ASTU 100A Blog (Sandra)

Hello readers! In class we have been going over Peter Morey’s essay over in class recently. The essay brings up many fascinating points and key concepts that, when applied to the narrative The Reluctant Fundamentalist written by Mohsim Hamid, allows us to view the book and its characters in new ways.

One example is that of Erica, whom Morey analyzes extensively within his essay. He points out the symbolism of Erica’s character, being a representation for America. This, he argues, is especially true when Erica symbolizes America in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, where America/Erica’s reliance on the past creates a concerning, even dangerous, state of being for them both (140). America in its revival of World War II spirit and Erica in her inability to move on from her late boyfriend Chris, both of these conditions causing them both to slowly wither away from their former glory in, at least, Changez’s point of view.

However, I find Morey’s passing comment of Chris also symbolising something to be of more interest, and wish to further explore it. Morey has likened Chris to the Jesus Christ (140) in which (Am)Erica becomes increasingly fixated on and unable to let go. Morey describes how Erica’s fixation on Chris is like that of a religious practitioner to their faith, citing quotes from the book that have religious connotations like “devout” (140).

I am curious, though, as to why Hamid had made it so that Chris is dead due to lung cancer. If he truly did symbolise Christ as Morey suggests, then surely Chris would have died from something far more suited to such a figure? Perhaps with something that wasn’t lung cancer, as it holds the implications that those who have lung cancer were habitual smokers (and thus are often blamed for causing their illness themselves).
In the book, Erica said that Chris had never smoked a cigarette before he was diagnosed (28), yet Hamid chose to give him lung cancer. Such things can happen of course, but there is still the assumption that lung cancer is caused by smoking. Knowing the connotations that this form of cancer holds, why did Hamid choose to diagnose Chris with it?

Work Cited:

Morey, Peter. “‘The rules of the game have changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant

Fundamentalist and post-9/11 fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47.2 (2011):

135-146. Print.

Hello readers! Recently in class we’ve been discussing The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The book itself was fascinating to read. I found myself unable to decide who, between the nameless American and the protagonist (Changez), was the one who was more “dangerous.” Is it the suspicious American, whose hand continues to creep into his jacket in the way one reaches for a wallet or for a sidearm? Or is it Changez, whose peculiar language hints at a feeling of, perhaps, bitterness towards America?

In many instances within the text, we find words that gives us reason to suspect both of these characters to be hiding something potentially sinister. For example, when describing any actions the American does, Changez uses language that, while perfectly polite, points out the ways in which the American appears to be not just a tourist or one on a simple business trip. For now, I wish to focus only on the behaviour of the American.

For example, within the first paragraph, the American is described by Changes to appear to be on a “mission”, the word being italicized for emphasis within the text. Why would “mission” be emphasised? Was it done by the author to immediately point out the dubious nature of the American to the reader? But the whole narrative is the monologue of Changez, so surely “mission” was emphasised because Changez had emphasised the word when speaking to the American as well. If so, was Changez pointing out the suspicious nature of the American to the man himself?

Not only that, but the American had been noted to be sitting on the seat closest to the wall. Such a decision is a wise one for someone who cannot be sure of their safety and wishes to protect themselves. By placing his back close to the wall, it prevents people from being able to sneak up behind him. Of course, that small act of untrusting behaviour, as well as tactical thought, places even more suspicion upon the American. Why would a normal civilian think to do such things?

However, likely the most important and repeated action the American does is reaching his hand into his jacket. It has been noted in the book that the American could be retrieving his wallet. It has also been noted that such an area is exactly where people with hidden sidearms favour holstering it. It can also be noted that the American has a habit of reaching inside his jacket whenever he is likely to be feeling threatened, like when he was taken by surprise by their burly waiter, or when the lights had temporarily gone out in the bazaar. It is suspicious behaviour, quite simply, yet it has never been truly stated whether the item inside the jacket is a wallet or a gun.
Indeed the American is quite a suspect individual. But does this truly mean that the American is in Pakistan for something more sinister than a company business trip?

Hello readers!

