Dearest Readers,

I hope you have had a wonderful long weekend and enjoyed the extra day off! As a student who has no family in BC, I spent the day studying for upcoming midterms and had dinner with wonderful friends!

Similarly to the previous week, my ASTU class has continued the conversation about Judith Butler, but we have also now added Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, which is a collection of two poems.

I want to talk about the first poem in Juliana’s collection, titled poem that was written after September 11^th, 2001. When I first read it, I felt as though as was unable to catch my breath and almost gasped for air. The poem gradually builds by starting with

“as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands in and out” (5)

In her writing there are no commas or breaks where you feel it is appropriate to breathe, so this is where you may experience the breathless feeling. It continues to build until she gets to this point,

“as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere and the space of the stratosphere and the space of the mesosphere in and out

In this everything turning and small being breathed in and out by everyone with lungs during all the moments.

Then all of it entering in and out.

The entering in and out of the space of the mesosphere in the entering in and out of the space of the stratosphere in the entering in and out of the space of the troposphere in the entering in and out of the space of the oceans in the entering in and out of the space of the continents and islands in the entering in and out of the space of the nations in the entering in and out of the space of the regions in the entering in and out of the space of the cities in the entering in and out of the space of the neighborhoods nearby in the entering in and out of the space of the building in the entering in and out of the space of the room in the entering in and out of the space around the hands in the entering in and out of the space between the hands.

How connected we are with everyone.”(8-9)

This poem drastically altered how I understand everyone to be connected. In geography we discussed how everyone is connected through using the example of products like the iPhone, where its components can come from 60 plus countries, but Spahr shows us it is so much more than that. Possibly the least thought about yet singularly most important component of living, is air, and I had never realized just how much it connected every living thing on this planet. Spahr opened my eyes to this idea that I had never considered before and it got me thinking. I was thinking how much we rely on the air to be clean and breathable so that we can live and be healthy and yet at the same time how much in one day we pollute and damage that exact air.

With all this thinking about air I could not help myself but think about global warning. Humans drive cars everywhere, garbage is overrunning our planet, destroying the air. There are many people on this planet who do not feel that global warming is a big deal, but maybe that’s because they were like me and haven’t connected all the dots just yet. When we talk about global warming, it is largely focused on the idea of how we are polluting the air, which is killing the physical structure of the earth, which has resulted in the change of temperature patterns which has led to the death of many creatures, along with many other things. But why is it that it’s never stated that the pollution we create is killing us? If people thought of polluting the air as killing themselves, or their mother and father, or their children, would they be more concerned? If you personalize the damage of air, would people change their patterns and possibly save this planet that we call home, along with all the living organisms that live on it?

As Juliana Spahr put it,

“How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs.” (10)

Works Cited

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Print.

Hello Again!

On Monday my geography teaching assistant began our discussion by asking everyone to state the colour they were feeling most like that day.   I was pleasantly surprised to hear that many of my fellow classmates felt they resembled bright or warm colours. I felt a bright yellow as it was quite warm and very sunny, which for Vancouver is a rare sight.

I hope you are also feeling similar to bright and warm colours this week!

If you are wondering when I’m getting to the point, it’s now. So this week I will be talking about a chapter of Judith Butler’s book “Frames of War”. The chapter we read is titled Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect, which discusses the ways in which we consider who we are and exactly how we define ourselves and what it represents. She stresses the ideas and ways in which we as humans are precarious and vulnerable to one another. Near the end of the chapter Butler writes about some of the poems from prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, and some of the situations and moral regards surrounding it.

As I began to read the first sentence, I immediately thought that I was not going to like this chapter because just from that first sentence I knew it was going to make my brain hurt… and was I ever right. But as I continued reading it began to grow on me and eventually made my mind explode.  Her writing forces the reader to rethink many of their decisions, and why exactly we decided to make those decisions.  On the third page of the chapter, Butler discusses the idea of responsibility; how exactly we define it and to whom we are responsible for. She then goes a step further and asks the questions:

“Could it be that when I assume responsibility what becomes clear is that who “I” am is bound up with others in necessary ways? Am I even thinkable without the world of others? In effect, could it be that through the process of assuming responsibility the “I” shows itself to be, at least partially, a “we”? But who is included in the “we” that I seem to be, or to be part of? And for which “we” am I finally responsible?”

This was something I had never even bothered to consider before reading this part of her book. I had always thought of “I” as me, and “we” as whoever happened to be with me at the current time. Butler forced me to reconsider that, and to me, proved that there is so much more to the simple “I” and “we” then it may appear. As she continues she goes into looking specifically the “we” in times of war.

“Who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable… Those we kill are not quite human, and not quite alive, which means that we do not feel the same horror and outrage over the loss of their lives as we do over the loss of those lives that bear… similarity to our own”.

Butler encourages her readers to rethink how exactly we define who we are and why we define them the way we do. This sentence opens my eyes to the unfortunate world we all live in, we consider some lives ungrievable simply because they are less important to us than others. It makes me wonder what the world would look like if everyone’s lives were considered equally important.

The final part of Butler’s chapter that I cannot come to terms with, has to do with the poems that the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay had written. Their words were written on Styrofoam cups as they were not allowed to have pen and paper at first. In this passage, Butler questions the connection between poems and vulnerability and survivability, and how exactly they provide “evidence”.

“The words are carved in cups, written on paper, recorded onto a surface, in an effort to leave a mark, a trace, of a living being – a sign formed by a body, a sign that carries the life of the body. And even when what happens to the body isn’t survivable, the words survive to say as much”.

This idea of a person having to “leave a mark” in order for their life to be consider real, is completely bewildering to me. Why is it that every life is not valued the same? I understand that when people commit crimes, it is the general conclusion that they should not be treated or valued the same way, but who decided that it should come to the extent that these people feel they have to write something down in order for their life to even be considered a life? No matter what the crime, I feel it is wrong to deny a person the right that they are a living, breathing body, which is part of what I feel consists as a life.

Why is it that these prisoner’s words must survive because their bodies could not?

Butler, Judith. “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect.” Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009. 33-62. Print.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I had a much needed break which involved travelling back to Ontario, where I spent all my time with friends and family.

I am going to start the New Year off with talking about this amazing novel that I read for my ASTU class. The novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is about a boy named Oskar who suffers from the death of his father in 9/11. Oskar finds a key that he assumes to have belonged to his late father. Oskar travels all five boroughs of New York trying to uncover the lock that this key would open. To him this key represents a final way to connect with his father.  This is a novel that I cannot get off my mind.  I am reminded of the main character Oskar at least once a day, he seems to just pop into my mind whenever I find myself day dreaming.

While reading this novel I often find myself forgetting that Oskar is only nine years old. He manages to travel the city of New York almost seamlessly (he has a better sense of direction than me… and I’m almost twenty).

In class on Tuesday we talked about the memorial of 9/11 and how it was actually created to sit in the ground.

http://blog.archpaper.com/2011/08/911-memorial-plaza-how-it-works/

After seeing this picture I could not help but remember how at the beginning of the novel Oskar talks about how there one day will be no room left on this earth to bury the dead.   He says:

“So, what about skyscrapers for dead people that are built down? They could be underneath the skyscrapers for living people that are built up. You could bury people 100 floors down, and a whole dead world could be underneath the living one.” Pg3

This in a sense is the 9/11 memorial as they have designed it so that you feel you are looking down into the ground. I couldn’t help but imagine Oskar’s view that in the middle of the memorial where the tower was that there is an elevator that takes you down to world of dead underneath the living. It resembles his idea even more knowing that there were in fact skyscrapers there before and now it is considered ‘Ground Zero’.

It seems so realistic to me… maybe I’m just able to live in Oskar’s world for just a moment.

While reading this novel and discussing the events around 9/11 and how is classified as a ‘terrorist attack’, I cannot help but consider the events in Paris, France at the current moment. The attacks in Paris have had a similar reaction from its citizens as the events of 9/11. Once people come to terms with what has happened, they have come together as a country to stand together and support the police, first responders, and Special Forces as they have continually protected them as citizens. The citizens have not let the attacks or invasions change their love for their country and the people that belong to it.

More Information on the People of Paris Coming Together.

Hello readers!

I must first off apologize for not writing over the last few weeks.  Last week I had the opportunity to write as the “class blogger”.  I had to read all my fellow classmates blog posts and then summarize their posts and elaborate in my own post.  I realize that I did not post that on this page, so here is the link to my ASTU Class Page.  Which I must say, is worth a read!

I am going to take a slightly different approach this week, and focus on the really interesting experience of visiting the Archives and Rare Book Collection at the UBC library.  We went with the purpose of looking over Joy Kagawa’s fonds.  Joy is the author of the novel Obasan, which was the most recent read in class.  The novel is a story follows Naomi and her family as well as other families through the struggles and challenges faced as well as how men and women were treated during Japanese internment camps is Canada during World War II.  The novel inspires its readers to consider all sides of the story and to ask questions as to why these actions were seen plausible to the Canadian Government.

