Blog Post #11: The End

The final blog post, we’ve made it.  I’m happy to report that the research and writing of my paper has been going well, and I think that I’m right on track with how my argument is taking shape.  As I don’t have any questions or issues impeding my scholarly path at the moment I’m going to use the space in this post to give a basic run-down of my thesis and how the paper is looking to be organized ( for now, there’s a week left for revision ).

My basic thesis: Alexander Chee employs mythic narrative in his novel Edinburgh as a means of indirectly discussing the sexual abuse Fee and his friends suffered as children, and furthermore Fee’s direct connection to the origin of the mythic narrative ( his grandfather and family by extension) gives agency to a discussion of the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality in men.

I’ll begin with a basic introduction to my concept, and then proceed to support my assertion of the use of mythic narrative as a language of abuse.  A discussion of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Dorothy Alison’s Bastard Out Of Carolina will set precedent for the use of myth, folklore, and/or spirituality as both a coping mechanism for the abused characters in the respective works and a means of conveying to the reader the emotional weight of a traumatic situation without discussing it explicitly. Here, I’m trying to find balance between getting to the discussion of Edinburgh quickly and making sure I provide sufficient evidence of an existing discussion in relation to abuse narratives and myth/folklore.  In addition to Morrison and Alison, I have one or two more examples of the use of a secondary language in abusive narratives.  I think it will be necessary to briefly discuss all my examples because it sets the stage for the question at the end of this section, which will frame the argument of the paper.  All of my examples are books written by women about female survivors of abuse. I had trouble finding research and information on male victims of sexual abuse and its place in literature. The question then begs, why is the discussion of abuse narratives so gendered? why have men been left out of the discussion?

Fast forward to Edinburgh. Fee’s character answers this question in many ways, and therefore provides a new and dynamic facet to the discussion of abuse narratives in American fiction.  Fee’s character is homosexual.  His exploration of his sexuality begins loosely around the same time that his abuse began at the hands of Big Eric.  The question here, the one that people seem reticent to discuss ( explaining the lack of this particular perspective in the discussion of abuse narratives), is what, if any effect did Fee’s abuse have on the development of his adult sexuality? Was he gay previous to the abuse? or did the abuse affect his sexual orientation?  I think it’s clear from the text that Fee was gay before the abuse began, but the negative association between pedophilia and consensual adult homosexual sex lingers in the text throughout.  It affects the way Fee interacts with others as the demon ( his abuse and his love, Peter) has a continued presence in his life.  Only he is able to let go of both Peter, and the demon, is he able to move on toward a happier life with Bridey.

So, basically what I hope I said up there was that the use of the Fox demon myth in the novel is two-fold.  It acts as a secondary language, a means of communicating the abuse and its effects to the reader.  Also, it has a function for Fee.  Just as the Fox demon was a part of Fee, as he was distantly related to Lady Tammamo, so was his homosexuality.  They were both parts of his nature.  Fee projects the struggle between the effects of pedophilia and his sexuality through the struggle he has with the fox demon throughout his life.

And finally, I end with the scene in which Fee recognizes himself in the tide pools with the help of Peter’s spirit.  It’s a nice place to end, as it seems hopeful that he’s been able to leave both the myth and the abuse behind him.  I tried to mush it all into a blog post, so if I’ve confused anyone I apologize.  It will be much more coherent in its final version.

Blog Post #10: Sin Nombre

The relationship between collective identity and individual identity has been discussed at length throughout our exploration of Asian American literature.  The tense relationship between group and individual is similarly explored in Carey Fukunaga’s film Sin Nombre.

While watching the film I was actively searching for ways in which the film would fit into our continuing dialogue regarding the themes associated with Asian American literature, and my thoughts kept returning to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Specifically, the opening section of the book titled No Name Woman.  Long before her birth Kingston’s aunt became pregnant in China while her husband was away.  She suffered great punishment and shaming by the village before committing a spite suicide by throwing herself and her bastard child into the village well.  She was erased from the family’s history.  The only reason Kingston was told by her mother was for her aunt’s transgression to serve as a cautionary tale.  The aunt would wander forever as a ghost, not honored by her family.

