Hello readers!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written so let me catch you up on what we’ve been focusing on in my ASTU class. Last week, we read the short story “Redeployment” by Richard Klay, which is a story about a war veteran returning home and the difficulties he faces with adjusting to the constant changes in environment. We then moved into a novel this week called “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. This novel tells the story of a young Pakistani man named Changez who falls in love with an American women and his abandonment form the United States. Although there were a few other topics discussed in this week’s blogs, I’m going to focus on those that talked about Klay and Hamid’s stories.

Let’s start with Martin’s blog. He focuses on the aspects of the short story that show how hard it is for a soldier to return home from war. Marin uses the example of when Sgt. Price returns home to his wife and says, “I moved in and kissed her. I figured that was what I was supposed to do” (7). I really like the example used here because it shows that something so ordinary and routine like kissing your spouse is extremely difficult when coming from an environment filled with violence and war. This brings me to Therese’s blog, which brings up the idea that going home might be just as hard as going to war. Although many believe that war veterans who come home must feel relieved and safe, Therese brings up a good point when she says “but being in the army doesn’t actually leave them”. Moving onto Joseph’s blog, he focuses mainly on the meaning of the dogs in Klay’s story. When Sgt. Price kills his own dog instead of taking him to the vet to be put down, it shows that he is taking responsibility for his dog’s death. This connects back to how difficult it is to return home, because it seems as though it is impossible to escape from what is routine when at war.

I’m now going to move on and look at some of the blogs that discussed Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. Starting with Melissa’s blog, she discusses the novel as a romance. She talks about Erika representing America because they are both “stuck in their original form” and “not willing to change”. This connects to the idea that Erika is unable to fall in love with Changez because she is unable to live in the present and can’t move on from her deceased boyfriend. This novel can be seen as portraying many different genres, not only romance. Moving onto Baris’ blog, he brings up the idea that what we take from the novel depends on what lens we read the book from. I think he Baris brings up a really good point here; the reason why he doesn’t see the book as being anti-American is because he can relate to how Changez is feeling. I might interpret the book differently than others because of different backgrounds, which I find really interesting.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone’s blogs this week and good luck with the rest of your semester!

-Kate

Hey everyone! Last week, my ASTU class ventured over to the UBC archives to explore Joy Kogawa’s fond, so this week everyone blogged about their fieldtrip experiences. It was really interesting to see what people got out of this experience, especially because a lot of the documents people wrote about I didn’t get a chance to see myself and I thoroughly enjoyed reading many of your blogs!

While looking through the blogs, I noticed that many people brought up how interesting it was to see many of Kogawa’s drafts. Sandra, for example, stated “seeing a writer’s progress is always a rather engaging experience, as one can trace a writer’s initial piece to the final product”. I thought this was very well put. When I was reading Obasan, I was not thinking about Kogawa’s first drafts, as it’s not often that we get the opportunity to see the author’s entire writing process. Ryan was also intrigued by Kogawa’s drafts. He talked about having a feeling of satisfaction and authenticity while having pages of the author’s handwriting in front of him. Ryan also brings up the fact that the Internet has the tendency of decreasing the value of different pieces of art, and the case is the same for Obasan as millions of people are reading the same published version. Isaiah also brought up the negative aspect of the Internet saying, “in the age where everything is accessible by media we often forget the beauty and complexities behind a piece of writing. I was really glad that Ryan and Isaiah brought this up in their blogs because although it may sound silly, we’re very lucky to have access to Kogawa’s original documents in today’s world, which is increasingly being controlled by the Internet.

Moving on, I really liked how Magda talked about “hidden treasures” in her blog. As the librarian told us, all of the folders had labels on the side of them, describing what kind of documents were inside, but sometimes things completely unrelated were found. While flipping through the folders, I remember finding an unlabelled envelope that had a picture of a man, but there was no indication of who it was. It was really interesting to see items like that, and it left me wanting to know how he was part of Joy Kogawa’s process of writing Obasan!

Overall, I found this experience extremely interesting and showed me how long and difficult the process is to write a book. It was awesome having the chance to read everyone’s blogs; it’s been a great first semester!

See everyone soon,

-Kate