Hey Bloggers,

It’s strange to think that I will be typing this blog for the last time this year! I can’t believe how fast my first year at University has gone by, it’s crazy to think back on my first day of classes and then to think now about how much has happened since then.  I can safely say that I am really happy with my first year experience as a CAP student at UBC, I think that CAP is a really great and unique program that allows a nice smooth transition into the University environment.  I enjoyed all of my classes that I had the opportunity to take, some more than others, but overall i’ve had a positive first year experience.  One of the classes that I found really interesting was this class which is of course my ASTU! I enjoyed ASTU because it was a really great way for me to become more comfortable with reading scholarly discourse, proper essay writing technique, and we got to read some really great literature, all stuff that will definitely help me in my coming years at UBC.  So with all of that being said I want my last blog post to focus upon the highlights of my ASTU class and reflect upon a great first year at University!

When I heard that our main topics were going to be memory and post 9/11 literature I was really excited because there is a lot of depth to these topics, and the novels, poetry, and essays that we read covered a lot of interesting ground.  One of the main highlights from term two for me was reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the fictional post 9/11 novel was for me an accurate representation of what life was like for mourning people after 9/11.  I found it to be sad, funny, mature, and sentimental, and I particularly enjoyed how Foer not only chose to focus on the event of 9/11 but also brought in trauma from other generations, like the Dresden bombings and the Holocaust.  Another novel from this term I really liked reading was Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  Although this novel did not focus on just on 9/11, it incorporated the event is a more subtle way.  I found Hamid’s novel interesting because although it is fictional the content enters on a very real topic which is the matter of “Us” and “Them” or “The West vs. the Rest.”  It was provoking to see the revelation of the main character Changez from expressing his love of America and how much he feels at home there, and then seeing later in the novel, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 how he begins to question his love for America.  This novel definitely expresses some of the real problems that are still occurring in present day.

Going back to term one, I want to reflect on some of my positive experiences!  Term one was hard because everything was totally different from high school : the content we tackled, the writing style, and the quantity of work.  Taking this ASTU class really helped me in areas of my other class that focused on writing, conducting research and how to properly approach reading scholarly articles.  I was great to see improvements in my grades and the quality of my work because I was constantly learning new techniques that catered to these areas of my work.  As for literature in term one I enjoyed reading Persepolis, who knew that a comic style narrative could be so though provoking.  It was a particularly enjoyable book for me because it was entered upon the real life story of Marjane Satrapi, and it totally opened new doors for me when I learned  about what life was really like for a child growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran Iraq war. I’m glad we were able to spend so much time discussing and analyzing Persepolis.  

Overall my year in ASTU has been a really great experience, the class definitely gave me some important skills that will greatly help me in my next years at University.  The small class size made it possible for me to meet some new people in the CAP stream and made for a really great and productive learning environment. All of the literature we covered was great and I would recommend all of the books to friends and family!  Thanks Dr.Luger and to all you guys in this class who made my year in ASTU really great!

Over and Out.

-Magda:)

Hey Readers,

This past week in class we have just finished discussing Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in an assignment due in early February we have been asked to do a close reading of Foer’s novel.  That is to say that we must pick a small moment in the book and relate it to a larger theme or bigger picture that the Foer is potentially trying to convey throughout the novel. In preparation for the upcoming assignment I am going to be discussing something that I read in the novel that I feel is potentially part of a larger theme.

I thought that the specific moment in the novel that contributed to the bigger picture was Oskar’s journey to find the lock to fit the mysterious key that he found.  After losing his father Oskar finds a key in an old vase in his fathers closet Oskar is convinced that his father has left it for him and sets out on an epic quest.  Ultimately the key did not belong to his father at all, it was a forgotten key left by the man (Mr.Black) who he had bought the vase from. Some may have viewed this as a disappointing ending, but I believe that it the novel actually ended in a perfect way.  The larger theme that I want to relate Oskar’s journey to is the theme of grief.  Grief plays a big role in the novel in terms of Oskar trying to mourn the loss of his father, but the key theme of grief also prevails when studying Grandpa and Grandma and how they both suffered the loss of Anna and are now grieving the loss of their son, Thomas.

