This week in ASTU we were introduced to The Reluctant Fundamentalist a novel by Mohsin Hamid and I must say this was the most enjoyable rad I’ve had this year. Personally, I loved the way it was written, the structure, the stories and the suspense Hamad created all came together to produce a very dynamic book. I found the novel to have a real flow in the way Hamid had written it, as if the language he was incorporating speed up the pace in which I could read and interpret the novel.

What I found most remarkable about the book though, was how the story transpired. At the beginning of the novel I quite enjoyed the character of Changez and the way he conducted himself. He appeared to me to be quite a successful, driven, personable and appreciative individual that was experiencing great deal of exciting accomplishments at a young age. It actually took me a while before my perception of Changez started to shift. I began to feel differently toward him as the story progressed, specifically when his descriptive stories of Erica turned strange and complicated. This is not to say I enjoyed Changez any less at this stage of the novel, I almost enjoyed him more, but in a different light. I saw Changez in the way you see a villain that you kind of like, I was comparing Changez to a figure like the Joker in Batman. I was fascinated by Changez as he progressively got creepier and he started to play with his language more. It was almost as if he was speaking in clues and riddles for a great deal of the book. I thought it was quite cool how he handled himself while speaking with the unidentified American.

The novel certainly took a quick turn toward the end when Changez returned to Pakistan. Those final moments as he walks the American through Lahore, back to his hotel was by far my favourite section of the book , I’m not sure I’ve ever been so captivated by a novel in my life.

A.J.

Happy blog day readers!

The past few weeks in ASTU have had a primary focus on the craft of poetry and specifically last week a focus on poetry dealing with 9/11. Personally, I found the in class discussions we had last week to be the most compelling thus far this year. Hearing everyones different and similar interpretations of the assigned poetry was really cool. A particular area of discussion that stuck with me from last week was on the topic of poetry or art in general that greatly offended people around the time of 9/11.

I certainly understand how art dealing with such a sensitive issue would be capable of striking many individuals as offensive, but I definitely wouldn’t hold the art or the artist to blame. This topic came up in class when we discussed the “Falling Man” poem and the “Tumbling Women” statue. Apparently both artists received a tremendous amount of criticism for their controversial pieces and were even subject to death threats. The “Tumbling Women” statue was actually removed from the Rockefeller centre because people were so offended. Hearing this in class was not exactly surprising to me, but it was certainly disappointing. I believe that all art that arrived during the period of 9/11 should be appreciated for what it was because it was such an essential time for art production. With individuals worldwide enduring so many overwhelming emotions all of a sudden, art would serve as a tool to reconcile those complex emotions and let people focus in on one thing at a time, to grasp certain feelings through personal interpretation. As for the artists experiencing the trauma of 9/11 I can only imagine there not being a much better time to express oneself. Working with so many emotions brings a  great deal of inspiration for an artist and I personally don’t think society can put restrictions on the ways in which artists wish to express their feelings on the issue.

I believe that art shouldn’t be oversensitive to the emotional reactions of the audience because art should always be playing off emotion. To remove a piece of art or threaten an artists life over a controversial piece of art is absurd to me. How can an artist feel free to put forward their creative work while worrying about how people will interpret it? What I consider to be one of the most valuable aspects of art in general is that it can be widely open for interpretation.

But if you disagree or have a stance on the issue sound off with a comment!

Thanks for reading,

A.J.

Welcome back readers,

This week in ASTU we discussed the Judith Buttler essay and initially I was dreading reading this piece because of the reputation of complexity it held. As I started flipping through it though, I became pleasantly surprised with my ability to decipher many of the more basic and even a couple of the sophisticated arguments Buttler was presenting. This caused me to reflect back to my first attempt reading Shahzad’s essay at the beginning of the year and the difficulty I had forming a strong understanding on it. Now finding myself grasping a seemingly much more sophisticated piece of writing gives me a gratifying feeling of progression.

I found the in-class discussions intriguing this week as we broke down many of the different ideas concerning the “us” vs. “them” debate, 9/11, trauma, media and Guantanamo Bay. Specifically in a group discussion today we were asked to speak on how hearing the poems from prisoners inside Guantanamo might alter our impression of the war on terror. Firstly we talked about the abnormality of the idea of Guantanamo prisoners producing so much poetry, and that was an interesting thought. This idea definitely made the prisoners appear much more human to me. But then we started to discuss how it’s odd that Guantanamo wouldn’t allow for most of the poetry to leave the prison. Then a string of questions began to form. How was the producer of “Poems from Guantanamo” able to compile enough poems for an entire book? And if they were holding or destroying the majority of it, what reasons do they have? And again if Guantanamo holds so much how can the end product of the poems released be trusted to be free of any censorship in the editing process? Then of course there’s the question of translation that was brought up in class discussion, how can the process of conversion from Arabic to English be trusted? I’ve always thought that being a J. Edgar Hoover type would be fascinating because you’d have the access to view all of the United States shady activities and be one of the privileged few.

If you read my blog than thanks!

A.J.

Welcome Readers!

I’m not going to lie, I have been struggling all day to start this blog post, it’s been so long I hardly remember how to do it! But I hope everyone had a nice Christmas break with enough time to relax and let their minds wander away from school. As everyone should hopefully know we are kicking off the new term by discussing the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Personally, I was unaware that this story was made into a novel. I had seen the movie as it was somewhat of a hit in theatres with roles from Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. This happens to me quite often actually, I tend to hop on books rather late, after already had seeing the movie. I almost prefer it that way, because then there’s less potential for disappointment and in the case of Foer’s novel it gave me a much rounder, more full interpretation of the collection of stories that the book uses.

I actually really enjoyed the film, it’s completely focused on Oscar and his struggle to find the connection to his father once more in order to eventually let his pent up frustrations go. With so much emphasis on Oscar’s story alone though, the movie doesn’t cover the stories of Oscar’s grandmother, grandfather, Anna or many of the interesting characters Oscar comes across throughout his search. The lack of substance that these characters held in the film made them that much more interesting throughout the book. I was actually more captivated by Thomas Sr. and Oscar’s grandmother’s stories then I was Oscar’s because I had already seen a large portion of Oscar’s journey in the movie, but then being introduced to the book it was as if I was getting a behind the scenes look at the lives of Thomas Sr. and Oscar’s grandmother. With the addition of Anna into both their stories makes for an even more obscure and exciting dynamic between Thomas Sr. and grandma, while bringing more knowledge to be interpreted by the reader.

It’s understandable that the film producers decided to keep the majority of the movies focus on Oscar’s story, because it would certainly be difficult to create a movie with so much substance that didn’t drag on too long. That being said I personally would’ve found a part two and three or a full sequel that goes back and tells the stories of Oscar’s grandparents to be a fascinating way to fully depict the story from each angle. That’s something that I couldn’t get off my mind when reading this novel.

Thats all for today, thanks,

A.J.

Welcome readers,

Well it’s been a while since we’ve been able to share our exciting thoughts through a blog post, and it feels good to be back! We’ve covered a lot of material in ASTU since the last post. Great works such as Sturken, Safe Area Gorazde, Obasan and of course everyone’s wonderful memory presentations. Needless to say it’s been a riveting few weeks in ASTU, but one piece struck particular interest for me and that was Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco.

Since arriving at UBC I’ve been on a constant search for interesting fields that I may want to major in. One that recently came to mind not long before we began Safe Area Gorazde was journalism. Journalism looks like a field where you can really connect with subjects your passionate about by going right to the source and learning real information first hand. Reading Safe Area Gorazde was intriguing to read for me because it was assigned at a perfect time to really grab my attention and give me a sense of the fields elements. I’ve recently been reading through a lot of editorials where journalists spend a few weeks traveling alongside musical artists on tour and have been fascinated by the idea, but I found that through Sacco’s detailed illustrations I developed an even closer interest in the field. Sacco has such an impressive drawing style that it felt as though I was alongside him throughout his trips to Gorazde, listening to the in depth stories of locals (as corny as that all sounds).

Obviously Sacco didn’t just completely glorify the field of journalism because he was clearly in a dangerous place during a sketchy time trying to do his job, while making close connections with people who he will eventually have to leave behind. So there are factors that make the job difficult, another being the title a journalist carries and how particular people view them. For example in the “American Man” chapter (p.190-192) the character F. becomes very angry with Joe simply because he’s a journalist. F. has the idea that journalists don’t always record accurately and for the right reasons, which could be considered a fair assumption.

Now it feels as though I’ve been introduced to a variety of positive and negative factors of the field, but that’s made me all the more interested. The idea of traveling and furthering my insight on certain subjects then writing on matters that are engaging to me seems so compelling. So feel free to comment on this bad boy and tell me what you’ve been considering taking in your future years at UBC!

Happy blogging,

A.J.

Good day readers,

I hope everyone had a wonderful thanks giving weekend, I know I did, but I must admit last week felt somewhat empty for myself without an assigned blog post where I could read everyone’s exciting insights on summary! I was able to cope with the disappointment from the comfort of my own home though, just so no one is too worried. Initially coming into this week I wasn’t terribly thrilled to be working through another research paper, but after reading Hilary Chute’s essay The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” and drawing my own interpretation on it, I found myself noticing a lot of interesting breakdowns of Persepolis that I hadn’t originally picked up on. Obviously in Chutes’ paper she puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of images and the style of Satrapi’s illustrations. These are factors that I thought I was paying a lot of attention to while reading Persepolis but then came to the realization that there were a variety of aspects I hadn’t taken into consideration. Another interesting point that I’d like to talk about briefly is something we discussed in class regarding authority and how Satrapi is able to demonstrate her authority throughout Persepolis; as well as just how important authority can be when trying to convey a story to an audience.

In class this week we were split into five groups and each assigned a section of Chute’s essay to analyze and to develop a further understanding on. My group was assigned the second section of the paper where Chute mainly discusses the style that Satrapi incorporates in her graphic novel. Chute suggests that the simplistic, childish illustration style made the entire novel more relatable to the audience while keeping it personal to Satrapi’s childhood, I found the “message in a bottle” reference that was brought up in class quite relevant to Chute’s description. Chute also addressed the lack of colour and its significance to the comic specifically in the quote she cites Satrapi on “To draw it and put it in color-the color of flesh and the red of the blood, and so forth-reduces it by making it realistic” (Hadju 2004, 35). Giving reason to the black and white format was fascinating to me because it opened my eyes up to certain details of the comic that I was previously blind to. For a broad example just any of the variety of violent scenes, I started to notice and retrace the emotion I was drawing out of the disturbing images that didn’t seem so disturbing in the first place, and found myself answering the question why. As a group Benny, Devon and I agreed that in our first read through Persepolis we definitely didn’t examine the images for their significance the way that we would’ve liked to; we all admitted that we felt as though we needed to go back and evaluate certain sections again.

Personally, on Tuesday I found the topic of authority intriguing. How authority is distributed and acquired in controversial text. When thinking about Persepolis I found that just the demeanour in which Satrapi presents her language and drawing gave her authority because in my opinion it felt very genuine, it felt as though I could trust the story and the information that the comic put forward. It didn’t feel as though I was being scared into believing the story or even made to feel empathy for anyone; it seemed realistic.

Thanks for listening!

Work Cited

 Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36. 1&2 (Spring/Summer 2008)

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The story of a Childhood. New York. Random House, 2003. Print.

