Week 9: Another post on misogyny

Look I gotta deal with this everyday. Why I stopped reading this week’s book definitely wasn’t an excuse to just not read for the week while everything else in life goes on. Although Week 9 was a particularly difficult week and everyday misogyny did play a role in that… I felt I had to establish a boundary somewhere like I always have to try to do in my life and I drew it with this book. Here is the line that started it all:

I literally put the fucking book down and walked away. One thing I really really hate is how people are viewed and judged as body parts rather than as whole people. For the case of people of color (especially qtpoc and woc) and people with marginalized identities (especially those with disabilities and of size) there have been many ways we have been dehumanized and objectified. As a woman of color, this line and several other instances of the book up until the part where I stopped reading, this is something I could not overlook/step back and view from a critical perspective/not take too personally.

Maybe on another week I would have just passed it, made an annotation about the misogyny, move on and finish the book in the day and a half I gave myself time to read. Maybe on another week I would have rationed out the pages over a span of six days like I have done with the other books and that line and the other lines wouldn’t have been so offensive to me. THIS week was particularly stressful on the living-as-a-woc-navigating-a-world-of-misogyny front. On Wednesday I had to talk to an advocate from CASV to vent and cry in front of someone who would understand. Throughout that morning in class I was fighting back my feelings trying not to feel them because these things just keep coming up. I will never not escape sexist comments, news of sexual harassment/assault allegations, rape culture, sexist media, casual misogyny from peers, anything anything anything related to any of that.

Maybe on another week I could stand up to this book like I’ve done before and approach misogyny from a critical perspective. Take note of the time period the book takes place in, take note of who the voice of the story is, and not take it so personally. Maybe on another week I can critically analyze the ways in which my oppressor sexually objectifies my gender and talk about how that it’s wrong while also not discounting his voice and humanity as a whole. Maybe on another week I wouldn’t be so hard on my oppressor for viewing my gender as separated body parts to be measured and instead view THIS as an assignment for my program AND not let it get in the way of this week’s seminar and my education.

Maybe on another week I could see all of this from another perspective and not take it so damn personally. Maybe I could see that I’m overreacting and this isn’t a big deal like I’m making it out to be.

Right. No. I don’t think so. Not this time.

I’m not here to blast anyone for reading through to the end of this book. I’m not here for that. I am taking this personally because it is personal to me. It sucks that I wasn’t able to look past the personals and unable to fully participate in seminar. It sucks that I wasn’t able to be a critical consumer of this book. But I just wanted to put down my feelings about why I stopped reading it. No man could ever say that shit to me and I’ll just hear him out and listen to his life story whether some of it is fictional or not. This book didn’t get a pass from me. Again, I have to stress that I deal with misogyny every day. I deal with it outside of school, I deal with it in my personal relationship, I deal with it internalized in my own damn self.

I had to draw the line somewhere in how I come across misogyny everyday. There are some ways I can’t avoid it but I can control how I deal with it. I’m still learning how to do that. Sometimes I just got to shut it out. Because it hurts me that much.

Week 8: What do you know about the Pacific Islands?

Well, I grew up in the U.S. and went to school here so NOT MUCH. Not because I didn’t think it was important. Not because I didn’t care or forgot about it. But this is where these “things” are bigger than me. Bear with me: because of my upbringing and education, because of United States exceptionalism and white hegemony, I know very little about Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Because of all that, I never had to think about the people who live there, the history they have endured, how the people and the land have been mistreated, and what the future holds. I never had to think about that, I never had to consider the land and lives of all the people who are from there. That alone shows my privilege of being born in the United States and for years being able to blissfully live in the ignorance of this “great” country. Ever since I started learning about feminism starting at age 19 and then enrolling in Highline College at age 21, I’ve been unlearning toxic beliefs I’ve been socialized to believe without question and I’ve learned about the axes of oppression and power dynamics. I’m aware of my privilege to an extent, I’m aware of the comfort my privilege has allowed me, the access, and the safety. But it’s so uncomfortable because I know a lot of people don’t have the privileges I do and how could I enjoy certain parts of my life knowing that other people are suffering because they are marginalized by the system of oppression I benefit from. I think it’s not a stretch or an extreme to say the Pacific Islands are not important to me and I do not care because U.S. culture, society, and education have told me the Pacific Islands are not important and unworthy to care about.

