanes. These were a very major symbol throughout the entire book, and it is understandable why. The planes represent Chinese culture, and Donald’s actions shows how he was feeling about himself. For example, when Donald lit the plane on fire, that represented Donald attempting to rid of his Chinese heritage, in his attempt to be “normal”. Later on, he is given another plane to build and replace for his father, showing him trying to put the pieces together and figure out who he really is. Later on, his mother also has another plane, and the two have a quick conversation about how Donald would only be able to build one plane within the next two weeks and that he should focus on one. I took this as one plane being his American heritage, while the other being his Chinese heritage. He needs to focus on figuring out if he wants to accept his Chinese background, rather than forcing himself to be “more American”. He should stop focusing on the American part, and instead build up his Chinese side.
Finally, at the end of the book, the plane is built, and this is when Donald finally accepts who he is. He has put all the pieces together, and now he has a sense of identity.

Like the last two, I really enjoyed reading this book; I feel like it definitely expanded my mind, opening up the discussion for many topics, such as racism and multiculturalism.

“Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Now that it is week 2, we are starting to get into the nitty-gritty of our studies.

The most impressionable thing to happen this week was definitely our trip to the two museums and Chinese Reconciliation Park. To be honest, I didn’t expect to find much of Asian-American influence on Washington; in fact, I thought the first museum we went to would have a small section in a corner dedicated to their impact. I’m glad to find that this was not the case.

A majority of the countries mentioned in the museum, just like the first book we had to read, was China and Japan. While there were small mentions of the Philippines and India here and there, China and Japan was definitely a major focus.

When it came to Japan, as expected, a majority of the things I read related to World War II. I liked how the museum acknowledged the conspiracy theories surrounding the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, going in-depth of Japan’s surrender prior to the action taken. For example, it described how people have speculated that this was to test the bombs and/or assert their dominance to the Soviet Union. When I was in high school, I wrote a paper about the latter, so seeing it finally acknowledged felt like a breath of fresh air, since I had always seen the basic set-up of “Japan surrendered after the bombings,” and nothing more.

I also liked how there was one section dedicated to describing Takuichi Fujii’s art and diary, rather than having it mixed with a whole bunch of other art. While he was an issei, like everyone else, he had no intent on returning to Japan, but also makes no declaration of loyalty to America, thus he stayed in an internment camp for around 3 years. During this time, he made so many beautiful oil canvases and drawings, many of which were the buildings and his surroundings. With this art, he created his own personal diary, which did not become discovered until one of his grandchildren decided to display it.

When it comes to WWII, one fact I found really interesting was how this war allowed more African-Americans and women to gain jobs in Washington. They found jobs in the defense industry, since white men were going out to war. “They had to hire everybody, you know, to have sufficient laborers.”~Henderson Grayson
“That was the first time I ever seen girls in overalls.”~ Eugene Coleman

I think one story that really pointed out the discrimination in Washington was the story about 200 South Asian men working in Bellingham, only to be gone one week later. One night, hundreds of white men had decided to get together and drag them out of their homes, since they saw their presence as a “threat to their livelihoods” since they all worked at local lumber mill companies and were of Sikh faith. After being pushed onto the streets, with nothing but their pajamas on, the Asian men left, causing a plummet in the population.

A similar event happened with Chinese-Americans who were living in the Tacoma area. Around 800 Chinese-Americans worked/lived near the tide flats, and Euro-Americans did not like this, “fearing” them as an economic threat. These white men told them all to leave, and soon after started burning down Chinese-American houses. Lum May was one particular person affected by this incident, originally coming to America to set up a store, only to be kicked out, moving to British Columbia soon after.

A common theme I noticed here was how the museum more-so focused on different people’s experiences with white American’s actions, rather than just describing it from a point-blank view. I think this is why it was my favorite place to go to out of the three, since it allowed the readers to gain a different viewpoint, rather than just relying on white America’s eyes.

The Chinese Reconciliation Park, in my opinion,was very interesting in its origins and set-up, but the location was disappointing, mostly due to its location. According to the website, this site was made primarily to “.. allow the park to stand both as an acknowledgment of the forceful expulsion of the Chinese population of the City of Tacoma by municipal leaders and a large crowd on November 3, 1885, and as a celebration of the city’s multicultural past, present, and future. The expulsion was an act of exclusion in response to complex conditions of the time, among them economic decline and anti-Chinese sentiment. The park is an act of reconciliation and inclusivity toward appreciation of the people of diverse legacies and interests who are part of the city as a dynamic community.” The effort and meaning if definitely portrayed in the area, from the Fuzhou Ting to the Stonehenge-looking area, but I wish that it could have been placed in a wider and discrete area, to give the area more of a calming and nurturing feeling to it. The area was placed next to a noisy road and docking area instead, which takes away from the significance.

Overall, I hope we have more field trips like this, it was a lot of fun!

Asian-American influence has affected the U.S. for far longer than the typical American thinks. In fact, Asian-Americans are in a very similar position as the African-Americans we learn about in our U.S. history classes, having been brought to the Americas originally as slaves, only to be denied citizenship upon gaining their freedom.

After reading “Asian-American History: A Very Short Introduction”, I have very much been “enlightened” about the treatment of Asian-Americans by white people throughout the history of our country. I put “enlightened” in quotations due to the positive vibe that comes from the word; I am happy to learn about this but am also disgusted by how they were treated like they were heathens and practically monsters, like they were coming over for the sole purpose of “taking over the country”. The author, Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu, does a fantastic job of describing all of this briefly yet in-detail, while also balancing it out with many Asian-Americans of the past who overcame these obstacles and made a life for themselves in their prejudiced home country.

In our seminars, we discussed most of what is written above, as well as a few other topics, such as how Hsu brings up examples of popular movies and books near the end to help the reader relate to the text and understand the background of those forms of entertainment. If the reader didn’t know what they were, they would watch it for another time, an example being one student in the seminar who had written down the sources to watch/read them himself. This was also the same for the main Asian/Pacific Island countries that were mentioned throughout the book. One student mentioned how countries like Laos were mentioned very briefly, while countries like China, Japan, Philippines, etc. had much more of a focus for this book. There was a map in the book that showed where the Asian ban applied to, and it included countries from China to the western part of India, including places like Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Since this was only a short introduction, Hsu chose countries that the reader would most likely be familiar with, to help them relate more with the book and continue to be interested. In my opinion, that was a fine decision on her part.

In all, this was definitely a very interesting read; I am not much of a fan of American history, but since I have an interest with Asian countries, reading about their struggle in America definitely had me glued to my book.