Recently we have been discussing language poet Juliana Spahr’s book This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. Her poetry isn’t typically something that I would actively search for to read, mostly because I enjoy lyric poetry more.

As discussed in class, Spahr’s poetry within this particular book seems to be a mix of lyric poetry and language poetry. Lyric poetry is intimate, personal, and often confessional. It often feels like the reader is listening in on a secret or conversation that was not aimed at them. Language poetry is less about the individual and more about the language and how it can be used. Certain words can be used only for the sound they make order to bring to mind something else. The meaning of the words used is not as important as to how the words are used. It is communal and fairly abstract.

It was a little strange to learn about language poetry, and to see how language poetry diverged from the traditional style of lyric poetry. I found the style to make little sense, even as it was explained to me. However, learning about language poetry has helped me be able to differentiate language poetry from lyrical poetry now.

Of course, that brings questions as to how much of Spahr’s poems within this particular collection has roots in language poetry.

Reading through it again, with what I know now, I can not find many characteristics of language poetry within these poems. Her note also supports the fact that these poems are largely lyric based, having her feelings “made lyric” (13) through them. Despite this, they are still noticeably different from the other poems we have read for class such as Wisława Szymborska’s “Photograph from September 11”. The first poem in Spahr’s collection is where the difference in style is most visible.

In Spahr’s first poem, one she wrote in the aftermath of 9/11, utilizes spacing, punctuation, and run-on sentences. It’s been pointed out in class that these arrangements functioned to make the reader “breathe” with Spahr, especially when reading the poem aloud. Could this be part of language poetry? Along with the impressive amount of repetition, which works to almost detract upon the meaning of the words with its constant re-use, could this way of structuring her sentences be linked to language poetry?

Works Cited:

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Print.
Szymborska, Wisława. “Photograph from September 11.” Poetry Foundation. Web. Feb 10, 2016.

Hello again!

Recently in class, we have been discussing the work of Judith Butler. While reading, I found that Butler’s writing was incredibly theoretical, which made me feel a little lost at times before I figured out what she meant. However, Butler’s work does call attention to a certain topic that has been gaining more public knowledge and attention.

This topic is specifically the “frames” people use in order to interpret the world around them, and thus how they should respond to it. By “frames”, one could liken it to a framework that provides a structure or basic foundation. These frames help us to interpret and organise information into something we can “understand”. This understanding and interpretation, however, is something quite subjective to the person doing it, and is very relative. Frames helps us to interpret and understand, yes. It also causes us to understand things in the particular way we were taught to by our societies and cultures.

We use prior knowledge as a lens to examine information and events in order to make sense of it. With this knowledge, we form the basis of our opinions and beliefs which we then use as we interact with the world around us. But this knowledge we gain from our communities, media, or culture tends to be biased or leaves out things that does not fit into the narrative that is being built up. Because of this, we tend to have an incomplete understanding of events. We only see things from one perspective, dismissing others.

Butler explains through the context of war, using America’s war on terror as her framework. With the comparison between “grievable lives” and “ungrievable lives”, she illustrates the results of our interpretative framing. All lives are human lives, yet why do we mourn the death of one but remain unaffected by the death of another?
It is all a matter of how we interpret something, how we make sense of things with the frames we have. As in the words of my sociology professor, one person’s terrorist could be another’s freedom fighter. Like this, we can truly see how subjective our understanding is.

Hello again!

Recently, my ASTU class had visited the UBC Archives. We learned about the uses of an archive, and were given the opportunity to browse through the Joy Kogawa fonds, a collection of documents from the author of Obasan.

It was an interesting experience. We were able to see how Kogawa’s many drafts, where there were many corrections and whole parts added or cut out, and other various documents like letters. Seeing a writer’s progress is always a rather engaging experience, as one can trace a writer’s initial piece to the final product. Seeing the difference between the two can be surreal, since readers usually only ever see the final copy that is published. You find vast differences in certain scenes you had read in published copy from the first few drafts, scenes that seem unrecognisable in the first draft warping into the iconic ones that you have read.

