Hello Everyone,

These past weeks have been active and busy ones for the CAP Global Citizens students. In our ASTU class we read Phil Klay’s short story, “Redeployment,” Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and had a joint lecture with our professors from ASTU, Sociology, and Geography to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement.

Much was written about about our joint lecture. Ramon’s post was very interesting as it discussed what the joint lecture taught him about the contrasting differences between the disciplines through which we viewed this phenomenon. Ben wrote his post about our joint lecture on Black Lives Matter and how much he enjoyed hearing the perspective of Geography TA, Guille, describing him as a primary source to this event and reminding us of the importance and relevance of primary sources. In her captivating and thought provoking post about our joint lecture, Mariana discussed how she grew up with innocent perspectives of a child and how now, as a university student in Canada, her perspective has changed. She takes this idea of how she may have grown innocent and not brought down by a fear of discrimination and compares it to the reality that other kids may experience when they are discriminated or treated differently because of the color of their skin.

Another subject that our class also looked into this week was the book we read and analyzed. Fiona discussed the identity crisis faced by the main character of Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez and compares it to the anime Death Note. She talks about the suspicion that lingers in the characters telling the story and the reader and how, although Changez may be innocent, he is put into question because of his post-9/11 presence. Harnoor also wrote about this book its issues with suspicion and how suspicion plays such a key role in the novel. She discussed the question of whether it should be considered a thriller. She quoted the author and analyzed how we may consider it a thriller precisely because we have grown in a fear culture. I enjoyed A.J.’s post as he also wrote about this book’s structure and how its effective in allowing us to view the character of Changez change throughout the book. The blogs posts really captured and synthesized our class discussion about fear culture, Islamophobia, and how our views shape the way we interpret our readings of a book.

The media has had multiple effects on our culture and the way we lead our lives but these impacts range from negative in their creation and strengthening of a divisive fear culture to the empowering of people and groups of people through movements like Black Lives Matters.

The posts from everyone were very interesting!

Have a great day!

Andrea Barraza

Hello class,

I was looking over everyones recent comments and my attention was drawn to Jen’s response to Ben’s post. In her response, she posted an animated video about Comfort Women in Japan’s invasion of China. Before posting the video, she warned that they video, although graphically animated, had strong content and I very much agree with her. Although they may be drawing or depictions of the events, the symbols, colours, and the ways in which these images are portrayed makes it an extremely moving video. I was quite impacted as I watched this video and highly recommend it as it is very much worth watching. We have been reading Obasan, where we see a story told from Japanese-Canadians during World War II but this video shows victims of World War II but those causing the harm were the Japanese. This, I though, was very interesting and it shows how we imagine people based on the perspective that is given to us by technologies of memory, in this case the texts or videos, that we encounter. Right now, the image that comes to mind when I think about a Japanese during WWII is that of Naomi’s father and her Uncle. They are honourable and silent in their grievances but always keeping their loved ones as best as they can. I have come to see them as the innocent victims of racism and the brutality of war. In the video, Japanese soldiers are the ones who use and abuse the young girls and they are drawn with the features of evil characters and snaky, monsters. This is a huge contrast and it shows how the perspective from which you take in memories has an enormous influence in how you then remember that event. Thank you Jen for posting that video.

Andrea Barraza

The moment I opened Georgia’s blog post and saw Frida Kahlo’s portrait as one of the images presented in the blog post, “The Self Portrait and Why it Matter”, I knew that I had to read it and I am extremely glad I did. In her post, Georgia shows the importance of the self portrait to famous artists like Kahlo and Van Gogh and then connects this to the works of Sacco and Satrapi. She also talks about how Sacco portrays himself as an outsider through his drawing style. This reminded me of something we have been discussing with my group in ASTU and that is the importance or the symbolic role played by Joe’s glasses in the book. His glasses are always covering his eyes and we never see his eyes. This made us think that maybe its not just to make him seem different but also to show that what we are seeing is more or a reflection of reality, with his glasses playing the role of mirrors, but this reality stands against the perspective of the narrator, who is Joe. As Georgia stated, Joe portrays himself as not belonging in Goražde. He is, and he shows this to us on multiple occasions, an outsider. The point of this book is not for us to see his story but that of the people of Goražde and what he does in the book is serve as the connection between the readers and those who are telling the stories.