It’s a lot to take in. But back to the presentation this past Tuesday. I greatly appreciated the hard work it took and the four students who took the time and dedication to present to us. There are so many layers and complexities we had no idea existed. I didn’t know about like 95% of the content they presented but I was able to relate on the level of I also fall under the APIA umbrella and can relate to many cultural struggles.

Because of the lack of education/awareness on the Pacific Islands, we are guilty of bunching all the islands together. Considering the more “well known” islands like Hawaii and Samoa (but not distinguishing between American and Western Samoa) and at the same time not considering the smaller, “lesser known” islands. The thing is, we are not going to receive this kind of content anywhere, we are not going to be presented with this information anywhere else. And if we do, here’s me hoping the presenters are compensated greatly for their work. For me personally, there’s a reason why most of the papers I’ve written and the things I’ve talked about have had to do with systems of oppression – because that is something I know and understand (to an extent because the learning never stops) and I don’t often allow myself to focus on the good that’s happening at the same time.

Like I said, it’s a lot to take in. But now, I’ll focus a bit on the pop culture side. It was pretty cool, on the slides of PI’s in the media, seeing The Rock, Roman Reigns, and Tamina. Like everyone knows The Rock (tbh, was never my favorite wrestler because I liked the bad guys) but what’s lesser known is how he comes from a long line of wrestlers (which we can analyze and it relate it to how PI individuals, especially men, are pushed toward military and sports) who have met varying degrees of success in the world of professional wrestling. Other wrestlers I’m aware of are The Usos and Nia Jax. I grew up watching wrestling, I barely follow it now, and it will always have a place in my life. Lately, I’ve been disengaged with it because of its displays of overt toxic masculinity, the way women are represented, the glass ceiling for wrestlers of color, the way the McMahons donated millions to the Trump campaign, it’s very thin dedication to social justice, and its history of racism and sexism. Oh what a mouthful.

Anyways, the lessons of this presentation will stay with me. Not just as a reminder of the privilege I hold but I got to incorporate it into learning I do everyday. Look up PI activists and writers, do what I can to become more aware about the issues and of the people.

Week 7: Interracial Relationships

First of all, I had no idea the British ~brought~ people from India to Uganda to build the railway. It’s a piece of history that we just don’t hear about. The movie started and I was like woah slow down give me the whole summary of events here. But of course… we saw little Mina next and suddenly I was like omg protect this child don’t let anything bad happen to her. Until, of course, we get the flash forward in the next scene – the Milk Run – and we see how much Mina has grown and where her family ends up. Then I was like yesss Mina be all baad with your wild driving self.

How amazingly cliche is it to develop a relationship with the person whose vehicle you smash your car into? I say “amazingly” because I watch Days of our Lives. Some of the way characters meet and end up in a relationship are super cliche. And also, it’s amazing because you never know what could happen in situations like that one. How life changes. Mina and Demetrius seemingly get their end of the movie happily ever after. They achieve their own sense of independence away from their town and their family, free to be and free to explore.

When their relationship gets exposed and Mina is “forbidden” to see Demetrius (Mina, who is 23 in the movie, I should add), this is where other things get exposed. Both Mina and Demetrius get accused, either outright or assumed, of “ruining everything” and they both realize something needs to change. Demetrius’s business got affected and Mina sees how trapped she is living with her parents in the motel. At the end, I really thought she was going to go home when her mom was pleading her to on the phone but I hoped she wouldn’t. I feel like I know how hard it is to leave home and not come back when they are literally telling you to come back. But like she was 23 and longing for more out of life. Not going back to Uganda with her family was that big step away from the safety and predictability of family life. That’s what she needed to do. Demetrius was her way out, it’s always seems to be easy to move when there’s a lover right by your side.