Good day fellow citizens,

It was an interesting week in ASTU as we were introduced to the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Personally, I loved this piece; the comic style genre was exactly the type of assigned reading I needed to close out my first month of university. After analyzing research papers, and reading through intricate course content Persepolis offered a simplified structure to interpret controversial issues that are still directly relevant to our course material as Global Citizens. Not only was it a fun read, but very informative for myself as someone who was quite uneducated on the history of Iran. Because of the way I was influenced by the news as an adolescent I had a particularly flawed view on how I looked at the country of Iran. I had always held Iran and Iraq in the same context, and saw them both as impoverished war grounds and nothing else. Persepolis gave me a brand new, much broader perspective on the way in which I now look at Iran, I found the power struggle they endured throughout history fascinating, but still quite upsetting. For a country with so much potential to be subject to so much violence is really a shame. Throughout reading the graphic novel though, I couldn’t help but notice the prominent role interpretative communities (Shahzad 2011) played in shaping Marji’s political and religious views.

Marji experiences a variety of shifting ideologies throughout Persepolis that she draws mainly from her family and direct community. She developed as a young woman in a very controversial time period which made her subject to a great deal of change. Marji would form her opinions mainly based on her parent’s views with contributions from other family members and family friends. Through basing her strong ideologies off her community Marji was able to reject and challenge the ideals that were being taught in her school not only with course material but also religion. I personally found it very impressive that such a young girl could even form opinions on such big issues, it’s clear that she found a profound interest in what was happening to her beloved country. Most children between the age of ten and fourteen (including myself at that age) wouldn’t seek such in depth reason for what was happening in the world around them; but Marji was so deeply submerged in her interpretative community (Shahzad 2011) that she was able to acquire a high degree of knowledge and apply it to the events that were taking place in Iran.

Thanks again for the listen,

A.J.

Howdy readers,

This week in ASTU 100 we mainly discussed the topic of citation. We did this by relating the material in our textbook to that of the work done by Farhart Shahzad in her study of the connection between remembering and learning in The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning. Personally I found this week’s concepts of citation quite intimidating, as I have never experienced referencing in such a sophisticated light. Initially, I was taken back by the idea that this level of writing and research is what will be expected of me as I take on the challenge of university. For example, the first assigned reading of Shahzad was only three pages and I had a particularly hard time even comprehending the subject. Thank god my class contains such intelligent thinkers along with a brilliant professor (;) to help clear up the understanding of the material for me through group discussion. I found “Noting for Gist” (Giltrow, Gooding, Burgoyne, Sawatsky, 2014, p. 31) especially helpful when attempting to summarize pieces of the article in language that I could personally interpret. I used this tool and after an embarrassing amount of time (4 hours) I was finally able to not only grasp the ideals that Shahzad was explaining, but relate to her overall study of remembering. I specifically found correlation with Shahzad’s methodology when she asked ninety-nine students how they remembered the War on Terror. This caused me to reflect on my past, and how I remember learning about the attacks of 9/11; while considering what interpretative communities (Shahzad, 2011) I may have been subject to.

I recall 9/11 surprisingly well for being only five years old at the time. My parents were very disturbed over what they were watching on the news, but I couldn’t wrap my head around why because they didn’t want me to be exposed to such content, so young. However, probably several months after the attacks I received one of those cardboard paged, picture books for children from my grandmother; and it was about the attacks on 9/11. I only vividly remember one picture from the entire book and it was a colorfully drawn depiction of the iconic image of the second plane making contact as the previous tower was still smoking. As a child this was astonishing to me, and not being the global citizen I am today (lol) I though that this incident had taken place in my own city of Calgary. Obviously later on in elementary school I learned about where the attacks took place in more detail, but throughout my childhood this one historic image that my grandma passed down to me stands out in my memory more than anything else.

Through reading Shahzad’s research I was able to identify my grandmother as the most influential source in my interpretative community (Shahzad, 2011). I was able to further my understanding on an important moment in history at such a young age, through one powerful drawing.

Thank you for listening!

Giltrow, Janet et al.. Academic Writing: An Introduction, 3rd edition. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2014. Print.

Shahzad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning.” Canadian Journal of Education 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 1 Sept. 2014

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