This year ASTU and CAP , we have covered large and complicated topics.

First part of the academic year we read Persepolis, Obasan, the movie Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley and all of these pieces have a common theme of history and memory. These works really makes us understand different perspectives of history and memory. What I learned the most, is to appreciate the fact that literature has different layers that we uncover slowly one by one. Reading books and understanding world history is not always easy. Literature does play huge role in history and memory. It has given a space for people to reflect and understand this complicated subject. It has become a huge debate worldwide in the way we tell a story or convey a memory. How do we represent history and memory? Does it benefits us or other people?

In the second half of the year we focused on darker literature. We read Gonzales, poems written in Guantánamo jail, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and movie American Sniper. All of these books mention about the war, the aftermath and all the different emotions that we can feel during war. After reading these works I can firmly confirm that war is very complicated and there are many stories and perspectives to tell. I think looking back on 911 and the aftermath teaches us maybe that we should do things differently in the future. However history does repeat itself often over and over again.

CAP this year covered a lot of different subjects. But also intertwined with several subjects. For example we all talked about the MOA exhibit in all of our classes. What we learned in first term in political science : the nation state has been repeated in sociology and in geography. What we have learned in geography also correlates with different sociological theories today. In geography we talked about the triangular trade. This is how people and goods are exploited and exported to a richer country.

CAP has been a great foundation program to help understand the world and a great introduction to what to expect and learn how to write in university.

I remember as a young Canadian reading Flanders Field as a poem. Most of the time it was known to be read during memorial day. John McCrae’s poem describes the war in a more peaceful way. He explains that these poppies represent death but at the same time it represents a life that has been lived. We can feel the pain that the soldiers endured. Sometimes explaining the war in a positive and happy way is hard, it’s ironic how simple he the emotions of the soldiers that have been suffering and it touches us more. The poem by Juan Felipe Herrera is a lot more visual in his stanza’s. He has lots of spaces and in between certain words. It gives us time to absorb the meaning of each word. He is more direct and also very calm as the poem Flanders field. He brings up the aspect of humanity, how we are actually very similar each one of us. I feel that he wants us to question is war really worth it? In the beginning, the spaces are far apart. But at the end, the words are closer as if death brought them together.

I like the fact that poetry in fewer words can mean a lot and that gives a lot of liberty to the poet and be very vague allowing us to imagine the meaning. Thus, this is a great way to mention and bring up sensitive subjects that could be censored if talked about openly. Poems do have a place in the conversation we’ve been having about culture and politics. The poem about the photograph of the falling man was surprisingly calm and soothing. This poem was talking about an event with people jumping out of windows and dying but the poet made us feel like an “in the moment” feeling where time has stopped and nothing can prepare us for what comes after. We also mentioned in class that if we did not have the title of the poem we probably wouldn’t have known that the poem was about 9/11. ( keeping it discreet) Poems also create a feeling of anxiety such as the one of Sparh. She builds her poem up with repetition and a constant reminder of the situation. I think that poems bring out people’s different emotions in a more dramatic way.

When I first heard that we had to visit the Museum of Anthropology to see the Amazonia exhibit, I was not sure what to expect. I had previously been to see the Indigenous collection without visiting the Amazonian part. I enjoyed learning different facts of South America including the threats on the Amazonian forest with the rise of private sectors. Also you learn fun facts such as you can make little toys out of latex or lean the use of different objects like bowls could have multiple meanings. There was not one object really stood out and appealed to me.  However, the most fascinating fact that I learned was that there were 891 targeted assassinations of indigenous people in Brazil in between the years 2003-2015. I thought it was intriguing because we just finished Safe Area Gonzade by Joe Sacco mentioning the Bosnian civil war where lots of people where killed including indigenous people. It is fascinating to see the similarities in these two different continents (Europe and South America) and watch history repeats itself. The exhibit also reminded me on of what we discussed in geography. We had a reading and understood that every culture has a different concept of property rights. There was a considerable difference between the concept of ownership and wealth for the British colonizers and the indigenous people. The British considered the land as a place to prosper and to find dig up the natural resources to exploit them. However, the indigenous people tend to be friendlier towards nature and considers wealth is what they produce and live with what they have. I think that the different objects that was shown at the exabit were indigenous. I’ve seen hammocks before, but I’ve never learned what material and how to make one. I think this exabit was interesting to visit and very informative. Its important for us to discover different cultures and remember indigenous people. I’m also curious to find out why this exabit was shown at the museum. I’m also curious if there is a connection between the Musqueam people and the indigenous people from Amazonia.