Anyway, their relationship caused a lot of strife with the two family sides. The father tells Mina something along the lines of “their side always sticks together,” referring to the pain he felt when Okelo told him Uganda is for Black Africans. It was the father’s way of trying to protect his daughter while generalizing all black people for not being loyal to the people they care about. Parents’ protection over their daughters is strong and at times, vicious. It’s often mistaken for “love” and then more accurately understood as control.

When I was 23 I began my first relationship and obviously my parents were not thrilled. For many reasons you know, and Jackson and I both understand why. He’s 23 years older than me, he’s previously been incarcerated, and he’s black. He thinks him being black was one of the big things while I think it’s his “criminal” background history. My parents were scared for my life, telling me I was going to end up dead. Looking back of course they were scared. I totally understand it but I also know of the anti-blackness a lot of Asians internalize. But I also gotta factor in how Jackson was 46 at the time and he got out of prison a year and a half before we got together. From a general parent perspective, I get it. But adding in our family dynamic, how sheltered I was as a child, our ethnic background, and my gender, it makes it more complex.

It demonstrates the importance of that conversation Mina had with her father where he told her what happened before they left Uganda and how that led to him acting the way he did.

Anyways, interracial relationships can come in so loaded with history, stereotypes, perceived expectations, prejudices, internalized biases and other things really based on not only the racial identities of the people in the relationship but of their gender identity, class and other identities the people hold. I specify with interracial relationships because we’re partnered with someone whose ethnic background is uniquely different than our own. It’s a loaded topic and it’s very complex so like I don’t want to put myself in a hole trying to come up with sweeping statements. I know that in my own relationship, there’s had to be many learning moments of understanding each other, knowing where each other is coming from and really listening to each other when it comes to our identities. In being Pilipina I’ve had to ask myself if why some of the behavior I exhibit is due to my own background. Some of the things I picked up in how my parents interacted with each other and some of the stereotypes I read in my sources.

Okay that’s enough, still wondering how I can write so much in these posts but get mentally blocked when it comes to my paper. Though it’s no wonder, I know exactly why: I don’t have to worry about sounding academic-y when it comes to here. But then again… Rock post to come next.

Week 6: How reading can change lives

This week I had to read We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phanbefore Wednesday to turn into Kris because I wasn’t going to be in class on Friday. I read about 80 pages throughout four days. This was a phenomenal book. It didn’t have the crying-reach-out-to-my-estranged-siblings power Forgotten Country did but it was so powerful in other ways. How the different stories connected together, how imagery and dialogue were used to enhance the stories made it so SO powerful. I had to read up on Operation Babylift and I had to ask Jackson for some backstory on the Vietnam war which filled in some of the gaps for me since I don’t know this history (for obvious reasons tbh because I grew up in the US going to public eurocentric white people school lolz).

One of my goals was to read and think critically so that I can make more thorough annotations. Since I turned in the book, I don’t really remember what I annotated… I do remember how I tried to link the stories together, I wrote about how every character in the book was suffering under white supremacy and impacts of the Vietnam war which made their personalities and actions very complex and loaded with this historical and present trauma. The character Vihn, on the surface, is a very unforgiving character because of the way he treated Kim and then how he played Bac Nguyen. But I wrote that Vihn was suffering too. Just like the other characters he is struggling to survive, being entangled in his past and living in the US. How he mistreats Kim and seeks out Bac Nguyen, pretending to be a friend, robbing his family and his house and then attacking him shows how vicious impacts of war is… to hate and rob your own people, knowing how to do it, knowing how to get away with it – shows how entangled he is in internalized hatred and the system of racism. That was probably my favorite chapter because it evoked so much emotion from me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and if I had it with me or took notes for me to keep I could write more. But because of these past couple of days and losing the original Rock post, I’m going to sign off.

Week 5: yet another rant on misogyny

This week we learned about pop culture of the Philippines! There’s so much rich history and culture in all the ethnic groups we covered this quarter and it’s a kind of bittersweet shame that we don’t get any kind of coverage of it unless we choose to learn about it in college. But like… they got us singing about Columbus in kindergarten because that was so important. *rolls eyes* But anyway, I wasn’t expecting a total immersion into Pilipinx culture because Tuesdays are the only days we get our culture on. I was so blown away by learning of the Great Pinoy Boxing Era, an era I had no idea existed (for obvious reasons). It’s “amazing” how an era that spanned twenty years has been almost completely erased because of *ahem* white supremacy, racism and war.