It is not only iconic scenes that develop from first drafts, but even titles! One of the titles Kogawa had previously used for Obasan is “If I must Remember”. I found that interesting because Obasan is a book about remembrance. The protagonist, Naomi, remembers the events of the internment of Japanese-Canadians and her own personal history. There are even technologies of memory used inside the book. Aunt Emily’s letters contain descriptions of the events and emotions during the start of Japanese Internment, and are given meaning by the individuals reading them as they interpret it and fit it into their understanding of this particular point in Canadian history (Kogawa 125-157). When thinking of Obasan as a book for remembering, the title suits it very well.

An old version of the title page

However, Kogawa had decided to strike that title, and use “Obasan” instead, which means “aunt” in Japanese. I personally do not know why she chose to use that title instead, but the single-word title does hold more of an appeal than “If I Must Remember”.

It had been speculated in class before that the reason why that title was chosen is because of the role Naomi’s aunt/obasan had in Naomi’s life. Naomi’s obasan essentially became her caretaker while her mother was trapped in Japan. She cared for Naomi and Stephen, taking responsibility for them and protecting them when she could, and keeping them together.

On the other hand, Aunt Emily had also done quite a bit for Naomi. Aunt Emily worked very hard in finding a place for them to stay, contacting people for help (Kogawa 147), and making runs to different places like the bank to get things in order for the family and their move (Kogawa 157). Aunt Emily’s documents – technologies of memory – were also used as a prompt for Naomi to remember the events of the Japanese Internment, to remember and speak about it rather than stay silent and thus allow the memories to fade.

I believe that the title “If I must Remember” would because of Aunt Emily, as she encourages Naomi to remember even when she does not wish to. Because of this, I think it could be possible that “Obasan” is also referring to Aunt Emily as well as Naomi’s obasan, because they both play large roles in Naomi’s life and the remembrance of the Japanese Internment. “Obasan”, after all, is not just used to refer to a single aunt. It is a word used for all aunts.

Hello again!

Lately my class has been going over Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde. The book is a graphic narrative of Sacco’s time in Bosnia during the Bosnian war. It depicts his time in Gorazde as an American journalist allowed entry through the United Nation’s, and his interviews with the people living there. More specifically, the book provides readers insight into the lives of Bosnian Muslims during the war, and Sacco’s own experience within Gorazde.

The book has a particular drawing style that I wish to discuss with this blog. This drawing style was something I found peculiar, even unappealing when I first started reading. After having read Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and being used to the drawing style usually associated with comics and manga, I found Sacco’s style jarring. After having been accustomed to seeing Satrapi’’s almost childish drawing style (that reflected Persian miniatures), reading Safe Area Gorazde and seeing Sacco’s drawing style gave me a rather unfavourable first impression.

However, as I continued reading, I found that the style suited the narrative very well. It wasn’t drawn to look nice or pleasing to the eye, it was drawn to be as realistic as Sacco could make it to take on a realism as it told Sacco’s story. The realistic way Sacco draws everything – the people, the violence, the injuries, the wreckages of homes – is showing readers that these are real events that happened. It shows that what Sacco has drawn is a reality, that it is history.

The style uses simple shading techniques, and depicted people in a realistic but strangely cartoonish way. The way Joe Sacco draws himself may be called caricatural, as he exaggerates his features.

Joe Sacco (Real life and drawing of himself)

But the way he draws other people – Edin, Riki, and Sabina, to name a few – is very detailed and fairly realistic, as mentioned before. He makes the effort to draw their wrinkles, their frown lines, their teeth as they grin. All together, the amount of detail he puts into work is astonishing. It also allows readers to clearly see emotions in their expressions. I would say that he draws them like this to depict them as real people, and not just statistics or interviewees. They are the people within Gorazde, all with their own emotions and stories.
The way Sacco draws himself, on the other hand, is something I am still in debate about. Does Sacco draw himself caricature-like for ironic, self-mocking reasons? Or is it a way for readers to differentiate Sacco from the people of Gorazde? That he is not wholly part of, or entrenched, in the reality of Gorazde like Edin and the rest?

Hello all!

Recently in my class, we’ve been going over an essay of Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood (by Marjane Satrapi) written by the feminist Hillary Chute. The essay, The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, was insightful, and had a very deep analysis of Persepolis.

