This week we read the book Paper Bullets by Kip Fulbeck. The book was a coming-of-age story about a “hapa,”, a half white and half Asian American. The interesting thing about this book is that it is labeled as a “fictional autobiography,” and at several points during my reading of the book I would stop to think about which aspects were true and which were fabricated. The book was deeply personal, oftentimes uncomfortably so, especially the explicitly sexual scenes which touched on themes like misogyny, pornography, racial fetishization and consent.
Our final movie for this quarter was Birth of the Dragon, a film loosely based on a true story about Bruce Lee, although very fictionalized. Unfortunately I was unable to concentrate on the film as there was a group of students who talked and laughed loudly through the entirety of the film. Due to this loud group of classmates I could barely hear the movie half the time. The movie was interesting as I don’t have a lot of knowledge on Bruce Lee, but I felt it focused a little too much on fictional characters rather that Bruce Lee himself.