Andrea Barraza

I found Jen Paxton’s blog extremely interesting as it made me think about Canadian politics. Jen discusses the conservative’s desire to forbid woman from wearing their hija at that citizen’s oath ceremony. I believe that forcing a woman to take of her vail can be as problematic as forcing her to wear one because either way, it is one group of people, in the case of Canada it would be Steven Harper and the conservatives, imposing their values and preferences unto another group of people. Jen points to the the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how it allows religious freedom, something I find key in a country as inclusive as Canada. If the conservatives had won the battle against the woman’s freedom to wear something they wear due to religion, then Canada would be taking a step back in its progressive and liberal path, one that hold it very highly in the eyes of people all around the world. I found it very effective for Jen to quote actual muslim women who willingly wear the hijab as this is one perspective that is, not only from the first person, but also new to me. I agree with Jen’s quote from Satrapi where she states that forcing women to not wear a vail they want to wear, as is the case in France can be as bad. In France women who wish to wear their vail are not allowed to do so because the government argues that this demonstrated oppression against women. I ask myself, is this an act of feminism or is it simply an act of religious intolerance. Would the French government, or the Canadian conservatives for that matter, ask a catholic nun to remove her head dress? The conservatives, I am convinced, would never say that all woman are forbidden from wearing head dress during their citizenship oath as there is nothing wrong with it but instad have focused on lashing at the muslim tradition of head dress.

Hello ASTU classmates!

I would like to start out by saying how interesting and enjoyable it was to read all your blogs as they made me think about the topics discussed this week from various fresh perspectives. This past week we continued to discuss Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative, Persepolis and we read and looked deeply into Hillary Chute’s “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” There was an evident pattern in writing about the connection between these two readings.

Focusing on Persepolis, Ben did a great job as he described how, in Persepolis, the presence of visual images as a part of the narrative, “added a whole new dimension to the story” as Satrapi’s drawing portrayed imaged that could not be equally portrayed in words. He also argues that the graphic narrative should be more widely introduced in schools as this is a type of narrative that students might be more likely to enjoy as it is easier to comprehend. Chase went even deeper into discussion on the idea that Satrapi’s work being a comic book as he stated that even tough the comic is easier to understand and more appealing to a visual learner, it still lacks the respect it deserves amongst academics. He explains how the descriptions of Satrapi’s story held the attention of his peers until he explained to them that it was a graphic narrative and this led to them to disregard it as not holding sufficient authority.

When discussing both Persepolis and the way it is analyzed by Chute many had interesting points and connections. A.J. explained how Chute’s article led him lo look deeper into the images and their significance in Persepolis. I found myself emphatically nodding as I read his blog when he points to how he retraced the emotions caused by disturbing images that had not produced the same degree of emotion on the first encounter. A.J. also discussed Chute’s theories about Satrapi’s exclusive use of black and white in her visuals, a topic that Olivia analyzed both clearly and effectively. She agrees with Chute’s idea that Satrapi’s use of black and white serves not to show an emptiness of memory, but rather a deepness within said memories and, because colours are supposed to express emotion, the absence of this is what allows us to see how hard it is to share or convey the emotions she felt. She then adds that the black and white may be used to show the reality of the situation and its starkness with no grey areas, a point I found very interesting and that makes you think and dig deeper into the symbolism behind the author’s choice of color.

Harnoor also wrote about the meaning of Satrapi’s style. With both personal and larger, global examples, Harnoor illustrates how Satrapi’s images “provides a shocking juxtaposition between the simple drawings and the violence they are producing” and then takes it further and does a great job discussing a larger theme in Persepolis which is the way in which are now viewing violence as something normal. She contrasted Marji’s encounter with violence and her remembrance of it with the way that we now come in contact and deal with violence as a normal, everyday thing because of the way the media presents it.

I enjoyed reading all of your amazing blogs and hope you all have a great week!

Andrea Barraza