It’s also pretty cool how Peter Bacho incorporated boxing into Dark Blue Suit. I was able to relate to certain cultural connections in the book like: having family members with nicknames and not calling them by their actual name, listening in on conversations in another language acting like I don’t know what they’re talking about (even though I don’t speak or understand Tagalog, by listening for certain tone and familiar words in Spanish/English I was able to guess what my parents were saying to each other). But I had a big problem with the book, like I did with Better Luck Tomorrow, which is the blatant misogyny and sexual objectification of women. I guess it’s a sad truth in literature that’s written by men (and also content that’s created by men) that women have to be background characters and have to suffer in order to be in the story. But then again if women were written into stories written by men, they wouldn’t even be accurate depictions because men are often so far off in their perceptions of us – because they “often” don’t recognize our humanity – they can’t write us without reducing us to stereotypes. You see the difference in how Catherine Chung and Julie Otsuka wrote their characters. There’s a BIG difference. Just like in Better Luck Tomorrow, I didn’t feel any sympathy for the characters because of their collective misogyny, I felt the same about Buddy and Rico in Dark Blue Suit. Even fully knowing that Rico’s life was turned upside down when he came back from the war. It’s just that I didn’t feel as much compassion for him as I had the potential to. Trying to write a story about the horrors of coming back from war to a country that does not value your life and mental well-being can be done without treating women as objects, as a “good time” and using “tall, long legged blondes” as an overall descriptor (which is all the more terrible because that is literally reducing us to body parts and even while I have my reservations about white women which is a conversation for another time, they’re still women and also suffer under this woman hating world). It just turns into a big masculine show where how masculine a guy is directly relates to how many women he had laid whether he’s doing it as sport or if it’s just part of the life they’ve been socialized to be a part of.

In seminar I made a comment about how the men in the book, as a way to get closer to whiteness, treated women the way they did. In the United States you don’t get an example of women being treated as people and with respect and decency. And these men are fighting for their lives trying to make a living in a society that only values them for their labor and not much else. I guess what I’m saying is before I write myself into a hole, there are a lot of factors to consider while discussing a conflict like this. While I hate the way men have oppressed all other genders since the beginning of time, I can’t ignore other aspects of identity like ethnicity, class, ability, etc. while I express my thoughts and beliefs. But there is one thing that won’t change about me and the way I see power and oppression is how there is one group that benefits from the oppression of another and all people are contributing to that whether we’re complicit or actively working against it, trying to destroy it or ignoring it or using it for our benefit while pushing down others. It’s complicated and not completely all that is on my mind. But I’ll try to wrap this up nicely in the next paragraph.

While I didn’t like the blatant misogyny in Dark Blue Suit I tried to sidestep it and focus on the Filipino identity of the characters. And it’s still funny to me how Filipino Culture was not a theme said by anyone (including myself LOL) in seminar. But I understand why that is.

Week 4: I hope you are proud of me (for the thing I’m about to do)

I think it goes without saying that my blog has been pretty deep into the personals… especially with my Rock posts lately, talking about identity and being open about my crying and writing. And then with my other topics, writing about the Better Luck Tomorrow film, writing about my hesitance to speak during seminar and all that stuff. It goes without saying but I said it anyway so that must mean I’m building this up to be another personal post. I mean, the title and the subtitle are both things that relate to the book we read this week but they aren’t in the book.

I don’t talk about my family a lot and when I do either it’s all okay I can make it through the conversation or my eyes well up with tears and suddenly I’m in a closed door meeting with my adviser talking about why it hurts so much to talk about them.

This week we read “Forgotten Country” by Catherine Chung and I have never cried so much at a book before in my life. THIS IS TRUE. Also what’s true is I have never had a book touch me so deeply. The themes of family, migration, secrets and death really got to me. The relationship between Jeehyun and her parents, Jeehyun and Haejin mirrored my own with my parents and older sister.

My family has kept secrets as well. My parents have kept secrets, I have kept secrets and I bet my siblings have as well. When they come out, it’s ugly. It’s all screaming and crying and saying “you did this to me” – just expressing a deeply hidden hurt that ends up making everyone feel guilty and shitty and then there’s no talk of “where do we go from here.” Life goes on with another pothole in the road we carefully tiptoe around.

Last year when I was in therapy I shared something I never told anyone before because it was just one of those moments you forget thinking it doesn’t affect you today. I remembered something happening with my sister, some little fight or something, and mom asked us what’s wrong. I sat on her bed crying saying “I’m such a bad person.” And my therapist asked me to think about what a child could ever do to make them a bad person. And then she asked me what I would have liked my mom to do in that situation. And I cried my eyes out because the thought of little me being comforted while crying was too much to imagine in my mind.

While reading this book I thought of the arguments my parents had when I started high school, opening up some wounds that were decades in the making. To this day I don’t understand why they screamed at each other in English rather than Tagalog which made me think they purposefully put on a show for us so that they could separate and it wouldn’t be a “surprise” for us. They never spoke to each other in English. I thought of the arguments my parents had with my older brother, older sister, myself and our younger brother. The really bad arguments make us bring up the past. But to my recollection no one has ever accused anyone of being the perfect child or getting whatever they wanted. When it was a siblings argument we didn’t accuse each other of anything, it was more like we say things, shut down emotionally and not talk for years. With our parents it was much more vocal. The fight before high school was a major topic in therapy last year, it lead to stuff happening to me in my sophomore/junior years that I only started talking about recently, after years of shame and keeping it to myself. As of right now I am closest to Bobo, the youngest one and have just recently reconnected with my mom this summer after being at odds for several months.

THAT STORY is one to tell on its own but this is already getting too long. I haven’t spoken to my brother or sister in years. We used to be close as children but when we started to get to teen-age things fell apart. For many reasons I bet, but we just never were the same. My relationship with my dad hasn’t really been one. I recognize the sacrifices he made to support us financially and all the hard labor he’s done to make that money. My idea of him shattered when I was a pre-teen after seeing something I shouldn’t have seen and then the fight before high school happened where he was accused of doing…some things. I haven’t really talked to him either, we didn’t have that kind of relationship.

So when the parents in the book pleaded with Jeehyun telling her to find her sister, I couldn’t help but think of the times my mom would plead with me in connecting with my brother and sister. I thought of the times she sat crying telling me that’s all she wants me to do, telling me she’s lost her brother and sisters. I thought of how it would make her happy if I did what she asked. I thought of how silent my brother and sister are when we’re in the same room. I thought of what happened when we were teens that destroyed our communication, how little and immature we’d all been and I guess we’re still the same to this day.

On Thursday after reading a couple of pages, I had to put the book down because I was crying so much. I texted my mom saying I love you and I miss you I hope you’re proud  of me and I can’t wait to come home soon. What I was originally going to write was I hope you’re going to be proud of what I’m going to do next. This book has really motivated me to reach out to my brother and sister, hoping we can reconcile and not be strangers anymore. I don’t know what words I’ll use but it’s going to happen this weekend. All the crying that I’ve done for this book is that built up-unreleased-unexpressed deeply hidden hurt that I’ve held close to me for years.

My partner Jackson always tried to push me towards reaching out to them, extending that olive branch, just putting myself out there to “keep my side of the street clean.” He cautioned me against be like them in the sense of hiding things, holding in resentment and being silent when there’s something wrong. All this time I’ve agreed with him and knew he was right and there’s just something in me that has to light up and actually do it. This book is the catalyst, I had to come to this conclusion on my own. Land my own helicopter, as my former counselor once told to me. Throughout the week of reading this book I knew I had to capitalize on the feeling, on the crying so that I would not forget to do it. It’s weighing heavily on my heart and I’ve got that in me – I really do just want to make my mom happy and proud.

