Question:

Judith Butler writes that “[if] certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense”. Can you apply Butler’s thinking (in this representative quote, or in the chapter more broadly) to current events including–or beyond–the war on terror?

Hello everyone.

Today, during our ASTU class, Professor Luger brought up the surge in poems to commemorate the dead in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11 and provided us with two interesting poems. One, Photograph from September 11, by Polish Nobel Laurate Wislawa Szymborska, interested me the most, as it was referring to several photographs of people jumping out of windows from the World Trade Centres moments before their collapse, one of which was ‘The Falling Man’, which was subsequently censored by the press and by society until years later. In ASTU, we discussed scholar Judith Butler and how ‘[if] certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense’. Today, I would like to put Butler’s quote, and general ideas in the chapter in her book Frames of War into the context of ‘The Falling Man’, and explore the various aspects why this picture, as a ‘technology of memory’, as first raised by Communications Scholar Marita Sturken in Tangled Memories, a text that we have studied in ASTU, could be rejected by society and people alike, and be forgotten as lives that have been lost in that particular sense.

One of the reasons why ‘The Falling Man’ is controversial is that the photograph, the portrayal of a person committing suicide, is deemed too graphic as a memory. However, I believe this type of depiction, graphic or not, has every reason to be constituted as a technology of memory, as it delivers a certain portrayal and aspect of the event that is known to be 9/11. In my opinion, 9/11 is important not only in the sense in that it was a catastrophic incident that made Americans perceive their vulnerability in the face of the threats of terrorism at home, and perpetrated important concepts such as ‘homeland security’, and the ‘war against terror’. It was significant because of the impact that it brought to the world, due to the significant importance that the United States plays in the economy, security, and stability of the world, as shown in the role of both the World Trade Centre and New York, along with the quick spread of information through the media because of this, which results in the specific memories that we remember when thinking of 9/11. Sturken in Tangled Memories, notes how things like ‘camera images, whether photographs, films, or television footage’, are ‘perceived to embody memory’, and would ‘entangle with personal and cultural memory’, specifically noting how the media make people ‘perceive themselves to be participants in the nation’, which was ‘enacted’ through things such as live television, which was eventually covered in her cases such as that in the Persian Gulf War, where live television played an important role in the narration and memory of the events that transpired. Similarly, I strongly believe the same can apply to 9/11, as the increased focus on sensationalism by the media, allowed a significant flow of information, most often more or less real-time, by live televisions and photographs, into the personal and cultural memory of the public. The public, as an audience, and their memory, more or less plays a significant role in solidifying what they have witnessed through the media into their concepts of memory.

Yet, if we acknowledge that ‘The Falling Man’ is an undeniable instrument that constitutes a fragment of our memories of 9/11, why would it be rejected by society as a memory in itself?

I believe the reason why this is the case, is in that ‘The Falling Man’ simply does not fit in with the narrative that the United States and the people of the lost ones would like to find themselves having in relation to their memories of 9/11. To me, ‘The Falling Man’ continues to serve as a reminder of how fragile memories continue to be, Sturken mentioned how memories have been created ‘in tandem with forgetting’, and how this ‘forgetting of the past’ is often ‘highly organized and strategic’, in which Sturken explicitly mentions, is a way to forget events that are ‘too painful’ to be kept in ‘active memory’ whilst creating a certain historical narrative. The reason why ‘The Falling Man’ was actively forgotten not only through censorship within the press, but also by individual family members, I believe, is not only due to the incompatibility of the narrative that ‘The Falling Man’ brings in relation to the heroism as often presented in the narration of what transpired in 9/11, but also due to the unwillingness of individuals such as family members who may have lost people in 9/11 to believe in something which is to the contrary of the beliefs, attitudes and personalities brought by the memories of their lost ones. Thus, I believe that ‘The Falling Man’, in a way, presents a perfect example of Sturken’s concept of ‘strategic forgetting’, not only on the national and societal level, as Tangled Memories suggested, but also on the individual and personal levels.