Ok, the obvious connection, the title.  The movie title translates to without a name, and the story of Kingston’s aunt is called No Name Woman.  That’s enough of that.

What I find more interesting is how Casper becomes the “No Name Woman” of his gang by killing Mago on the train. His transgression earns him an immediate death sentence, his ties to the gang are severed and his days are numbered.  Just as in the village of Kingston’s ancestors the structure of gang life is marked by strict adherence to a hierarchical system.  Casper flees, more for Sayra than himself.  He is aware that he cannot escape his fate, and that the bonds of the gang are indelible.  He makes it to the river where he’s shot by Smiley and his body is kicked into the river.  Just like the No Name Woman Casper leaves the earth in water.  While the parallel is clear, transgression from a group within a culture, a family, a gang, a village will result in punishment and loss of identity, family, or life I think Fukunaga chose the gang as a vehicle for the discussion of collective vs. individual identity as a way to open the discussion to a larger audience.

We’ve discussed collective vs. individual identity in relation to the immigrant experience in Asian American literature.  By using the gang structure as the lens for the same discussion in Sin Nombre, Fukunaga opens the discussion greatly.  The is a universal concept, it’s probably safe to say that there are gangs everywhere.  In my research paper I assert that Alexander Chee uses mythic narrative as a means of processing, and then communicating the abuse Fee suffered to the reader.  The language of the Fox demon myth tells the story of his abuse and the emotional toll it took.  Similarly it could be said that Sin Nombre uses the metaphor of gang life to mirror the strong connections of immigrant culture in America.  By dealing in a language familiar to a wider range of people, more success is gained in regard to conveying the emotional weight of the story without the reader/watcher struggling to make connections to a foreign culture, family unit, etc…  The reader feels sympathy for the No Name Woman, but it’s hard to picture your own neighbors beating down your door and punishing you for breaking the laws of the community.  Where the No Name Woman fails to connect completely with her audience, Casper succeeds.  His story is one that could take place in South America, The United States, or anywhere else.

Eng Expertise Project

Expertise Project:

Primal Scenes: Queer Childhood in “The Shoyu Kid”

By David Eng

“The effects of the specular domain on Asian American male subjectivity are expanded upon in this chapter through a focus on the visibility of the Japanese American male body during wartime internment.  In particular, Lonny Kaneko’s “The Shoyu Kid,” which is set in Idaho’s Minidoka concentration camp, exposes and reworks—indeed, “shows you”—the mechanisms of this specularity”(Eng 110).

 

This is the crux of Eng’s argument.  In other words, Eng argues that invisibility and visibility in the context of ethnic identity within the United States have a constantly evolving, reflexive relationship and both invisibility and visibility work in tandem to alter the image of Asian American to fit the current political and social climate of the “nation-state”.  What we positively and negatively identify as Asian American is not finite and alters itself with the course of history. He then places this argument in the context of the short story “The Shoyu Kid,” and explains how this shifting image of the Asian American has negative effects on the development of identity in Asian American children, specifically during wartime internment. This is accomplished through the use of Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Image theory and Freud’s Primal Scene.

Eng introduces this concept, and the article with a discussion of Chinese invisibility as a negative social construct in America and compares/contrasts it to the hyper-visibility of Japanese Americans during WWII.  His example highlights that in recent history both invisibility and visibility have had negative effects on the specularity of the Asian American.  The article deals in “the realm of the visible” and how the identity development of the children in the story is affected by the predominant images of white male heterosexuality contrasted the by lack of Japanese adult male heterosexual images.  The discussion is divided into two sections, Lacan’s Mirror Image theory and Freud’s Primal Scene:

Lacan- “According to the logic of the mirror stage, sense of self is introduced from the outside in, through an “other” in the form of this external image”(111).   In the most concise of explanations, Lacan’s mirror theory discusses the development of an infant’s identity through identification with an external image.  What Lacan does not discuss, and what Eng asserts is that racial difference has an effect on the way that children experience these images.  In “The Shoyu Kid,” the boys mimic a game of cowboys and Indians, associating themselves with John Wayne and other white male heterosexual images.  Because they have no adult Japanese men visible they attempt to identify with these white images and become fragmented as a result.  Their inability to identify with the white male images and the fragmented and broken nature of the only elderly Japanese male mentioned in the story causes a rift in the boys image associated identity.