Today we spent our class time looking at all of Joy Kagawa’s records, with everything for love letters to fan mail, and the first hand written draft to the letters to and from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.  Having spent only an hour or so looking over the archives that were brought out for us, I did not get a lot of time to look over even a quarter of what was in the box in front of me.  The box I looked through had multiple drafts of the novel Obasan, as well as editorial notes and critiques.  The class found letters from students, teachers, and friends all phrasing her work and thanking her for writing a terrific story.  It was interesting to see the editor’s notes written on the drafts.  It was eye opening in the sense that whenever I think of a book I always think of the finished copy, never the drafts, edits, and thousands of corrections that go into making the finished copy.  It made the novel and the story seem real as I was able to hold all the drafts in my hand.

The most interesting artifact that I came across was a title page that had a variety of different phrases that I assumed to be the titles that Joy had considered for Obasan.  After having read the novel, there were four titles on the list that stood out to me, as they related to major parts of the novel that we had discussed in class.  The first one was “A Canadian Story”, which had been crossed out.  There was a discussion we had in class when we talked about how throughout the novel the idea of who was classified as Canadian and even though Naomi and her family considered themselves Canadian since they were born here, they were still discriminated against.  I take it since Joy had crossed out the option, she didn’t find it fitting.  The second title that stood out to me was “If I must remember”.  We have discussed if we feel it is important to remember specific events and the idea that some people choose to remember while others choose to forget.  Throughout the novel it is depicted that Aunt Emily is the one who chooses to remember and continually encourages the others to remember.  Kagawa depicts herself as one who does not necessarily feel a great need to remember and it is often contemplated throughout the novel.  This title is fitting to how I grasped that Kagawa felt about the history.  I don’t think I would necessarily want to remember something this horrible either.

The third title was “Everyone Someday Dies”.  This statement is said Obasan (her aunt), when her husband dies.  She is struggling deal with her lose and repeats this phrase to Naomi many times.  This statement is blunt and makes no excuses; it just gets straight to the point.  Whenever I hear a statement along this line, I automatically relate it to the idea of living you life to the fullest… because it’s true in the fact that everyone does die someday.  The final title that stood out to me above all the others was “The Silence Never Dies”.  Through reading her novel you can imagine how to someone who has suffered everything she and her family had that you would in a sense be silenced, because you would be lost for words… and that feeling of being lost for words is exactly the silence she is talking about, that silence and the shivers that run down your spin never die whenever you talk about these hardships.

Kagawa’s book Obasan served as an eye opener, and I would definitely recommend it!  The time spent in the fonds was really interesting, and I will definitely be going back as often as possible!

Here is the CBC archives link to the apology from Mulroney.

Till Next Time!

Hello again!

I don’t know if you’re like me, but if you are, you can’t wait for Canadian Thanksgiving!  I can already smell the turkey and stuffing! Yum!

On a less positive note, for the past couple weeks in my ASTU class we have been talking about the Graphic Narrative Persepolis.  This week we have focused on The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a scholarly essay written by Hilary Chute.  In the essay, Chute talks about how Marjane uses a graphic narrative to convey her story.  She discusses how the images are in black and white and the significance behind it.  A particular portion of this essay that has sparked a large amount of interest in me is the idea that violence is seen as ordinary.  Chute talks about how Satrapi uses black and white images along with plain titles to convey trauma as something ordinary.

This is something that I feel is very relevant to the perspectives of much of the world today.  There is conflict throughout most of the world and I personally know that when I heard about it, I wasn’t surprised.  When I step back and think about it, it’s saddening to think that this killing and war is all too normal.  The last century has brought too much violence upon the world and it has changed the way people perceive it.

The ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) conflict occurring right now in the Middle East is frightening but as I sit in my living room writing this, I am not overly surprised at what is happening.  There has been much conflict in this area of the world for the past decade and it is nothing new.  The violence that occurs in the Middle East has become almost expected.  This violence that occurs is horrible but I know speaking for myself, I find it extremely ordinary, even though it should not be.  This kind of violence is seen so often that we become accustomed to it.

ISIS soldiers are attempting to take over Iraq and so far have proved effective in doing just that.  They take no mercy on the people who do not support them and usually execute them on the spot.  In a recent UN report it was stated that “the number of children manning ISIS checkpoints is increasing” (Smith).  This seems so far fetch to me that it’s hard to believe that it actually happens.  If you would like more information, this video gives an accurate explanation of what is going on in regards to ISIS.

Looking back at Persepolis, I can begin to truly understand why Satrapi used black and white to relate to how violence is ordinary.  Creating these images without colour was the best way to do that because it allows us to understand that even though violence is shown as ordinary, it should not been seen this way.  Chute suggests that the use of “plain titles, most of which commence with the definite article “the” and are followed by a commonplace noun, denotes the ordinariness Satrapi is intent on underlining, even when the events depicted appear extraordinary” (Chute 105).

This article has encouraged me to reflect on how I view the violence in my world and I am sad to say that I agree with the idea that violence has become this ordinary image in our world.  It makes me wonder that if we could change this view of violence, could we also put an end to the fighting, killing and war?