Thus, as a result, ‘The Falling Man’ inadvertantly becomes a memory that has been selectively forgotten by the general public, and to a certain extent, I believe that a lot of memories and interpretations of memories of 9/11 have more often than not focused on the heroism portrayed by the fire department in New York, or the helplessness of victims trapped in the buildings when the World Trade Centres collapsed in 9/11. In a way, even in a memory as significant as the 9/11 attacks, certain lives were evidently placed over some other lives. Lives such as those in ‘The Falling Man’ are forgotten or ignored through censorship because such lives were in a way, viewed as ‘ the others’, because they didn’t fit in the narrative that they were as brave as the firefighters who gave their lives in 9/11, that they didn’t stick to certain religious beliefs by taking the initiative in taking their own lives. This, to an extent, certainly fits well into the aforementioned quote by Judith Butler in Frames of War. By rejecting ‘The Falling Man’ as a legitimate life lost, and a memory to be worth remembering, the lives lost would no longer be ‘conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames’, and thus are never ‘fully lived’ in the view of the American public and family members.

Similarly, the case also fits into the case of conscientious objectors in the United States and other countries in times of war. Despite their suffering under pressure from their respective governments, these lives are also under threat and forgotten in the general scope of memories of those respective conflicts, because such people fail to fit within the narrative and perceptions that the state would prefer when portraying conflicts such as World War I and the Vietnam War. These people are seen as ‘cowards’ rather than legitimate lives with legitimate personal beliefs, and are thus, forgotten in memory, and are also dehumanised in the process of memory. War is never just a physical conflict against people whom we perceive to be enemies, it is also a mental and moral conflict against people amongst ourselves, people amongst ourselves whom we may perceive to be enemies because of their differences.
Therefore, unless controversial photographs such as ‘The Falling Man’ are not selectively forgotten, censored by both society and people, and unless people, when going through memories such as ‘The Falling Man’ try to think of those lives to be as human as themselves, and that it is just as human to choose to take one’s life as it is to sacrifice one’s life in saving others, or to stick to one’s beliefs to the very end, we ultimately risk disqualifying certain lives from being ones that are worth remembering, and risk dehumanising them through the censorship and selective forgetting of memory.

Blog #6: What kind of knowledge(s) of the Bosnian Civil War did you bring to Safe Area: Gorazde and how has the book affected your understanding of this history?

Welcome back guys, hope you had a wonderful holiday and new year. This week, in ASTU, we were reading and discussing Safe Area Gorazde by American journalist Joe Sacco, which talks of the war in Bosnia from 1992-1995, and the details of the experiences of various survivors in the Safe Area like Edin and Rasim collected through Sacco’s stay in the safe area, along with the relevant historical details of what happened in the course of the Bosnian war.

While some of you may be shocked by some of the graphic detail presented in particular in Safe Area: Gorazde, in particular the descriptions of some of the atrocities that had happened in the war, in which Joe Sacco clearly portrays in much more detail when compared to the abstraction shown by Marjane Satrapi in Persepolis, to me it was more of an experience of the visualization and the putting of material and knowledge from conversations and sources that I have acquired into perspective. From the reading of Safe Area Gorazde, it was more of a rediscovery and the understanding of another point of view of something which I had personally researched on during my high school history project, when I read reports about the Srebrenica Massacre such as the Srebrenica, a ‘safe area’ written by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), and reports on the massacre by organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, along with things that I have found myself discussing with people I have encountered, namely the Bosnian War.

Through the reading of Safe Area Gorazde, not only was I able to increase my understanding of the conflict in Bosnia through the eyes of Joe Sacco, and through the accounts by the people he interviewed, but I was also able to relate to both my knowledge gained through various documents and interactions with other people, and as a result increase my understanding and further my perceptions in regards to the Bosnian War.

