Author: Isaac

D&R: MariNaomi

Image result for turning japanese marinaomi

I finished Marimaomi’s comic “Turning Japanese”

It’s a funny and anxious memoir about trying to learn about Japanese language and culture when her mother refused to share any of it with her growing up.

It’s heartbreaking to think about not being about to speak the same language as your grandparents.

It also shares some interesting experiences of the culture shock MariNaomi experiences in her journey to reconnect with her heritage.

Three Project Ideas

I really like making and reading comics so I think I would like to Incorporate some the reading and creation of comics into my project.

  1. I could analyse Adrian Tomine’s examination of Asian American masculinity in his comic “Short Comings”
  2. I could interview my Irish/Korean American family friends the Nugents. I’ve known them my whole life and have been exposed to much pop culture through the boys my age in their family. I’m interested to hear their experience. I could make a comic out of those interviews if i wanted.
  3. I also could to a broader study of Asian Americans in the comic scene. I’ve heard manga brought up to many times in this class so far, there are so many amazing APIA cartoonists. Maybe I could wrangle an interview with Jason Shiga or someone else. Comics people are really easy to get a hold of.

Talking Points: Asian Americans in the Twenty-First Century

  1. Something I thought was interesting about Dale’s first interview was how conservative he seemed. I certainly didn’t expect anyone in this collection to talk about how great america is. I suppose it’s hard to really appreciate it when neither me nor my parents have known anything else.
  2. Wow, Ark Chin really went through a lot. It’s interesting that he spoke about what he had to do to have “earned my place” (p.19) like what have I ever done to earn my place.
  3. It sounds so stressful to be at a school where you don’t speak the language. Also it’s interesting that Hoan didn’t feel any different growing up, but when he attended college he began to experience racism. Almost like college then was what the internet is now, exposure to the subconscious of a nation, that isn’t filtered through familiarity.
  4. Susim talks alot about feeling “culturally inferior” growing up and at college. It’s interesting that her parents and other older immigrants treated Black Americans poorly but she felt that was unjust. Does growing up with the experience of being afflicted by institutional racism help you sympathize with others afflicted in a way that’s harder to learn later in life?
  5. Marriage and Family really seems to have fucked Qing’s life up a bit. Taken to a different country with an average looking man for the prospect of american money, only to have the situation in China improve 10 years later. She tried to learn English but had kids instead. That sounds like a trap.
  6. Frank’s interview seems to be placed strategically after Qing’s to highlight the different motivations of immigrants from China. Both live similar lives in the US, working very hard and struggling with language and raising a family, but Frank had a rich life in China before he came to the US. He didn’t come because there were no jobs in China, he came to stay with his family. I guess I can’t really empathize to strongly when I’m so young.
  7. It’s so crazy that the supreme court was defrauded about Japanese internment with the Korematsu decision (there’s a really interesting radio documentary about Korematsu called American Pendulum by More Perfect) I wonder what exactly was withheld from the supreme court, and I also what difference the fraud made. Would the supreme court have made a different decision with all the info? It doesn’t sound like they were really enforcing real law in that case anyway.
  8. Gary Locke seems like a really admirable guy. It really feels today like politics is full of cynical wolfs planning their power plays. To hear of a time when someone as humble as this could become governor just boggles my mind. Do they still exist?
  9. Ruby really makes me think about what it means to be a politician, to go from a leader in a small community of people who know you, to being voted into office mostly by people who don’t feels really alien. Ruby and Gary feel like they are underestimating the amount of work they did to reach public office.
  10. It’s interesting that Cheryl’s interview is right after Ruby’s. She contradicts Ruby on so many points. “when my mom was in politics i saw how dirty it was” why is she more comfortable sharing the dirt? Does her mom just want to forget about it?
  11. Marriage and the Green card is a really import chapter. just a short description of an ongoing injustice.  It’s interesting how the way our immigration system works can enforce the dis-empowerment of women.
  12. it’s interesting that Ark is facing the difficulty in recruiting young members into the Family association. it’s like those younger generations who are more Americanized don’t need the family associations to survive like the older generations did. What does it mean to preserve a community for so many generations?