It makes me wonder…

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36.1/2 (2008): 92-110. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Web. 5 Sept. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27649737>.

Smith, Samuel. “UN Report on ISIS: 24,000 Killed, Injured by Islamic State; Children Used as Soldiers, Women Sold as Sex Slaves.” CP World. 9 Oct. 2014. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.

For the next week or so our topic in my ASTU class is Persepolis.  Never heard of it?  I hadn’t either.  Persepolis is “Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution” (as stated on the inside cover).  As I looked at this graphic memoir before I began reading it, 2 things were going through my head. One, being that I’ve never read a graphic memoir before and two, that I know nothing about the Islamic Revolution.

Much to my surprise, I was immediately taken in by Persepolis.  Not only was I learning small bits and pieces about the revolution but I was also intrigued by the detail in the drawings.  Before I even realized, I was three quarters of the way through this memoir.  I found the graphic memoir a really interesting genre that I have never had the pleasure of reading until now.  The relationship between the dialog and the illustrations captured my complete attention and kept it right through till the end, which doesn’t happen often.

When I had finished the memoir I could not help but to just stare at the last piece of information Satrapi leaves us with.  She has drawn this image of herself turning around to look at her parents one last time before she leaves for Australia, and she sees her dad carrying her mother out of the airport.  I could not help but feel a connection to the way she felt.  Even though the circumstances were extremely different I understood the pain of saying goodbye to your parents in an airport.  I had experienced this only a couple of weeks ago when I said good bye to my parents to get on a plane to come to UBC.

Now I know that some may say that by reading her memoir I have only learned her side of what happened during the revolution. In class we talked about memory and a couple questions that surrounded this topic were “who owns history and memories?” and “who has the right to tell it?”  I want to jump to a paper I was reading for my history class, which was Oscar Moore’s personal account of living with aids.  A specific line in this paper caught my eye, it read “…in 1976 (well 1977 really, but it’s my history, I’ll lie if I want to)”(Moore,38).  When I read this I was immediately drawn to the thought that because this was Moore’s account of what happened in his life, he had the right to tell it in the way he wanted it portrayed.  This idea has left me wondering what memories of Satrapi’s story she specifically remembers and what parts may have be altered over her lifetime, as many memories do.

A suggestion was brought up in class that her story may have been a very different story from the one that could be told from someone who was from a lower social class.  If this had been the case, how different would the story have been?  All the information that is depicted in her memoir has left me with many questions that I hope to find answers.

Till Next Time!

Farhat Shahzad’s research paper “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” opened my eyes to the idea that even if people have been taught something the same manner, they may interpret it completely different.  I had never really considered that where you grew up, what culture you grew up around, all those little things, had such an impact on the perspective that you would take.  In her paper, Shahzad states that “a human agent gives meanings to facts in the light of how these communities represent them, the words they use, the stories they tell, the images they produce, the emotions they associate with them, and they way they classify and conceptualize them” (pg.306).  Only after having read this did it occur to me that the reason I have the same, for example, political views, as my parents do it is because I grew up with their influence.  It was in the TV shows we watched and the world issues that we talked about, that their opinion slowly became mine.  This is not because it was forced upon me but simply that this was the voice I had listened to all my life, the voice that guided me, the voice that taught me and therefore I had never seen a reason to look elsewhere.  That is until now.  Shahzad’s paper has encouraged me to reconsider many of the opinions I previously thought to have been my own.   I now understand that it has not just been my parents but also my friends, teachers, and the country in which I grew up in, among many other “interpretative communities” that have shaped my perspective of different topics.  I experienced this first hand when I was talking to my new roommate, who happened to be from the United States.  The topic of history had somehow come up and immediately she disagrees with the Canadian version of history.  Since she had grown up in America, the communities that had shaped her remembering and learning were very different from ours.  Her understanding of history, the way that she remembers it, would have been the understanding in more than one of her communities.  Shahzad writes that “students learn not only in a school system, but also within a highly diverse network of communities” (pg.310).  This conversation I had with my roommate, only further proved Shahzad’s idea of how interpretative communities frame the way we remember and learn.

Welcome to my ASTU blog! A little bit of info about me! I’m a 19 year old female Arts student hoping to major in Speech Sciences.  I am from a small town in north of Toronto, Ontario.  I’ve lived on a horse farm for 95%  of my life, and have shown  horses competitively for the last 12 years.

If you’re wondering what my ASTU blog is, I will tell you! ASTU is the short form used for Arts Studies.  My class has been given the assignment to create a blog as part of our course!  This blog will cover topics related to my CAP (Coordinated Arts Program) courses, which includes Arts Studies along with Political Science and Sociology.  These courses are based on a global citizen’s perspective.

I can’t wait to get started!