In Edinburgh an example of Mirror Image theory causing a negative association would be Fee’s associating his developing homosexuality with Big Eric’s pedophilia as a result of seeing Big Eric molest other boys, particularly Peter, and the romantic and sexual desire that Fee had begun to feel for Peter before the abuse began.  The image of male-to-male sexual contact as demonstrated by Big Eric allowed Fee to associate the image of himself and Zach experimenting sexually with pedophilia, rather than homosexuality.

In an article by Todd. O. Williams  Lacan’s Mirror Image theory is applied to Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s poem “The Mirror”.  Williams argues that the recognition of objects that refuse to provide fulfillment result in the fragmentation of identity.  He places the argument and theory in the context of romantic relationships rather than race, but his argument supports Eng’s assertion that dissociation of image in the Mirror Image stage can result in the fragmentation and dislocation of a developing identity.

Freud- Freud’s primal scene is defined as the moment when an infant sees and hears its parents “copulating” without any real understand of what’s going on (125). This primal scene opens the door for both a positive and negative Oedipal trajectory, the positive meaning the infant identifies with the father and desires the mother, negative meaning the infant identifies with the mother and desires the father (128). The primal scene must be examined through “deferred action,” where “the importance of a memory is assigned only after the fact, its significance becoming clear through its juxtaposition with a latter series of events” (125). Itchy sees the molestation of the Shoyu Kid, but cannot rationalize it in terms of “normal” heterosexual male standard yet.

Taking Freud’s Oedipal complex into consideration, the boys’ not being able to identify with the masculine images of the cowboys aids Eng’s argument over the “positive” and “negative” Oedipal trajectories. Because the cowboys represent the white heterosexual male, and the boys are forced to identify with the Shoyu Kid and his “Japaneseness,” which, according to Eng, leads to the potential of their realizing a homosexual identity.

Mitchell Greenberg offers an analysis of Freud’s examination of the Oedipal complex. While Eng seems to interpret Freud’s argument to mean that the primal scene and Oedipal trajectories originated from inside the Japanese American boys, implanted and cultivated by historical context and their subjective positions in the internment camps, Greenberg argues that in the original Oedipus story, Oedipus’ incestuous relationship with his mother originates not in Oedipus’ own desires, but in the larger arena of fate. It was because of Oedipus’ father that Oedipus is punished.

Ultimately, Greenberg’s argument comes down to the examination of the cyclical nature of the Oedipal complex. While Eng focuses more of the specific trajectories and development of the Oedipal complex as they apply to “The Shoyu Kid,” Greenberg views the Oedipus story with more of a bird’s-eye view, saying broadly that physical desires can merely distract or completely corrupt—or “wreak havoc on civil life” (40)—because of how powerful or culturally acceptable/unacceptable they may be, but that these desires can all be traced back to an initial corruption/distraction that helped define and limit the desires in the first place.

Outside sources aside from Edinburgh or Eng Article:

Greenberg, Mitchell.  “Racine, Oedipus, and Absolute Fantasies.” Diacritics 28.3 (1998): 40-61. Project MUSE.Web.31.Oct. 2010.

Williams, Todd O. “Reading Rosetti’s THE MIRROR through Lacan’s Mirror Stage.” Explicator 67.1 (2008): 48-51. Project MUSE. Web.1.Nov.2010.

 

Blog Post #9: Edinburgh

Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh is ultimately a story of survival.  Although Fee is the only one of the boys who were abused to survive and eventually overcome the psychological trauma inflicted upon them as a result of their molestation, it’s his story with which the reader is most concerned.  He is the narrator after all.  What I found fascinating about the development of Fee’s character was how he was able to cope with the abuse he suffered.

Early in the novel the reader is introduced to the legend/myth of the fox demon Tammamo through a story told by Fee’s Korean grandfather.  The demon took human form and married a man and upon the man’s death his wife(the fox) threw herself onto the fire with her husband’s body.  We learn that Fee is a distant descendant of this fox demon’s family line.  Later, when Fee encounters Big Eric and becomes a victim of molestation he uses the language of the fox demon myth to both inform the reader of the abuse and its emotional effects and as a psychological coping mechanism for himself.  In a way Fee mythologizes his abuse and uses the language of Korean mythology to process and convey the effects of what has been done to him and his friends.

One of the stronger pieces of textual evidence to support this would be the shame and guilt that Fee feels as a result of the abuse and its effects on himself, Peter, Zach and the others.  Fee feels responsible, as if what happened to everyone was his fault.  The parallel to be made here is that if the fox demon is responsible for what has happened, and he is a descendant of this demon, then he is implicated.  Fee feels responsible because unlike the other children he recognized, or thought he recognized, what Big Eric truly was.  Fee was able to recognize Big Eric’s true nature as a result of his own growing attraction to boys. He failed to act because he feared speaking out would reveal not only Big Eric but himself.  He feared the something inside him(his homosexuality/the fox demon), and he saw this as a connection he had with Big Eric.   He often uses the language of the myth, fire inside of us, singing out fire, etc.. the feeling of a demon inside of him, as a device with which he conveys the self-loathing natural to victims of such abuse.

Later much more vivid examples of Fee’s mythologizing the effects of the sexual abuse appear.  Peter’s suicide by immolation is a clear parallel to the fox demon myth, and when Zach shoots himself in the head and Fee discovers him that night he has a hallucination of a fox leaping into the air and disappearing, as if responsible for what has happened to Zach.

Finally, the novel ends in fire.  Fee relates to us that by jumping into the fire with her dead husband, Tammamo, the former fox demon was now free, she had become human through the love of her husband, “Love ruins demons”(209).

The reader sees that Bridey’s love has conquered the demon inside of Fee.  And Fee has emerged on the other side of the fire (his encounter with Warden), now free of the demon inside of him.  (I will quickly mention, as I forgot to do it earlier in the draft, I think the connection, or the ability for Fee to make the connection between the mythology of the fox demon and his own sexual abuse comes from the story told of his great aunts, who were taken as Comfort Women by the Japanese).

So, in a nutshell, although the novel begins in darkness, and keeps us there for pretty much its entire run.  It’s a story with a happy ending.  Fee survives, and lets go of all the negative energy he has channeled for so long.  I think the beauty of how he is able to reconcile his life experience comes from the unexpected blending of his ancestral mythology with the trauma endured in his childhood.

Blog Post #8: Draft revision

After reading over my comments and looking back at my exploratory draft I’ve been able to narrow the focus of my thinking, placing me closer to the question that I’d like to explore in my final paper.

My first change is to abandon a discussion of Catfish And Mandala in favor of focusing solely on The Woman Warrior and the development of Kingston’s identity in relation to autobiographical form, cultural definitions of gender politics, and language and the theme of silence.  At this point I think the theme of language and silence is the largest idea here, the one that I’d like to frame all other discussions around.  Language(and silence) seems to be the thread that has the most potential to be woven through a discussion of Asian American writers and the autobiographical form, and gender politics as it relates to both Chinese and American definitions of femininity.

My motivation for deciding to focus on Kingston alone came from looking back to the Lisa Lowe article, specifically on her definition of hybridity.  Working with Lowe’s definition of hybridity, I think it would be difficult to draw parallels between the two works as hybridity as Lowe defines it deals with the specifics of experience: social class, gender, ethnic identity, etc…  While not impossible to connect the two works I think I can arrive at a better argument and eventually a set of conclusions from using Lowe’s definition of hybridity as it relates to one work.  I think that this approach will allow me to better unwrap and explain the development of Kingston’s identity in her autobiography in terms of her gender, ethnic identity, and the use/discussion of language.