  13. Hank is from a coal mining town. i can’t think of anything more country than that. “you load sixteen tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt” i don’t feel that Hank is in anyway trespassing on my American heritage. But if a friend of mine was like “I’m gonna learn how to play traditional Japanese music” I would feel pretty uncomfortable. I wonder what that says about me. Am I estranged from my culture to find it more novelty than sacred? or am i wrong about my belief that Japanese folk music should not be trespassed by outsiders?
  14.  The Jimi Hendrix of the Ukulele is a pretty tense title. On the one hand, Jimi Hendrix could be used just to describe a musician that is both good at their instrument and in some way disruptive and innovative to the common way of playing.  But Jimi Hendrix is also Racial Icon.
  15. It’s interesting how universal seeming the appeal of rock music was. Also how isolated their band was. Like they didn’t feel any racism and they felt only participation in american pop culture. but at the same time they were only heard by their peers in Chinatown.
  16. it’s interesting how the video tape age allowed for the creation of their niche media company. i wonder what the internet has done for communities creating media for themselves.
  17. It’s interesting ho Albert faced such harsh racism in Appalachia but then didn’t really fit in with the other Korean kids once he left for college. that’s such gotta feel like such a lonely place to be.  (also evangelism is so creepy)
  18. The language barrier Daniel has with his parents is terrifying. I can’t even imagine not being able to speak to a relative of mine. (Marinaomi has a good comic called turning japanese about trying to learn japanese, a language he mother never taught her, so that she could speak with her grandparents for the first time.) also interesting how he too felt like college was a place of racial cliques more so than highschool
  19. Jeff seems to have never felt inferior as a result of being Pillipino however he has compared himself to other Asian Americans and felt he was a “lower degree” of API for not knowing the language
  20. David’s experience sounds so lonely. He’s one of a kind. just “David” “That Guy David.” it’s interesting for someone to feel so adrift. He identifies Hong Kong as his home, but he doesn’t really feel at home there.
  21. It’s interesting hearing Laura’s experience from her perspective. It’s interesting how Daniel identified how there was more pressure on Laura to succeed in school. but when she talks about it it sounds much more stressful. Also it sound very difficult growing up with a father like that.
  22. Agnes speaks about discrimination on account of being a woman, in the Philippines and being an Asian Woman in america. It’s interesting how many stories there are of API’s having jobs and not being promoted until they quite and then employer’s being like “Ok we’ll promote you damn we can’t live without you”
  23. It’s interesting that Albert feels that he doesn’t have a say in whether asian americans become stars or not despite running a large magazine.
  24. I don’t think i fully understand the truths that corky lee is exposing. why is parking hard in china town after nine eleven? what is the significance of that? is there a conspiracy?
  25. This was really interesting, i didn’t think about how the concentration camps changed the way that japanese americans related to each other. The drive to assimilate that Dale is talking about makes alot of sense after that trauma.
  26. it’s interesting how the Hmong people changed the schedule of their celebrations to coincide with american time off. it makes me think about how culturally singular our official government holiday’s are. how come we don’t get chinese new year off?
  27. it’s interesting the generational difference between Vietnamese immigrants. Those who fled before the war got to bad, and those who were held in camps.
  28. it’s interesting that there should be such a large cultural enclave like Korea town. a place where assimilation isn’t really an issue because you’re surrounded by people that already speak the same language as you. in alot of ways it sounds very positive for immigrants. it’s interesting that these two siblings have such a low opinion of it. Is the Korean Mafia a terrible presence?

Music Writing: Vitamin C by Can

The drums are inevitable. When the recording starts the drums and bass have already begun, drums churning, bass rising and falling. From the sound of their grim certainty they may have begun when that meteor wiped out the dinosaurs, and are still going today.

Damo Suzuki’s mumbling joins in almost immediately: something about your Daddies airplane? something something beautiful rose? Anyone claiming to know the lyrics is suspect. Damo’s lyrics are almost always improvised and prone to be changed at any moment. Switching between English, German, Japanese, and languages all his own, the true meaning of the son lies in a mondegreen just outside the realm of coherent meaning.

But then our mumbling guide catches us off guard. He breaks the uncertainty with an accusation.

“Hey You!”

in accordance the tom toms let out a quick volley of blows. For a moment Damo joins the circular procession.

“You’re Losing… You’re Losing… You’re Losing… You’re Losing Your…”

Just then an avalanche falls. The crash cymbal explodes and the guitar joins in like 2 tons of shattering glass.

The accusation is clear…

“You’re losing your Vitamin C!”

I always reach for a clementine or a packet of Emergen-C. Because he’s right. Where’s my immunity? Privilege can leave you fragile, unable to cope with responsibilities.

The song continues much the same. The same marching drums, the same judgmental bass line. Something about Christmas, something about stepping on quicksand. But now behind it is a subtle addition. The guitar strings click and hum like the winding of a watch. They occasionally snap out aggressively to hint at the increasing frantic energy of the song.

In the next chorus the drums are meaner, Damo is ruder, and way back in the mix the keyboard begins to play.

Damo makes his confident accusation a second time and the drums take over. a break of precision like the robots that rivet cars.

The organ comes in to calm everything down, a haunted duet with a flute.

If the flute had lyrics it would sing of the inevitable demise of a tragically young bourgeois.

It’s fitting then that this funeral procession be gradually drowned out by the noise of flutes and computers, evocative of the birds who are indifferent to our suffering.

When Damo chimes in a gain it is as a pathetic echo before the song is forgotten, not even ended just absorbed into the next song on the album. Vitamin C is absorbed by the “Soup.”

Album Cover Analysis: Donald Fagen – The Nightfly

The only color is the name, Donald Fagen The Nightfly, running across the top.

Donald Fagen’s head is turned towards the mic, leaving half his face and both eyes in shadow. His head is the top point of a triangle formed by his body and turntable in front of him.

With the blue title along the top this triangle gives the cover the shape of a Z.

The clock in the studio reads 4:09 am. The ashtray beside the microphone is cluttered with half a pack of chesterfield kings. The light of a single bulb falls hard onto his face. There’s likely no one awake for miles.

The image places you as the lone listener to this broadcast. a position that colors the songs on The Nightfly with voyeuristic intimacy. This show is not for happy well adjusted people. The title is the same blue as the illuminated radio dial cutting through the dark in your car. This show is for an insomniac. but it’s host is not there to help you sleep.

The Nightfly is a grim companion through the loneliest hours.

His voice cuts in…

“I’m Lester The Nightfly. Hello Baton Rouge. Won’t you turn your radio down.”

Talking Points: Alien Encounters

  1. Page 2 “In considering our childhood rapport for Data, we are confronted with the complexity of our affections, a complexity that comes to bear upon our intellectual preoccupations…”
    • “the complexity of our affections” feels like such a ripe phrase to me. The authors are pushing up against attempts to define positive representations of Asian Americans in pop culture. What does positive representation look like when there are so many different people who might identify as Asian American.
  2. Page 14 “But even as the unprecedented corporate interest in Asian communities increased the circulation of Asian American cultural productions within and beyond Asian American audiences, participation in this new multicultural marketplace came with some new demands. The most pressing of these was the demand to produce palatable and thus saleable visions of Asianness…”
    • Just as APIA representation in pop cultural media is complicated, attention on APIA people from the pop market is complicated. Corporations recognizing the importance of a variety of people in the “fragmenting market” could be viewed as a positive thing but it also enforces an “otherness” both by treating Asian and Pacific Islander Americans as fundamentally different from White Americans and by creating a version of Asianness that could be marketed to White Americans. (also treating Asian Americans as one homogeneous group)
  3.   Page 17 “…there is little consensus about what it means to be well represented. as such, one might suspect that this language of authenticity can do scant more than simply sanction certain identities and deny the ‘heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity,’ …” and, indeed, the decades-long desire to generate “positive images” or more “authentic representations” has done little to undermine the power of stereotypes or ultimately to free Asian Americans from them.”
    • perhaps what is being sought then is not positive images necessarily but images with dimension to them. Perhaps using authenticity not to describe an essential quality of Asian Americans, but the authentic experience of individual people.
  4. “… If we accept a priori that Asian American Studies is subjectless, then rather than looking to complete the category “Asian American,” to actualize it by such methods as enumerating various components of differences … we are positioned to critique the effects of the various configurations of power and knowledge through which the term comes to have meaning.”
    • This is a quote from scholar Kandice Chuh on the subject of subject-less discourse. This idea has been bouncing around my brain since reading it. As Chico pointed out in class this is hardly a complete definition of Asian American because of its post structural peculiarity, but it does seem to me to capture a certain truth about what it means to discuss politically sanctioned groups of people.