Talking Points: Seventeen Syllables

The High-Heeled Shoes, A Memoir:

1. One cannot be prepared for violence. This is interesting because it is true when someone asks you “what would you do if someone were to hold threaten to stab you out of nowhere” we usually don’t have an answer because we need to be in the moment
2. Men and how awful they are and how women have been forced to try different ways to decline men which leads to many loops on what-ifs because one doesn’t know how the man will react since everyone is unpredictable 

Seventeen Syllables:

The Legend of Miss Sasagawara:

1. a thing on the American Dream and how a lot of the time the dream is to go to school and get educated because that seems to be the only way to excel in America. The only way for people to see your worth if you are not white.
2. Miss Sasagawara and the importance of community. Without the community that she built in the camps, she would not have been able to be “normal” and leave her ways… however, once the camps closed she returned back. This shows that it is important to have a network that is there for you regardless of the way you behave, the people who knew her were friends to her and she lost that once the camps closed which rocked her world

Wilshire Bus:

1. The way people of color have to deal with hearing white-passing people say “melting pot” or say “I am French and Irish so I relate” when the truth is that they don’t. They will never be called racists slurs on the street because of what the color of their skin, or their facial features, because since they are from Europe they have features that are normal so to speak.. and also, saying America is a melting pot is bullshit and that’s on periodt.
2. How even when we as minorities experience discrimination we stay silent because it is safer that way, people who are throwing out slurs are doing it out of anger/hate, etc and can be unpredictable and might resort to physical violence if challenged.

The Brown House:

Yoneko’s Earthquake:

1. The loss of Seigo hit the family hard like an earthquake expects, emotional. And how they dealt with the son’s death was different. Religion played a part in this story. I see religion as a way of coping, if you are not born into Christianity it can be hard to adopt the beliefs just like Yoneko.
2. When it was listing off all of marpos abilities and skills I couldn’t help but to think that when immigrants or people of color are able to do all of that and more even then they are still looked at as just a Mexican, just an Asian, just a black person… its like for Mexican folk the narrative of the “hard worker” seems to always fall on us when we are worth more than our labor.

Morning Rain:

1. Generational gap and how different type of generations have different responsibilities. First generation immigrants have to work to build a foundation so that their children can have an opportunity to go to school, and succeed in areas where they could not. This can lead to an extremely weird dynamic in between first and second gen because first gen might keep their traditions and values however second gen completely adapts to a whole new set of values that they are growing up in.

Epithalamium:

1. Once again the topic of religion. Adopting religion and being Japanese and how one can’t truly be a religion that they are not born into. Towards the end it discusses about how she wasn’t baptized because that would mean that she would completely get rid of Buddhism in her personal cultural background and I think that this is something that we as people who are from pluralistic cultures and identities struggle to grasp, we struggle to grasp ourselves and who we are as people while attaining new ideas.
2. So basically recurring theme.. men fucking suck, and they are entitled and are basically useless.

Las Vegas Charley:

Life Among the Oil Fields, A Memoir:

The Eskimo Connection:

My Father Can Beat Muhammad Ali:

Underground Lady:

A Day in Little Tokyo:

Reading and Writing: