Bonkie02's Weblog

The State Of Asian American Cinema

bonkie02 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:50:33 +0000

So after reading The State of Asian American Cinema: In Search of Community by Peter Feng I now know that there are different “kinds” of films. Apparently there are American films and Asian American films and others that I didn’t know. I honestly thought that movies were movies and that they were fun to watch… but I guess not. Anyway I thought that it was interesting that there is a difference between Asian American films and Asian films. The films are Asian American if there are Americans featured in the film with an Asian director and Asian films are directed and acted out by Asians. I also found the theme of identity crisis which we have seen in the past books we have read and discussed. I think it makes it especially difficult for filmmakers to make it in the business because they need to chose whether or not they are Asian or American. I, personally, don’t understand why people in the film making business can’t make good movies without being criticized for not choosing to be one or the other. What’s the big deal?

Also, I didn’t know that Asian films tried to put their independent films on the big screen because I’m pretty sure I would have tried to go and watch the film. I enjoyed reading about how it was like growing up in America for some Asians and watching it on tv would have been interesting. On page 24 in the first paragraph Feng wrote “While all five films reveal different longings, each long for the same thing: a sense of community.” I think that Asian American’s still don’t feel like they belong to either the American community or the Asian community. But I think if different races stop bringing up things that happened in the past and just move on and live in the present then I think that Asian American filmmakers could go pretty far in the movie business someday.

Fertility and Children

bonkie02 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:24:47 +0000

Two Passages:

1. Pg. 306 “Meanwhile, inside, changes,

cleavages and shifting,

thickening,

zygotes in morula into hollowed

blastula, still suspended,

free-floating, until…

now…

it brushes up against the soft and spongy wall. Parasitic,

it sticks tight, begins to burrow.”

Pg. 307 “It’s not important. What I wanted to say was it fertilized the egg, you see, and last night I concieved…so I can’t have the X-ray.

You what?

A baby. I’m pregnant.

How…how do you know this?

I watched the whole thing.”

2. Pg. 326 “Twisting the dial, shuttling the tape backward and forward, running my finger across the cusp of life and death, over and over, like there’s a trick here, something that if I practice I might get good at. Sucking life back into a body. Sometimes when I think about it I cry.” “At night, though, the displaced fragments float to the surface. I shuttle back, dream the baby is alive, I feel him kicking. The body remembers.”

Explained:

The first two passages on pages 306 and 307 deal with Akiko and how she is handling fertility and children. The poem she writes on page 306 talks about how women are connected to their children both emotionally and physically. Akiko can feel her baby inside her forming because she is connected to her baby on a deep level. On page 307 she tells the Nurse how she watched her baby forming inside of her. Now I can’t say that it has never happened to women because I’m sure somewhere there’s a “crazy” lady who said she did, but I’m thinking she just imagined her baby forming because she is so attached to it. She was probably having women’s intuition. The third passage deals with Jane and how she loses her baby but still feels connected to it because she dreams of having it inside her belly still and even when she watches the baby cow being slaughtered she wants to “suck life back in” because she sees men just taking it away.

Sentence(s):

Having a baby and being pregnant with a baby connects women, not only the baby inside them, but to women all across the world. It doesn’t matter if you live in Japan or America or if you are rich or poor and pregnant women are still going to have the “same” experience while being pregnant on a broader sense. Men can’t have children so they can’t really connect to a child like a mother can and they can’t connect to each other because it isn’t like all men bench the same amount of weights or eat as much as another man.

My Year of Meats!

bonkie02 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:23:11 +0000

So far I love this book and it is definitely my favorite book during this course. For this blog I am going to focus mainly on the theme of meat and the way American’s are perceived that Ozeki has in her book, The Year of Meats. Lets be honest Americans are obsessed with meat. Usually men are really big in to meat because when I go out to eat with my family my mom and I are eating like chicken or something and then their is my dad and uncles who are eating these huge steaks or burgers. Have you ever heard the “saying”: ‘Girls are treated like a piece of meat’. I think that that is the message that Ozeki is trying to portray to her readers. If you look at it women are always used and thrown away like a “piece of meat” and although we have tried many times over the past decade, century, etc it is like we will never be equal to men because they always try to degrade us. Also women are the ones who are always the ones who are cooking and doing the house work while the men are outside grilling the steak (’cause you know women will “mess it up”).

Isn’t it funny that when we talk about America we talk about Walmart or for example on page 33 Ozeki wrote “Suzuki had a passion for Jack Daniel’s, Walmart, and American hard-core pornography.” We have drinking, shopping, and movies all in one sentence. But, honestly, that is a bit stereotypical to say that it’s what American’s do all the time. Also Japan sees Walmart as a place that is abundant in many different things while Americans see Walmart as a place where you can get everything you want from food and clothing to i pods and video games. Furthermore we portray ur country as the “Land of Opportunities” and yet when immigrants come from across the globe we whine and tell them to go home. I feel as though we are very hypocritical when it comes to stuff like that. I think that Ozeki is trying to get across a lot of different themes so I’m excited for what is next to come in this book.

Bye Native Speaker

bonkie02 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:51:23 +0000

Wrapping up this book and discussing it in class made me realize that everyone, no matter their race, can feel out of place. When we were reading books like Woman Warrior and The Nisei Daughter we see that the women had problems dealing with their heritage and culture while the men were just there. But in Native Speaker you see that Henry felt shame about being Korean so much that he tried to change everything about himself so he can be as American as he can be. But honestly what does it mean to be American? Most people think that Americans are Caucasian and speak English and have everything that they ever wanted. However being an American I can safely say that I do not have everything I want and looking at my friends and other people in Albany I see that some people are of different skin color and that they have accents and look different from everyone else. I think that the language, whether its not English or how you pronounce a word, makes a person unique; it makes you different from everyone else. I think that when Henry doesn’t hear people talking in different languages he misses how America allowed people to speak in a different language. He realized that language was what he loved about this country. While I was reading about how Henry felt guilty that he handed over the list of illegal prostitutes because they get rounded up at night and sent back to their country. Although it is heartbreaking that these people were deported there is a part of me that feels that these people don’t belong here. Also I think that Henry did the right thing because sooner or later the aliens were going to get caught and letting them live in America for a long time and letting them think that they have everything and are doing well is worse than getting deported and not knowing what you will miss. I think that language and the unique-ness of people regardless of there skin color or nationality is what it means to be American.

I have to be honest when I was reading about Kwang and how he was with prostitutes I giggled a little bit not because it was funny but because it reminded me of the scandal with Spitzer. It’s crazy that Kwang was alike Spitzer with that aspect and that he was like Obama because he was a different race.

Native Speaker Part Two

bonkie02 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:16:08 +0000

I’m getting into this novel because it is very intriguing. Anyway while we were talking in class about the money or “ggeh” I noticed that Henry’s father said at the end of page fifty-one ” In America, he said, it’s even hard to stay Korean.” I thought that the phrase had connections to the other books that we read before. In American Born Chinese he “transforms” into being American because he couldn’t stay true to his heritage because people gave him dirty look or called him names. In Nisei Daughter, Monica Sone feels ashamed of being Japanese and tries very hard to become American. It is an ongoing theme in all of the Asian American Literature we have read thus far. “And to this day, when someone asks what my parents’ names were, I have to pause for a moment, I have to rehear them not from the memory of my own voice, my own calling them, but through the staticky voices of their own friends phoning from the other end of the world,” on page sixty-nine, relates to how Maxine Hong Kingston, in Woman Warrior, didn’t know her father’s name. When we were talking about our opinions of how Lelia reacted to Henry not knowing his parents’ names I was thinking that maybe that it was telling the reader that every family, no matter what their race is, have their own “traditions” and that people are too quick to judge things and people that are different from our “traditions” and who don’t look like us. Lee was trying to portray to people that Americans were to quick to judge Asians. When Henry was “replacing” John Kwang he commented, on page ninety-two, that “Mostly they were focused on me, whispering, nodding, conjecturing on who i was. Someone important, maybe. Known. Powerful. I was unaccustomed to this scope of attention,” it makes me think of celebrities get attention because, well, they are famous, and Henry isn’t use to it because he is seen as a “nobody”. There are rarely any celebrities that are famous Asians minus Lucy Lui, Tila Tequila, and Jackie Chan. We have never had any Asian president or any other leader that is Asian or any other race…only a white male. What is wrong with us?

Native Speaker Part One

bonkie02 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:40:54 +0000

I kind of enjoyed reading the first two chapters because I find reading made-up stories are more interesting than reading memoirs. They make your life better than in the stories you read….but I don’t know. Anyway let me get in to the story because I find this story, so far, to be very interesting. I keep noticing that Chang-Rae Lee focuses a lot on speech. On page six he writes “Her signature, again: False speaker of language.” Then on page twelve he writes “I heard then speaking Spanish, and I heard English, and then something else that Lelia said was called mixup. And at the bottom of that page “If I had to guess, you’re not a native speaker…You said Leel-ya so deliberately. You tried not to but you were taking in the sound of the syllables. You’re very careful.” It’s a reoccurring theme in the first two chapters. Another theme I see is that he points out the similarities and differences between Koreans or Asians i n general to other nationalities. “A friend in middle school taught me about Korean names, how Park and Kim were always Korean, the other names like Chung and Cho and Lee maybe Korean, maybe Chinese. Never Japanese,” a quote from page ten comparing Korean last names to Chinese and Japanese last names. Lelia annoyed me because it seemed like she liked Henry but then she would always make comments about his race like the above statement. I can’t wait to read more of The Native Speaker.

Immigration Blues

bonkie02 — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:44:35 +0000

Of all my years I have been educated I never learned quite how hard it is for people from different countries to immigrate into America and try and live here when everything is basically going against you. During and after reading this i felt sad for the people in this piece. In sucks that Alipio’s wife dies and then you have these two women are about to get deported and are telling their stories to Alipio. Although I was sad through the story I giggled a little when I read that people wanted Alipio to marry Monica so she could stay in the country. I don’t know why but every time I watch TV or hear of someone wanting to marry another person so they can stay in America I just laugh because I think that people should get married because they love each other. Also with the media influencing everything such as clothing and makeup and hair to what we watch on TV, making fun of people marrying each other to stay in the country we just laugh at it because it is absurd. Anyway I did enjoy reading this piece because I thought that it was interesting.