Week 3: AKA Questions of Representation Across Identities

Back when I wrote a post about seeing Ghost in the Shell during week one, I made this comment about how I don’t watch movies and a lot of TV. There are many reasons for that. One, Jackson and I don’t have cable, wifi is already expensive. Two) I’m a full time student, part time worker at the school and even when there is time I barely have enough to keep up with the only TV show I watch, Days of our Lives. Thankfully I can watch it online.) Three I’ve spent all the formative years of my life watching TV and have absorbed (and internalized) all the oppressive (most specifically, sexist) language and messages fed to me that I can’t take it anymore. I firmly believe a lot of the reasons why I’m insecure in a couple areas of my life have to do with how women are represented in the media. It really bothers me to hear a sexist joke or a scene where a woman gets r*ped or assaulted or harassed or killed, not just on TV but everywhere. There is a part of me that is numb to it all because this happens everywhere every single day and there’s not getting away from it but that doesn’t mean I can’t pick and choose what types of media to consume and spend my time on.

Watching Better Luck Tomorrow didn’t shock me with any of its language or violence. But how the male characters treated and talked about the female characters bothered me straight from the beginning and I hinged on that when I could have focused more on other ways to critically think about the film. The way I’ve come to understand systems of oppression is through gender oppression. If I were younger me watching this, I would have only seen the blatant offensiveness towards women like Virgil staring at the woman’s chest while she puts away her shopping bags or how Ben and Virgil are so excited to see this porn they think a classmate is in. Back then I wouldn’t have caught all the things Virgil said about women, how Han called them women and even the scene where Ben sits on Stephanie’s bed and looks through her things. What is seemingly small by other people’s standards, I can point out and say that’s messed up. And I know a common retort is to say “boys will be boys” and “that’s just how men are” and “you’re making a big deal out of nothing” blah blah blah. I say “whatever” to that because all those says are just tools to diminish our voice and to exempt men from the awful garbage they do to us.

I started writing about the toxic masculinity of the film but that’s taking so much out of me mentally so I’m not going to go forward with it. What I would rather write about instead is the subheading of this post, which is something I wrote to myself while I was watching: Questions of Representation Across Identities. This came up because I was thinking about the not-so-casual casual sexism and then having it tamper my whole viewing experience by not laughing with other students in the class at the “funny” parts and I didn’t even have any sympathy for the characters when things went wrong. Like seriously, the character of Ben is that stereotypical “nice guy” who wants a girl he can’t have (yet) and he has a friend who says offensive things but excuses them because they’re friends. Sarcastically I ask into the air “am I supposed to excuse the casual sexism because the cast and director are Asian?” Generally, what good is it to have a cast and write and director and producer who are POC if they are offensive towards other marginalized identities? In addition to the sexism, this film also used the n word, said something about going “Jihad” after an action scene or something, and my memory isn’t too sharp since I watched this three days ago but I’m sure there was ableist language in there too. If this is supposed to be a reflection (though a sensationalized, exaggerated one) of the lives of Asian teenage boys or even any teenage boy of any ethnicity or even in older and younger age brackets – of course they all say offensive stuff. No one is exempt from that BECAUSE that is the world we live in. No one is going to watch a movie where everyone is nice and respectable to each other, where no one gets hurts emotionally or physically, where the right people fall in love and be friends and everyone gets what they want. That is NOT the world we live in, that kind of movie will not make any money. So moviemakers have to be controversial, they have to tap into how people talk and view the world and each other. This oppressive BS is normalized through how we treat people with marginalized identities through action, language and thought. There was a question that came up of “does the filmmaker have a responsibility to portray Asian characters responsibly?”

This may sound unbelievable because I’m not a filmmaker nor a creator of any kind of media but I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway… it IS possible to portray Asian characters or any type of character responsibly (or complex and captivating) without resorting to jokes that are complicit in the oppression and discrimination of people with marginalized identities.

But I guess to that question, they were referring to the violence and drug use in the movie – especially the murder of the Steve character. This could be looked at as stereotypical representations, negative representations and filmmakers should be more responsible in portraying their characters more realistically – especially if they aren’t being represented well in the larger Hollywood scene. Asian people are not starring in box office movies or popular TV shows. The kind of representation we should get should be complex, realistic, non-stereotypical ones. We should be leading stars, love interests, action heroes and recipients of all the acting/directing/singing/performing awards. But seriously, To that question, there is not a simple answer. But there is a starting point, which I oh so clearly stated in the previous paragraph.

