I wrote about this in my annotations, but there’s a book I remember reading where a mother had a conversation with her daughter about her aunt who they did not speak the name of due to her being banished. I feel like it may have read it when I was in my women’s literature class a few years ago, but it’s fuzzy.

Anyways, the moment in Paper Bullets where it mentioned how family would ignore and not say the names of those who have shamed the family name reminded me a lot of that book, which also had a Chinese family describing this. The story went along the lines of this:

The narrator, the young daughter (around 10-years-old) listens to the mother’s story about how her sister had sex with an unknown man and became pregnant. This is considered to be shameful, and since her husband was dead, it was fairly obvious that she had sex with another man. The man ran off while the woman was left to take the blame, and eventually the whole town came to her family’s home and destroyed the livestock, destroyed the house, and killed the livestock. The family shunned her from the land, in which she complied and left the town.

This is where the mother’s story stops, but the child, who has an active imagination, decides to mislead the reader and make up endings of her own. One specific example I remember was how the woman fell down a well and was killed (including the unborn baby). However, this in-turn poisoned the water supply for the town, killing all of the inhabitants that originally kicked her out. Up until the present, she still haunts this well, and whoever goes near it is pulled down with her and killed.

I don’t know, I just found it interesting that this wasn’t just for that book and is an actual cultural thing. Very sad, especially when considering the example of the sister. I just wish I could remember the title of that damn book.

Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon (USUM) finally came out on Friday. I was so pumped for it that, immediately after class, I hopped onto the bus and went to the mall to get my own copy.

For those unfamiliar, Pokemon USUM is set in Alola, which is based heavily on Hawaii. The creators, Game Freaks, actually researched into the game by visiting Hawaii on multiple occassions.

Though they did research, I feel like only the “tourist” version of Hawaii was researched/included into these games. While I don’t find this surprising, since it is Pokemon and Alola is its own region in this verse, it would’ve been very interesting if they did manage to fit that in and show that not all of “Alola” is paradise.

The new game is really fun so far; I had to set it down so I could do my blog posts for the week. I recommend it!

I was trying to look up some cool fact to post for this week, and I discovered that the month of May is officially recognized as Asian American and Pacific Islander month.

The Wikipedia has some cool facts as well, so feel free to check them out~

Many Nintendo fans know of the popular “Jump Up, Super Star!” theme for the new game “Super Mario Odyssey”, which brings about a very upbeat opening to a very upbeat game. When I first listened to it, the immediate first thing I noticed was the jazz inspiration, which is very evident throughout the song with the many trumpets and the funky beat. The second thing I noticed, when watching the official video for it, is that it has a sort of “big city” theme, as implied by the Empire State Building with “New Donk City” written at the top. It gives a feeling of wonder and excitement, as with many songs describing experiences in this city.

Considering the developers are Japanese, I found it interesting that a game like Super Mario Odyssey would be inspired by this type of genre, as well as New York City itself. While they do have a Japanese singer for this theme, the English singer is considered the international version by Nintendo, which is even more interesting.

(Personally, I prefer the English version, though I also like the Japanese version.)

But yeah! It’s so interesting to see a major Nintendo game being inspired by American music, and the song turning out to be very catchy.

Before this class, I had not thought about the representation of Asians in the American music industry; I think that with recent whitewashing movies and shows coming out, such as the “Death Note” Netflix series and Scarlett Johannson’s “Ghost in the Shell”, I’ve been more-so focused on Japanese erasure in the film industry. However, I had never thought about Filipinos in the music industry up until now. I was also very surprised when The Black Eyed Peas, which practically made up my childhood, was brought up, only to learn about the Filipino-American that was in the group who has made a couple songs that are sang in Filipino. There was one pestering thought that popped into my head upon hearing “Bebot” and “The APL song”: how come I had heard most of the Black Eyed Peas songs, but not these two? Was it because they were in a foreign language, and it wasn’t as popular as their other songs due to this? Was there a more hidden meaning behind it, or was I just digging too deep into it?

These two songs are amazing in my opinion; after we entered into our 10 minutes break, I immediately opened up my Spotify and went to add those songs to my playlist. “Bebot” is a hella bop, and I listened to it on repeat throughout the day. Makes me wish that I had heard it earlier.

Apart from the Black Eyed Peas, which is a very popular band and bound to get more attention to these types of songs, I also liked “Morning of America” by Blue Scholars (which I also have on my Spotify). It has such a unique sound, combining jazz and hip-hop to make this funky beat, and goes on to tell their story as a Filipino-American. I went to see how many views it had on YouTube to get a better idea of the general audience, and the official video had approximately 74k views, which isn’t a lot in YouTube standards (but not necessarily bad either). Good songs like this are often overlooked in the industry, which is disappointing.

I figured out this week that a Eurovision Asia song contest is in the works. At the moment, it is scheduled to start in 2018. Countries that are signed up so far include China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Australia, and Hong Kong.

I’m really interested in how Asia has been influenced by Europe to hold a competition like this. From what many Europeans have told me, Eurovision is a way to bring the continent together as a whole (as well as have fun in the process), so perhaps that is the goal for Asia as well? Either way, I can’t wait to see how it plays out, and I hope that many other Asian/Pacific Islander countries will join as well.

Throughout the past few weeks, I have been a bit panic-y about how exactly I am going to write my paper, including my project proposal, annotated bibliography, etc. When Kris showed us the few examples her previous students had made, I was:

1. Glad to get more of an idea of what is expected when I am writing.
2. Very glad to see that I wasn’t the only one struggling with trying to understand what exactly expected of the writing portion of the class.

I hope that we will get more examples later on, since I feel that is the best way for me to understand what to write.

While reading the text for week 1, I found myself comparing it a lot to our modern-day society, more particularly with our current Republican-led administration. Hsu writes about how America tried to put up multiple barriers and apply bans to where Asian-Americans were unable to enter the country, only to have Asians find multiple ways around these hindrances. This reminds me a lot of Trump’s current travel bans for the Middle-East, only to have the executive orders deemed unconstitutional while they are still able to enter. It also prompted me to remember the “Build that wall!” slogan, where Trump promised to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, only to have that fall short since many are still entering the country. Trump and his cabinet are applying the same actions as white America was with Asian-Americans (as well as other minorities).