I’ve also decided it would be useful to look back to Frank Chin’s article, and specifically his discussion of the autobiography as an American form that a writer such as Kingston had no right to employ in the telling of her own story. I’ve found several other articles that discuss the ethnic American writer and autobiography ( in a manner much more positive than Chin’s) and I think his argument would provide a useful contrast, or at least a historical perspective in the debate, as his article was written closer to the time of Kingston’s autobiography and in the multiculturalist moment of the 1980’s.  Beginning with Chin and working my way toward more recent criticism on the ethnic American writer and autobiography will hopefully create a dialogue on the hybridity of the form, which would connect this facet of the paper back to Lowe.

Finally, one of the biggest flaws in the thinking I did for the first exploratory draft was framing the discussion of identity as a choice between ethnic identity and American identity ( Chinese vs. American in the case of Kingston).  Lowe was helpful here as well. Rather than a choice, it seems that in the case of Kingston it was more a development of her own identity, Chinese-American, and individualized.  However, I still haven’t reconciled the ending of The Woman Warrior and the ambivalence of the allegory which concludes the book.  Combining Lowe’s article, with more recent scholarship will hopefully lead me to a discussion of identity, especially ethnic-American identity as a fluid construct that changes with time, location, and various other social, political, and gendered factors.

So, to wrap it up for this post, what I’m hoping to do as I go ahead with the research and writing of the paper is to focus my discussion on the development of Kingston’s Chinese-American identity as it relates to gender, language ( and the theme of silence), and her use of the autobiographical form to arrive at a hybrid identity that while lacking a concrete definition points toward a more individualized ( and flexible) definition of identity for the author.

Blog Post #7: The Book Of Salt

I thought this book was fantastic.  There was an incredible amount going on in the pages of the book, all of it compelling.  But by the time I reached the last page I had trouble wrapping everything up.  This is not to say that I’d like each and every novel to end with a lovely bow tying together all that is held inside but I’d at least like to see a little bit of that ribbon running through all the different facets of the novel.

In an attempt to unpack the contents of the novel I’d like to identify some of the running themes I noticed.  Language, translation and mistranslation, non-verbal communication.  Salt ( its many sources of origin: tears, the sea, sweat and its many uses).  The irrelevance of names and anonymity.  Homosexuality as explored through “The Steins” and the narrator.  French colonialism.  Self mutilation.  And finally,  sea travel and the notion of being lost at sea.  I’m sure I’ve overlooked many but that’s enough to deal with for the purpose of this post.

I’m not going to attempt to make sense of everything but what I think I’d like to attempt to discuss and/or connect are the themes of non-verbal communication and male homosexual culture.  Struggling to make sense of French, and occasionally English, the narrator of the novel often relies on gesticulation, body language, expression in people’s eyes.  Words betray and confuse but a person’s countenance cannot often be manipulated.  I think what I’m really interested in discussing is the function of having a gay man as a narrator in a novel that bounces between three languages.

Often Binh’s encounters with other men are without words initially.  There are several scenes in the novel where “cruising” ( a term for a gay man who is out to have a good time in the biblical sense) ((I’m going wild with double parentheses here, Yes I just used biblical terms to describe gay sex)) is depicted.  Given the dates during which the novel takes place it is no surprise that homosexuality was a taboo subject, one that was not openly discussed but alluded to, hinted at.  The need for discretion and secrecy allows a look, a gesture, brushing up against someone else to take on greater meaning.  In living as a gay man Binh had already acquired skill in the language of silence.

I find it curious that a gay man who has mastered silent seduction winds up as a narrator who speaks Vietnamese, is learning French, and occasionally must dabble in English as well.  With the cacophony of multiple languages assaulting his ears, I think Binh found comfort in and retreated further into his sexuality as reprieve.  With flesh pressed against flesh Binh found a space where words were not necessary, where sight and touch were the primary faculties.

I think that’s where I must start if I’m to draw thread between the many themes of the novel.  Silent communication is the comfort zone.  With this in mind, cooking can also be discussed in reference to non-verbal communication.  And if I wanted to stretch it even further I think the idea of drinking as a social activity, could also be worked into the discussion.  The passing of a bottle in place of words, etc, etc. . . This wasn’t a very informative or well thought out post, I’m really just beginning to wrap my head around the layers of the novel.  But if anyone else is struggling as I am, perhaps it would be helpful to begin where I have.

I do think there is something to the relationship between the silent language of gay men’s culture and a narrator who cannot often rely on words to communicate what is necessary.  The last part of the puzzle that I haven’t been able to find a space for yet is the theme of sea travel, and being out at sea.  Whenever Binh starts to feel lost, sad, etc… he described it as being at Sea again.  I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on the relevance of the ocean, and boats in this book.

Blog Post #6: Exploratory Draft

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala have by a great margin been my favorite books of the semester thus far.  The fact that both works are also autobiography I took as no small coincidence.  There must be some connection between the form and structure of autobiography and the Asian American experience as represented in literature, or so I think.  In the loosest of senses this is what I’d like to explore in the research and writing of my final paper.  To narrow the focus more, I look to the exploration and discussion of identity in Kingston and Pham’s work.  Both narrators struggle to discover an identity for themselves that somehow merges their two conflicting worlds, immigrant and American.  Each struggles throughout their respective life, for the length of the memoir at least, with this balancing act and each concludes with what I see as making a decision between their two worlds (Chinese v. American, and Vietnamese v. American).  The choice for both is ultimately one in favor of their American identity.

Blogs – Upon looking at what I’d written for the blog posts on each of the works I could see that a discussion of conflicting identity was apparent in both. In my blog post for The Woman Warrior I discussed Kingston’s assertion of individual identity against the collective identity of her Chinese background.  When I think on how this relates to my idea about choosing American identity in the end, I think there is room to argue that Kingston’s assertion of an individual identity over her familial and cultural ties to Chinese identity is in fact a very American thing to do.  It what I like to call her “talk to the hand” moment toward the end of the book, she vocally asserts herself and rebels against her family.  She tells them to ditch the chubby guy with the porn collection, she will be not sold into marriage, she will instead go to college, get scholarships and be free of them.  Kingston chose to direct her own life, and let go of the connection to the China she had imagined for so long.  She chose her American identity.

In my blog post for Catfish and Mandala I discussed Andrew’s indigestion issues while eating in Vietnam as a symbol of his intestinal assimilation.  His insides had acclimated to American food and could no longer tolerate Vietnamese.  By the end of this memoir Andrew has clearly chosen his American identity, he all but says it right at the end.  As I wrote previously I think the digestive struggle he underwent mirrored the conflict between his Vietnamese identity and his American identity.  For the sake of his health, he had to choose Coca-Cola’s and Oreos, and in the end of the book, he chooses his American identity for the sake of his sanity.

What I noticed about each narrator was the choice presented to him or her.  Honor heritage and tradition but keep a barrier between you and the world in which you now live or jettison away your immigrant identity and wholly embrace the American aspect of one’s identity, it’s a tough choice.  Thus far, I’ve noted the connection between choosing American identity (in some way) in both of the works.  At this point what I’m left wondering is why did there have to be a choice? Why were both authors left unable to reconcile a more bipartisan existence between their two cultures?

Blog Post #5: Catfish and Mandala

I’d like to start with a simple sentiment, Favorite book of the semester.  Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a travelogue, and the inherent search for the author’s identity in relation to a geographic location, but I don’t think I have anything bad to say about this book, aside from the excessive diarrhea talk which is to be expected when traveling in a country where people look at a river and think, “Hey, this is the perfect place to fish, bathe, and defecate.”

Upon starting the book I had some expectations.  Andrew was at a cliched crossroads in his life, unsure of his next move.  He hatches a plan to travel back to Vietnam, the country of his birth to make a connection to the roots, and history he left behind when he and his family fled.  Pretty typical travel writing stuff, right? From here, things don’t go as smoothly for Andrew as he had planned.

Andrew is having trouble connecting to the places he once knew so well, all changed physically and overcrowded with people.  He is a Viet-Kieu, a foreign Vietnamese who has abandoned the country.  This title provides a barrier he is unable to surpass as he travels through the country.  What we then see, is Andrew feeling most comfortable in the company of other tourists, Americans and the like, Westerners. His attempt to draw himself closer to his native country has had the opposite effect.  By returning to Vietnam has not realized how American he now feels.  At times he is often repulsed, annoyed, and shocked at the behavior of the Vietnamese people.  Vietnam is rejecting Andrew while Andrew does the same to Vietnam.

I think one of the best ways that the rejection of his native people and country comes through is Andrew’s reaction to Vietnamese food.  Andrew is now unable to stomach the food of his native country.  He does not turn his nose at it, many of the dishes seem familiar and inviting at first, but his digestive system has other ideas.  He is wracked with illness for most of the trip. His stomach is constantly churning and gurgling, he makes frequent bathroom trips.  From the inside out, his body is rejecting Vietnam.  The food he was once able to eat with the ease of any Vietnamese is now poison to his American system. His reaction to the food provides a further disconnect between Andrew, Vietnam, and the Vietnamese people.  He must know quickly scan a roadside stop before deciding to eat or drink.  He must ask for drinks without ice, all typical moves of a tourist.

Just as his illness signalled a rejection of Vietnamese culture, his dependence on Coca-Cola as a beverage was a sign of his dependence on American product, and culture.  The one thing was guaranteed safe to drink ( out of a closed bottle or can) was as “American as apple pie”.  In addition to soda, Hershey chocolate bars and Oreos were also praised as “safe” rations when other food was beyond attempting to digest.  American food came to be a comfort in Vietnam, whose cuisine was now verging on being classified as poison to Andrew’s weak American stomach.  Food, usually touted as a universal language of sorts came to be the wall that Andrew couldn’t climb, it simultaneously kept him from connecting with his Vietnamese roots while at the same time further cemented his status as a Vietnamese-American.

While thinking on food and its ability to either connect or prevent an individual from a foreign culture, even one that was once theirs, I thought of a nifty little term, which I’d like to share.  When thinking of Andrew’s physical rejection of Vietnamese food and his comfort taken in American food and drink I began to think of all the language describing food as evidence of Andrew’s intestinal assimilation.  His inability to stomach the food of his native country proved without a doubt that he had left Vietnam behind for good, there was no going back.  He was through and through, an American eater.

Blog Post #4: All Over Creation

While last week I struggled to hone in how I would connect American Woman to some aspect of Asian American studies in my blog post I had no such trouble this week.   Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation all but included page markers saying, “Hey! Look at this passage, I’m talking about seeds but really we’re talking about race”.  After making it through a good chunk of the novel it became apparent where the plot was going, and what the author was clearly (pun intended) trying to discuss using the seeds as an obvious metaphor for race.

To start with the most direct of metaphors, let’s begin with Yumi’s children Phoenix, Ocean, and Poo.  The physical differences in the children, and their racially ambiguous backgrounds are meant to serve as a platform for the discussion of race, and the blending of races.  If Yumi (Lloyd and Momoko’s seed) hadn’t run away from home and been impregnated (fertilized) by three different men, then her varied collection of children ( let’s call them exotic squashes) wouldn’t exist.  If nature hadn’t been allowed to proceed unfettered then these children ( new seed varieties) wouldn’t have been created.  Phoenix, Ocean, and Poo are symbols of, and a reason to champion nature taking its course, as is their mother.  Had Lloyd never brought Momoko (his new and exotic seed) home to Idaho, Yumi would never have been born either.  What’s Ozeki saying with the “organically cultivated” lineage of her main family unit? Perhaps that nature, and humanity should be allowed to exist free of interfence (genetic, political, cultural, racial). It’s a nice message, and agriculture was a romantic field in which to plant the “seeds” of her ideas, albeit a little too obvious.

Another aspect of the novel which I found so incredibly obvious was Momoko, and her seed collection.  In the face of all the discussion of NuLife potatoes, and farmers desperate to create the genetic replica of one potato over and over again here was Momoko.  A tiny little Japanese woman (seed) who had flown thousands of miles through the air to land in Idaho to cultivate her massive collection of exotic, and naturally developed seeds.  Her assiduous work in the garden was the real seed of resistance.  Her work became a beacon of hope to the Seeds of Resistance ( or the hippies driving around in a winnebago with frozen rats).  Her work was at the heart of the what the protestors were trying to accomplish with their various grocery store demonstrations.  Momoko was the voice of reason ( and occasionally comic relief) throughout the novel.  The Japanese woman in the middle of potato country  creating a litany of seed varieties.  Doesn’t get more obvious than that.  To see the contrast between Momoko and her method of seed cultivation in comparison to the genetically modified potatoes didn’t take much work.