All I Asking For Is My Body

bonkie02 — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:18:39 +0000

I definitely vote this better than reading Frank Chin. Milton Murayama’s All I Asking For Is My Body and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter had some similarities between them. For example Sone had always felt ashamed of being Japanese and in Murayama’s section that we read he says that he had also felt ashamed about being Japanese. In Nisei Daughter Sone’s mother told her to not feel ashamed of being Japanese and in Murayama they have the same thing. He says “Be proud you’re Japanese. Never bring shame to the Japanese race. What if they, all of them, bring shame to me?” In the Nisei Daughter Monica Sone feels the same way about her heritage and being both Japanese and American. Both novels talked about the internment camps as well. They both described the camps to very horrible. Murayama described the strict rules that went around in Hawaii such as a Japanese couldn’t carry more than two-hundred dollars with him or her. I also found it interesting that Murayama had many Christian things such as symbols and views. I liked that his father wanted his family to have a Christian background because it was like blending two different cultures except with religion, I think.

The Nisei Daughter 8 till end

bonkie02 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:56:34 +0000

I found the end of The Nisei Daughter interesting because of her treatment in the camps and how her parents changed a little bit during the internment. In the beginning of chapter 8 when Henry, Sumi, and Monica heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor they were devastated and afraid of what would happen to their parents. They never thought that they would be sent to the Japanese camps although they did. I also found it interesting that Monica’s father, whom was described as Ghandi, snapped for the first time when asked about the bombing and what would happen to the family. Also when the Americans invaded Mrs. Matsui’s home looking for her husband they were yelling and screaming at her for her husband but when she finally told them that he was dead I felt like they were happy about it and that he was one more Japanese person that they didn’t have to worry about, but I don’t know if that is true or not.

Up until this part of the book I felt that Monica hated being Japanese because she was always shunning everything Japanese and saying she was one hundred percent American. But on page 156 “Wearily we closed out eyes, filled with an indescribable sense of guilt for having destroyed the things we loved.” She was upset about getting rid of her Japanese stuff that she had for most of her life, yet she still knows that she is still Japanese even though her and her family got rid of their stuff. I felt sorry for her but I was still confused about her feelings toward her heritage because she goes back and forth.

Skipping a bit a head to the part about George…when I first read this it made me really sad to know that this Japanese boy died fighting for the country who hated his race. His father was the one who had always had faith in America but I don’t understand how he can have faith when he was never granted citizenship and was rounded up to be put in camps after the bombing. At the same time I feel like Mr.Sawada is more of a citizen than any American because he had faith when he shouldn’t of had any.

The last paragraph on page 38 “I had discovered a deeper, stronger pulse in the American scene. I was going back into its main stream, still with Oriental eyes, but with an entirely different outlook, for now I felt more like a whole person instead of a sadly split personality. The Japanese and the American parts of me were now blended into one.” After reading this I realized that it must take great tragedy to realize that being Japanese and American can be blended together and prove to be a good match. But then I realized that no matter your race or heritage or your country everything can be blended together to make a great person.

The Nisei Daughter Three and Four

bonkie02 — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:42:28 +0000

In the beginning of chapter three, An Unpredictable Japanese Woman, Monica Sone tells us that she wants to be a dancer. But she doesn’t want to be a Japanese dancer, she wants to be an American dancer. I found it interesting that her father said no because he thought that she would become a geisha like over in Japan. But he still doesn’t want Sone to become a dancer in America because they dance “trashy”. “I lumbered out to the main auditorium to help serve tea, reeling like a grounded butterfly” (pg 46). I found this sentence interesting because it described how she felt like she was living in America but yet she still has to practice Japanese culture. All she wants to do is be free but she is just a “grounded butterfly”living as a Japanese American.

The part where Monica, her mother, and Mrs. Kato are trying to get on the streetcar I thought that it was funny how she was really embarrassed when her mother and Mrs. Kato were speaking Japanese and everyone was looking at them. I think that this shows that Sone doesn’t want to be seen as a Japanese girl but rather an American girl. I also liked how she added that her mother tries very hard to learn English and she talks about for a little while in the book. But her father on the other hand doesn’t feel he should need to learn English and she only only talks about him for a paragraph or two.

In the second section, The Japanese Touch, I noticed that Sone loves American Holidays but when it comes time to celebrate Tenchosetsu she doesn’t want to go and has no way of escaping it because she is Japanese. Also when the ceremony is done the last sentence she writes is “We scattered in all directions, as we raced home to recapture our holiday plans” (pg. 70). It sounds to me like that ceremony was just like school and that it wasn’t considered a real holiday to Sone. But then it seems that she only likes the holidays where she can have fun and be “free” like the Japanese picnic one. I liked this chapter, too, because it talked about all the holidays they celebrate, Japanese and American ones, and I enjoyed reading the similarities and differences.