A moment in the book where I felt that Oskar’s experience related to the theme of grief was at the end of the novel when Oskar meets Mr. Black only to find out that the key never actually belonged to his father, that it was left behind in the vase unknowingly when Mr. Black sold Thomas the vase.  By finding out that the key was never meant for him Oskar seems to find some peace for the first time since his father had died, for once he seemed not to question everyone and everything.  “Why don’t you come with me to the bank?” “You’re nice but no thank you,” Oskar states (Foer: 300) .  Oskar is finally coming to terms with his grief and by doing this Oskar is able to finally re-connect with his mother and begin to understand the grief that she has suffered.  Oskar begins to welcome Ron into their lives, after being unfair to his mother for feeling happiness.

Throughout Foer’s novel it is clear to see the stages of grief throughout most of the characters, predominantly Oskar, and how certain textual examples demonstrate grief as a large theme of the book.  When the mystery of the key is revealed the reader can see Oskar finally getting rid of his “heavy boots” and accepting and trying to move on through his grief.  It is clear to see grief as a key theme in this novel and is interesting to see the different levels of grief progress, and eventually the process of moving on among the characters.  This is just one example in the text that relates to the potential bigger picture of the novel, but there of course are many more key themes Foer is conveying in his work.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Magda Adkins

Hello fellow bloggers,

one term has just ended and the new term begins,and so I am ready to get stared again with my blog!  It has been one restful winter break full of family and of course lots of food! As I begin back in my ASTU class, we begin to read and analyze a new text, our new novel is entitled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close written by Jonathan Safran Foer.  This novel follows the aftermath of 9/11 and one young Oskar Schell’s journey to find some kind on closure after losing his father on that tragic day.  As I am reading this book I was able to quite clearly make some connections between this novel and the other novels and graphic narratives that I read in the previous term.  I was able to see some similarities and differences between the novel Obasan, the graphic memoir Persepolis and the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, keep reading to find out what those similarities and differences are!

Most specifically what tied the strongest connection between novels Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Obasan, and graphic narrative Persepolis was the child narrator present in all three.  Oskar Schell is able to narrate Foer’s novel as he embarks on an epic journey through the boroughs of New York in search of a lock that fits a mysterious key that is left behind by his recently deceased father.  Marji, is the voice behind Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis that portrays a young girls experience living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran Iraq war.  Lastly Obasan written by Joy Kagowa is told through the eyes of Naomi as her family is torn apart during the time of Japanese Internment in Vancouver, Canada.  All three pieces of literature are similar in the sense that they all posses a child but are very different in that only one of them is non-fiction.  Persepolis is the only one of the three novels that is a real autobiography, although with that being said I would argue that Obasan and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are in fact very accurate representations of the events that they portray.  In many ways they are not considered non-fiction because they represent a collective of people that have endured similar or the same experience.  After the world trade centre fell on September 11th 2001, many lives were lost and many lives were changed, I think that Foer’s novel represents many people that lost a loved one and also a part of themselves, the book very much highlights the grieving process and that it is unimaginably hard to say goodbye to someone that you love.  Similar with Kogawa’s Obasan, I believe that this novel gives a voice to all of the Japanese Canadians who were silenced during the terrible time, and represents a very true narrative of the many families that were torn apart.

In summary my blog has covered some of the connections that I was able to draw between the novel that I have read thus far this term(Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and others that were read in the previous term(Obasan, Persepolis).  The main connection that I drew was that all three pieces of literature have a child narrator, and that not all of them were non-fiction stories all though all those two covered very real and important ground.  All though there were fictional they all represented very real events and told the stories of very real people, so I’m my books I would very much consider them to be non-fiction!  These were just two of the connections that I made, but there are definitely many many more connections that can be drawn between the three novels. So my question to myself is are there any more major connections between these three narratives?

Until next time,

Magda  

Hey Readers!

Just this past week in my ASTU 100A class, myself along with my other classmates had the unique opportunity to visit then rare books collection in archives of one of the libraries at UBC.  We were given a short presentation by a librarian concerning some basic information about how the archives work and what we will expect to see.  All of the folders we were given to look at were the fonds of  Joy Kogawa, who is the author of Obasan.  Obasan is a novel that we have recently finished reading in our ASTU class, the novel is written  about a young girl and her experience as a Japanese Canadian living in Vancouver  during the time of Japanese Internment.  As time does not prevail for me to give a long winded summary of Obasan, looking at the some of the blogs from last week should help to give a clear idea of what the novel focuses on.

During my brief visit at the UBC archives I managed to take in and observe a lot of interesting subject matter regarding the material that our class was provided.  We were provided with a lot of original untouched work of Joy Kogawa in her fonds, including many of her original drafts, letters of acceptance along with letters of rejection, and just a lot of interesting things regarding her novel.  Many of the folders I did not get a chance to really look through, but the ones that I did contained some really interesting things.  I primarily looked at some of her original drafts, comparing them to things in the final published copy of Obabsan.  She has written draft upon draft, upon draft because they obviously did not have laptops or printers when the book was being written so all of Joy Kogawa’s drafts had to be done by typewriter.  I had to stop and think about this for a minute because this must have been a very lengthy process! I could not possibly imagine writing draft upon draft on a type writer, let alone on a computer!

Another thing that caught my attention was the hidden treasures that were inside some of the folders.  All of the folders had written of the side what was contained in them, but if you went through it page by page it was easy to find something completely unrelated to what was said to be in that folder.  In one folder I recovered a drawing on a scrap piece of paper, I was not sure but I assumed that this was a picture of what can be seen on the front cover of Obasan, there is something about uncovering little things like this that were very exciting and interesting!  As I was rifling through one of the folders that contained Kogawa’s second draft, I uncovered what was a title page with an different title to Obasan.  The title I found read “If I must Remember,” but was then scratched out and changed to Obasan.  I definitely thought that this was a cool thing to find, and by the end of the trip I was definitely encouraged to go back again.

Overall I had a great experience, exploring the fond’s of Joy Kogawa.  I found some interesting little treasures amoung some of the folders, and I definitely thought it was valuable after reading Obasan to see where Joy Kogawa’s inspiration came from to write the novel.  I will also add that through reading some of her rejection letters from publishers really made it real for me that before you see the finished product of a book, you don’t necessarily think about how much work goes into it of that it was not always what everyone wanted to see or read- judging by some of her rejection letters.  I will probably go back to the archives at some point next year to see what else I can find.

Until next time,

Magda

Hey readers!

After reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis I have gained a new perspective on the way in which life was like for a child growing up in the Islamic revolution and the Iran Iraq war.  I have actually gone back and read Persepolis for a second time to see if I would pick up on any key ideas that I did not the first time.  I found myself focusing a lot more on the images and what meaning they convey.  There were a couple of images that stood out to me as important, but I chose one in particular that I thought was a key idea to the book.  The image I chose is a good representation of the violence that was shown to be very much part of Iranian culture.

This is page 52 of Persepolis.

The specific image on this page that I want to explore is at the very bottom of the page.  It is the image of a cut up body with a black background.  The first thing that I recognized about this image is that the body is cut up so neatly and proportionately.  You may think that this does not seem like a very accurate representation of  the torture that people suffered.  Though it is a very accurate representation of what Marji imagined torture to be.  This photo is drawn through the naive eyes of Marji, and what her young mind imagined this torture would look like.  I think that the picture suggests that as the torture becomes worse and worse, Marji’s ability to describe it becomes less, and less.  As you can see the images above the bottom picture are what I would think to be more accurate description of what the torture was like.  The brutality of being scorched with a hot iron made me cringe, but when I looked at the cut up body I thought it looked a lot more tidy and clean.  Perhaps even though the image is being drawn from a child’s perspective the reader can still understand what she is trying to convey.  I felt that the black background added a lot of depth to the image.  It added a sort of thickness that you with a little bit of feeling for the horror and violence people endured.  Maybe the fact that the body is cut up do clean and proportionate has do do with Satrapi trying to show how normal violence and death in was becoming in Iran.

I chose to touch just on one particular image, but there are many more similar to this in Persepolis.  The way Satrapi uses the black backgrounds in some of her images may mean that those are the ones to stop on and think a little bit more about.  I love the way the images in her graphic narrative are so descriptive that some of them you could go on for ages reflecting and responding upon!  Satrapi also uses many more techniques for her illustrations that I have not touched upon.  I encourage you to ask questions and not just flip through the pages, but to think deeper about why Satrapi represents her images in such a way.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Magda

I have often wondered that if I was to write a story about my life in chronological order, if I would get distracted by a significant memory or an event and want to expand on it.  This is what happened to Marjane Satrapi, but for her that significant event happened during her whole childhood.  Marjane Satrapi is the author of many award winning books, but the one book in particular that I want to focus on is Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood.  The graphic narrative follows the life of young Satrapi who refers to herself as Marji and her family in Iran during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the Iran Iraq war.