Despite the fact that I found the metaphors in Ozeki’s novel to be incredibly obvious.  It doesn’t mean that I didn’t find them to be significant, or just plain lovely.  There was something refreshingly simple about stripping down the conversation to the level of seeds.  Biology can be presented as a divisive factor when it comes to discussions of race, but when you’re talking seeds and plants biology is the unifier, which is what I think the author wanted to highlight.  By the end of the novel I may have been yelling at Ozeki from my reading chair, “Ok, I get it, enough, just let Charmey die already so Cass can have a child, I know it’s coming,” or, “Ok, seeds are people too!” But after I closed the book, and had a little snack ( this book made me really hungry), I realized there’s nothing wrong with repeating a sentiment that holds as much truth as, just let nature create what it will.

Blog Post #3: American Woman

In Susan Choi’s American Woman the character Jenny Shimada starts out making bombs, and in the end winds up making juice.  The novel begins with a man searching for Jenny in upstate New York.  It’s the 1970’s and the reader soon comes to learn that Jenny is a fugitive.  She and her now imprisoned boyfriend William had been responsible for the bombing of several draft offices.  Their goal was not murder or even violence, the late night bombings were meant as booming indictments of the corrupt American political system.  Jenny believed she was representing and speaking for the people, that her actions would incite great social change.  Her scope was large. However her actions had forced her into hiding, and the reader then finds Jenny barely surviving, wracked with paranoia, and running out of options.  By the end of the novel we see a great change emerge in Jenny’s thinking.  She’s still a revolutionary, but the scale has changed.  Jenny realizes that quiet revolution, speaking only for yourself, and doing what you can as it relates to your daily life is a far more effective means of encouraging change.

“You like to blow things up that belong to someone who can always replace them, like the federal government.  You like to do things that make you feel morally superior but don’t make any difference, except getting your lover’s ass thrown in prison”(Choi 211). This accusation from Juan, one of the three fugitives Jenny agrees to shelter while still in New York, is a shockingly accurate analysis of Jenny’s tenure as a draft office bomber.  She and William made huge statements out of explosions, but after the smoke cleared nothing was different or had been gained.  The bombings were simply statements, nothing else. A new office would spring up elsewhere in town and the government would continue on.  While the initial impact of Jenny’s actions was impossible to ignore, nothing lingered.  It was as if the bombings had never happened at all.

Eventually Jenny is captured and made to face the charges against her.  In the midst of the high-profile trial of Jenny’s fugitive charge, Pauline (Patty Hearst!) , Jenny’s proceedings go almost unnoticed.  She is convicted, and serves her sentence with good behavior, which allows her early release.

Jenny finds herself a room in a house full of graduate students, and similarly minded young people.  She instantly recognizes in her new roommates qualities from her past comrades and then quickly notes one large difference, “They were the same people, Mike Sorsas and Sandys and Toms.  Even a Pauline of a sort, a beautiful, cocky girl from Maine, slumming a while in California.  But theirs was a different world; living communally, buying their staples in brown paper bags, pushing the compost around with a hoe, were their forms of resistance”(Choi 362).  The idea of revolution had evolved as was evident in Jenny’s new roommates.  Bombing, marching, protesting in mass were now retired as tactics.  Change was now made on the individual level.  Through composting, and recycling and buying from small business owners.  Jenny now began to see the significance of her own voice, and that living a simple life was in its own way, an act of revolution.

In the final scenes the reader finds Jenny content.  She works at a local juice bar, and enjoys the routine of everyday work.  She sets out to visit her estranged father, the greatest evidence that Jenny has shifted her focus inward, deciding that the best way to contribute to social change is by improving oneself.  Jenny has taken her revolution from the national to the cellular level, proving that true change comes from the inside out.