*takes a deep breath* alright, cool – I think I’m ready to step away from this post and never think about this film again.

Actually, on second thought, let me spray some positivity on this film so here are four (yes, FOUR) good things I can think of…

1. The beginning of the movie shows a close up of Ben and Virgil’s faces as they relax under the sun. This is important because Asian features are not represented as attractive in the wider Hollywood lens (unless Asian women are being sexualized). The close up of the faces (and this happened throughout the film) was like a demand for the viewers to take a close look, as if to say this film’s appearance is undeniably unapologetically Asian.
2. The boys beat up the white boys at the party. Look, I grew up watching wrestling and there’s that part of me that enjoys fight scenes in movies/TV. Plus it was cool to see the guys be fearless and take no shit from the ones who think they’re better. Although Daric taking it too far, Virgil jumping on the guy by kicking him after he was down and encouraging Ben to join in and then Ben actually giving into the pressure are all displays of that masculinity shit I was going to write about earlier. Anyways…
3. The Stephanie character added brightness and it’s a shame her character story was what it ended up being. If the movie was centered on her, it’d be more interesting (although entirely different), tbh. I’d rather watch that one.
4. The acting was great, super believable. While I didn’t like any of the main characters and was completely turned off in the beginning, the actors were committed and gave a great performance.

LOL I was going to do five but couldn’t think of a fifth one.

(NOTE: I mention that Days of our Lives the only show I watch and I just want to add that I’m not oblivious to the problems in that show. The issue I have with media isn’t black and white. There are a lot of shows I used to watch and would still watch if I ever get acquainted with a TV again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be critical about the stuff I watch. I can enjoy things and still ask questions, be critical about it. I like Days and it’s my escape from the world.)

Week 2: “Love me, leave me high and dry. I’m back in your arms and I don’t know why. Can’t get around your magnetic field.” – Magnetic Field by Lights

It is Week 3, Tuesday night. Life called me away from weekend homework duties and I wasn’t able to finish all three blog posts by Sunday night. It is Week 3 and I am feeling the weight of my life on my shoulders.

Last Tuesday we went on a field trip to the Tacoma Art Museum, the Washington State History museum and the Chinese Reconciliation Park. The specific exhibit from the TAM was “In Search of the Lost History of Chinese Migrants and Transcontinental Railroads” by Zhi LIN. This exhibit was extremely powerful and the one I spent the most time in. This exhibit is exactly why learning the real history of this country is so important. Before this class, I did learn about the Chinese railroad workers, the dangerous and unhealthy conditions they worked in and the political cartoons, the propaganda that was created during that time. In seeing this exhibit, I learned more about the Chinese workers and the lack of recognition they received from all the hard labor they did. Zhi LIN is an amazing and engaging artist and it’s clear to see the amount of passion and urgency in the art.

At the History museum, the exhibit we looked at was from Japanese artist, Takuichi Fujii. Fujii and his family were incarcerated during WWII for about three and a half years. These pieces of art were so colorful, full of life and intricately detailed. After having read “When the Emperor was Divine” by Julie Otsuka I have a better idea on what life must have been like in the barracks, even if it’s a fictional one. From that book, a common thought I had was how could people find the strength to keep going, especially when they have kids to take care of. Otsuka’s words of how they describe how the characters are managing through the days in the barracks were emotional to read and I can only assume that for Fujii creating art was one of the ways to manage, to survive.

This is why it’s so important to appreciate and seek out as many forms of art, education and media created by people with marginalized identities. The history of Asians in the United States is undertold and whitewashed. It’s a history of API being valued for their labor and not much else. It’s a history of API being stereotyped and discriminated against. It’s a history of API leaders, artists and political rebels being unknown. Our history is erased from the larger narrative. I could go on because this is the same story of other marginalized identities, it’s a lifelong work to give everyone and everything the recognition they deserve.