 This is a photo of Marjane Satrapi in real life and also a drawing of herself in Persepolis.  It is interesting to see that the two pictures look a lot alike, and when reading the book you know that you are being given an accurate Representation of how Margi actually looked through the drawings.

After reading Persepolis I thought it would be valuable to find out more about why Marjane Satrapi chose to write Persepolis, and what she wanted her readers to get out of it.  The 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the Iran Iraq War brought a lot of bad stigma to Iran, but Satrapi wanted to let people that Iran was not a terrible place to live in, and she was proud to call Iran her country.  Satrapi argued for along time that all of the visual representations in the news, and newspapers did not represent her experience growing up in Iran at all.  She found it hard to tell her friends about living in Iran because all they new about Iran was all the bad stuff they had heard.  Satrapi was determined to get people to open up their minds and not just believe what they hear.  When I found myself at the end of the book I had a whole different outlook on Iran, Satrapi’s Character Marji had a privileged childhood with a loving family, she was a normal kid who loved pop culture, books and hanging out with friends.  It opened my eyes up about Iran not being such an evil place full of oppression.  I can now see why Satrapi feels very rewarded when people from all different countries read her Persepolis because they gain a new perspective.  In 2008 Pantheon Graphic Novels staff asked Majane Satrapi various questions about why she chose to write Persepolis, one of the questions she was asked was: “What did you want to say through writing Persepolis?”  I found her answer to be very powerful because it summed up why she wanted people to read her story, and what she wanted them to get out of it.  She said “If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less.  It’s not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface.  That is why I want people in other countries to read Persepolis, to see that I grew up just like other children.”

I have included the link to those interview questions asked by the Pantheon staff below.  This was a particularly good source because I was able to understand more on a personal level what drove Satrapi to write Persepolis.  Some of the questions asked also covered more about the novel itself, and why she chose to write a graphic narrative instead of a narrative.  I highly recommend that you check out the link if you need any clarity on what I have written about, or if you are interested in learning some more about Marjane Satrapi herself.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Magda.

http://engres.ied.edu.hk/lang_arts/onlineRead/graphicNovel/PersepolisLesson_RandomHouse.pdf

I often ask myself how can the memory of one individual who has experienced a certain event be so different from many other individuals who have experienced the same event?  To put that question into perspective for me, I read the article “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning” written by Farhat Shahzad.  The main gist of the article was that all of which we remember and learn is influenced.  Some examples of those influences include teachers, family and friends.  Shahzad focuses specifically on The War on Terror, which was the time following the attacks of 9/11. Through asking different students to write about how they remember this particular event, Shahzad gives us a unique opportunity to gain perspective and insight into how the memory of this event differs from person to person.

I find it hard to gain insight on such an event such as the War on Terror because I myself have not experienced that kind of emotional trauma.  An interesting example as proved in the article, was the way that a white person remembers the War on Terror versus the way a muslim person remembers the War on Terror.  My point here being that the different cultures that these people are affiliated with and the values that come along with them, affect how they remember the War on Terror.  The way that a lot of people think of muslims now is quite different than before the attacks of 9/11, and in a lot of ways it can be argued that Western media has fabricated that “all muslims are bad.”  This kind of negative image put out by the media has the power to associate negative traits with being muslim.  It is very valuable to look at this particular issue from someone who has experienced it first hand.  I feel that I myself have pre-existing thoughts based on my particular values, and this definetely impacts the way that I choose to interpret certain things.  A more recent example of this is the current Syrian refugee crisis happening as I write this.  The way in which we are receiving this information is mostly from the media.  The way the media tells us what is happening, is definitely different than asking a Syrian refugee how they see it.

The idea of exploring memory through means of literature, I feel, is very valuable because your pre-existing thoughts are challenged.  When reading a memoir and having the author describe their experiences to you, you are interested to listen to what they have to say because it is told through a more personal perspective.  I have provided a link to an article below that depicts how one particular woman was wrongfully accused of having terrorist affiliations due to the fact of how people saw muslims after the events that unfolded on September 11,2001.

http://chicagomonitor.com/2013/04/not-all-muslims-are-terrorists/