For example, the use of black backgrounds in Persepolis. Originally, I had thought that the blackness was a way for Satrapi to help set the mood of the panel, and add to what was already drawn in the panel. Black backgrounds to match or create heavy and dark moods, essentially. However, Chute argues that the black backgrounds show readers the process of remembering, and represents the ‘thickness’ or ‘depth’ of the memory (pg 98). Citing Kate Flint, a scholar of art history and english, Chute suggests that the emptiness of black backdrops invites the mind to project memories onto the space. Thus, the practice of remembering is carried out by the author, and maybe even the reader.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, pg 6

Reading Chute’s essay also revealed to me some things that I had not know about Persepolis before. I had not known that Satrapi’s drawing style reflects ancient Persian murals, miniatures, and friezes! That fact helped me with my speculations on Satrapi’s drawing style. I had first thought that Satrapi’s drawing style was meant to represent the perspective of a child (Marji), but knowing that style resembled old Persian ones shed some light on the purpose for the way Satrapi drew Persepolis. Persepolis is a story of a child growing up in Iran, Satrapi references this Iranian heritage multiple times. The book’s title itself, Persepolis, an ancient and ruined Persian city. The history of Iran, from ancient times to the 20th Century is spoken of multiple times in the book. And now, Satrapi’s drawing style itself!

It was incredibly interesting to find out, and makes me wonder what other references Satrapi had made. I realise that, due to my own lack of knowledge of Iranian culture, I would have missed such connections. It makes me wonder if one of the reasons Satrapi makes all these references is for the purpose of encouraging readers to find out more of Iranian culture.

I personally love discovering references, and find that it makes me enjoy and relate to the story more. I’ve also found that references make good incentive to search for information to explain references that I find, but do not have enough knowledge of to appreciate it. Could the references Satrapi makes actually be used to encourage readers to find things out? To seek more information about Iran and the culture that surrounds it?
I believe that it could.

Hello all!

As stated in the About page of this particular blog, posts here will be connected to the ASTU 100A course, and will speak about material and discussions from class.

To begin, my class has recently read through Farhat Shahzad’s essay, The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning. The essay focuses on the significance that “interpretative communities” (ex. families, teachers) play in the remembrance and learning of the War on Terror. These students are specifically Canadian university level students, and coming from a diverse range of backgrounds.

I found that the essay interesting, as it put into words certain facts that I was aware of, but had not previously considered on the same level as this essay did. For instance, the way important individuals in our lives influence our intake of knowledge on events our issues. Such figures are typically able to impact our interests in issues they take interest in. For example, the first-generation Chinese immigrant quoted in the essay (pg. 307) had stated that she was largely uninterested in the War on Terror but, mainly due to her father and grandfather’s interest in it, learned some information pertaining to the war.

It was similarly interesting to see the ways in which students with such different backgrounds saw the War on Terror. Some, who were not as closely affected by it than others, were understandably less interested and thus knew less information than others. Most of the time, much of this information seemed to come from authority figures who were interested in the war, and managed to influence these people to have some awareness of the issue. The first-generation immigrant from China is a good example of this, as she had little interest in the war but learned of it through her father and grandfather (pg 307).

On the other hand, those who are more affected by the war are more aware and attentive to any information that comes up. Of course, since these people have connections that the War on Terror affects them through, it is unsurprising to see such behaviour.

To see such different perspectives side by side though, was an interesting experience. Being able to read and see the reasonings and experiences of these people was intriguing, and allowed me to gain a better understanding of the driving forces behind the learnings of such topics.

In regards to this though, I come to wonder how much authority figures influence how we view these issues.

As Shahzad had also made note of, interpretative communities have a role in what we select as our sources of information (pg 307). Most of these interpretative communities are authority figures with their own views and opinions, and as such they influence what information we absorb. Thus, it is entirely within reason that we could end up with bias or outdated information, but not think to look for less bias or more recent information because of these influences.

And so, is there any measurable margin as to the amount we are influenced by such authority? It would depend on the person alone, I think.