Last week, our ASTU professor brought us to the library to visit the Rare Books and Special Collection. It was interesting to see the archival material that can give us a deeper understanding of analyzing Obasan. Obasan is a novel of historical fiction about how Japanese-Canadians were treated in Canada during the Second world war. We follow protagonist Naomi’s journey in the present but also through flashbacks to her childhood. As a class, we discovered that Kogawa collected official documents throughout the years and had sent them to the University of British Columbia. It does add a personal touch to see everything that Kogawa decided to keep and it also adds a depth of reality to Obasan. It distraught me when I looked at the official documents by the Domain Department of Labour. The papers showed the unfortunate relocation of Japanese-Canadian families after being sent away from their homes. It baffled me that such forms exist in Canada monitoring the consumption of water, food and how much each person earned, although it was generous for the Anglican church to support Japanese Canadians families, most Canadians had a prejudice views against Japanese Canadians.

We saw many fascinating documents that gave context to understand this novel. For example, the hand-drawn family tree captivated me. It showed the first steps of creating this novel. It had crossed off dates as if Kogawa had trouble remembering the original dates. It amplified the authenticity of this book. We can see how is Joy Kogawa preserving literature through memory. In addition, we saw the first handwritten chapters of Obasan. It was slightly hard to read but displays the rawness of Kogawa’s ideas. We also noticed that Kogawa changed names for certain characters from the original hand-written version to the final product.

While reading a few archival materials, the letter from Pierre Trudeau amused me the most. He said that he would take Obasan on vacation to the beach. Ironically this would not be a novel for the beach, it would be a very depressing read. This book takes time to grasp all the information that’s given to us. I recommended to the librarian that we should send the current Prime Minister a copy of this book and hopefully not receive the same answer as his father.

This brought me to think about the relationship between First Nation and the Canadian government. I believe we can see a similar circumstance between the recognition of Japanese Canadians and the recognition of First Nations. It took many years for the government to admit their wrongdoing of the Japanese Canadians. Unfortunately, First Nations have a long and complicated history with the Canadian government. Till this day, recognition has not been reinforced. Most indigenous people believe that they have not received complete recognition from the Canadian government.

To conclude, we can see history repeats itself in many ways. Perhaps we should learn from our past mistakes and ask ourselves what we should do to recognize minority groups.

Dear readers,

The first week in our English class, we discussed the role of memory versus history. Which one is more reliable? Memory is generally expressed in the first person, informal, and authentic. In contrast is a social science history is in the third person, formal and based on “facts”. However, the fact presented as historical is not always correct.  I started thinking about the “civil war” in Algeria and how french books and analysists did not admit it was not an anti-colonial rebellion and an independent struggle. For a very long time, France considered the war as “national amnesia”.

Algeria was colonized by France for over 70 years (1890 – 1962). The war began on November 1^st, 1954 with attacks by the National Liberation Front (FLN) against the French administration. The French government did not publicly address the attacks. Instead of admitting the truth, the government chose to tell French citizens not worry and that the French security forces were taking care of it.  Even after the agreement of Evian in 1962, the French government still did not admit engaging in a civil war and continue to hide information from its citizens. In other words, the government chose to deny history. At that time, historians wanted to do more research on Algeria but access to sources were limited. For example, the movie “The Battle of Algiers” by Gallo Pontecorvo in 1966 was banned in France for 5 years. In France, most citizens forgot about the war and it was overlooked by French textbooks.  People could only count on memoirs, autobiographies, and photographs to remember what actually happened.

The challenge is that some memoirs are contradicted and have different interpretations of different historical events. For example, French citizens living in Alegria (know as the pied-noir) had an ideal vision of their colonial life in Algeria. In contrast, the descendants of Algerians immigrants from Algeria have different interpretations of events. In 2005, French historian Benjamin Stora started a petition on the “liberty of history” insisting that it is not up to the government to define history. Till this day, Algeria is still waiting for an official apology from the government of France admitting that Algeria struggle independence for which was a civil war.

A Memoir is a subjective interpretation of events that the author has experienced. Memoirs can be individual or collective. But we need to be careful interpreting memoirs because the author is setting up the narrative to make the readers think in a certain way. Memoirs can be used on a sensitive topic such as the Holocaust.

To conclude, we need to rely on different memoirs and interpretations of different sources to supplement our history, texts and national narrative. To understand history, it is very important to gather a variety of points of view to interpret historical events.  A deeper understanding can be gained by reading historical texts and memoirs of individuals who witnessed at the time.

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/algeria-anissa-daoudi2.aspx

https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/algerian-war-memories-divide-france-1.325105

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=iowa-historical-review

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/11/a-chronology-of-the-algerian-war-of-independence/305277/

https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/interview/2011/algeria-history-al-insani-2011-04-01.htm