Week 5: The day my Pumpkin brought home a Pumpkin

Seminar Thoughts: At the end of my Paper post, I noted how I thought it was funny how no one in my seminar named Filipino culture as a theme. I didn’t even name it even, the thought came to me when the time at the chalkboard was “over.” It didn’t have to be over, I could have cut in and said we forgot a huge fucking theme. But I didn’t, I kind of just let it go and a took a second to be amazed how no one else caught it though it’s not that amazing not that surprising. In seminar we ended up talking about masculinity and connections across texts and symbols and character development and war and family relationships and the role of women in these stories… I don’t think we talked about the Filipino American experience enough. But I don’t know how we could have gotten to that point if we didn’t know much about Filipino culture to begin with. We’d just be asking a lot of questions? But then a question could even be what did you learn or notice about the Filipino American experience… or something along the lines of that. I think the same could be said about the weeks prior where we discussed several themes in our books but didn’t go in depth about the specific ethnic group shared by the characters in the story. If we don’t ask these questions and if we don’t talk about it beyond a surface level then what are we achieving in this program? And then there are ways I can push this forward but I know that when students have asked questions we kind of shy away from answering and getting to the dirt about it (the what is racism question comes to mind specifically). So I’ll now ask myself a question I commonly ask to try to move things forward: where do we go from here? How will I push for this in seminar, how will I deepen my reading to incorporate this… to maximize my learning… to go beyond the surface level?

The Debut Thoughts: Seeing all the food I recognized definitely tugged at my heart. When I first heard we were going to be watching this film, I was excited because I assumed the film was about a young Pilipina getting ready for her debut and all the drama that gets attached to it. So yeah I was in for a surprise while actually watching the film to see that it’s actually about the brother and all the things he goes through. And again the female character gets pushed into secondary character status and the other leading female actor is the love interest in a *gasp* terrible abusive relationship. Okay, I won’t get into it on this post so instead I’ll write about other observations of the film:

The relationship between immigrant parents and US-born children: now this is something I relate to because that’s how my family is structured. It’s probably a common thing with families of color for parents to want their kids to be a doctor/nurse/lawyer/accountant/*insert high paying career here* because they just want the best for their kid. Think of the sacrifices, the hardship, the struggles that all come with leaving behind your home country and moving and raising a family in a country that sells you false dreams, hopes and opportunities. Okay, that last part was mine but you get the point. So personally for me, my parents tried to push NURSE on me back in high school but obviously that didn’t work. My upbringing was definitely different than you’d think if you’re thinking stereotypically which is another conversation. And lately I’ve been more sensitive to the struggles my parents have endured so me and my siblings could at least have a chance in this (stolen) country. So I understood it when the father got frustrated and violent with Ben in the beginning of the movie. You have to understand that this is an ongoing thing… meaning Ben has been stepping away from his family for a while. Not helping his family prepare the food or practice the dance for his sister’s debut was just one of the things he’s done to make him seem like a disappointment to his parents (probs just the dad since it looked like the mom just lets it go but that’s also a typical thing for moms to do I think). And Ben is a teenager so of course he’s going to step out and try to do his own thing and that definitely conflicts with what his parents want. It’s interesting how Rose was like the opposite of Ben (with how little we know of her) in that she got along great with her parents and… well that’s about it from what I gathered. She ended up being like the “voice of reason” type character which gets reserved for the female characters right.

Anyway…

It was really nice seeing a whole bunch of Pilipinx people in one film. And they didn’t all look the same. There were people of different skin tones and faces and I really appreciated that.

There’s a lot of things I could say but I didn’t want to turn this into a long post…

Other Life Thoughts: Today Jackson came home with a pumpkin and that was the sweetest thing. LOL. Today is Saturday and I have spent the day doing laundry and now I have my blog posts done. I am also going to read 60 pages of the book for this week and I am also cooking a spaghetti squash.