First of all, to a large extent, I find that at the end of the day, Srebrenica and Gorazde were not too different in character, which enabled me to further relate Safe Area Gorazde to sources such as the NIOD report, which has given a very comprehensive explanation of the situation, especially in the eyes of the Dutch Peacekeepers stationed in Srebrenica. For example, Joe Sacco’s presentation of some of the misconceptions and values imposed upon Bosnians by the west, along with the inaction of the peacekeepers in the eyes of the Bosnian Muslims was also something reflected in the Dutch training to Peacekeepers at the time of the Bosnian War, as mentioned in the NIOD report. At that time, misconceptions such as Bosnian Muslims being as devout as muslims of other middle eastern countries were rife in the Dutch training, and peacekeepers and Bosnians in the safe areas didn’t share good relationships, which often resulted in conflicts between the peacekeepers and locals.

Secondly, perhaps one of the most relevant experiences that I was able to find myself bringing to class in relation to the general theme of memory thus far, was the perceptions of Bosnian Muslims towards the Bosnian Serbs after the Bosnian War. In Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco provides to the characters in his book with the question ‘Can you Live with the Serbs again?’, and many of the responses ranged from outright distrust of the Serbs to simply blaming the main perpetrators behind the escalation of the Bosnian War. Similarly, this was somehow echoed during my experience back in the summer of 2016, when I was attending an international academic competition, and was able to meet some Bosnians from Sarajevo who were at around the same age as me, possibly younger, in multiple instances such as the cultural fair and flag bearing ceremony. With my researched knowledge about Srebrenica and the Bosnian War still fresh in mind, I was able meet and talk with Bosnians who were born after the war, and broached upon the topic of their view on the war and the Bosnian Serb. While it was not identified as intergenerational trauma and national memory as discussed in ASTU throughout the term, what I observed from their responses was certainly something similar to what Joe Sacco would have heard from the Bosnians in the writing of his book. To quote from one of the group, it went as follows, ‘I hope they learn their lesson, but until they learn their mistakes, we cannot forgive them.’ Looking back with the knowledge gained from ASTU in mind, and with one of the subjects tested in that particular academic competition being an imperfect world and the concepts of fragile and failing states, one can easily understand why subsequent generations of Bosnian Muslims would still hold a grudge against the Bosnian Serbs. Yet, perhaps ironically, the group were still willing to display Bosnian Serb outfits in the cultural fair, in which, I hope, is part of efforts to mend the tear made between the two parties in the Bosnian War, and to resolve the trauma between both sides. Aside from being able to observe the existence of intergenerational national trauma and memory existing in Bosnian Muslim society, from my interactions with them there I was also able, in addition, to learn of some of the ‘technologies of memory’ that the Bosnians have about the war to this day, such as the book of lilies given to those who have served in the war.

However, something which I was slightly disappointed about Joe Sacco’s work on Safe Area Gorazde, and believed that Joe Sacco was unable to portray in his work, was perhaps some of the memories and trauma suffered by another actor in the Bosnian War, namely the many peacekeepers and troops deployed in Bosnia during the war, troops of countries from Canada to the Netherlands to Ukraine. Whilst these people may not have suffered the horrendous losses of family and property as the Bosnian Muslims may have had, it is still important to note that many peacekeepers also suffered from significant trauma serving in the Bosnian War, and that they could, contrary to Sacco’s portrayal of Janvier in Safe Area Gorazde, not necessarily agree with the views of those of their commanders. From reading the NioD report, these peacekeepers not only suffered from the lack of mobility that Joe Sacco and the UN convoys enjoyed by the end of the war, finding themselves trapped in like the Bosnians in the safe area, but have also shared the trauma of losing fellow peacekeepers in action, such as the deaths of peacekeepers in Srebrenica. After the war, the NioD report also noted the trauma and stress that many of those peacekeepers in Srebrenica went through, and yet, sometimes the outside world, fails to report on the things that these peacekeepers were going through, just like how Joe Sacco noted how the situation in Gorazde was sidelined by the western world.

While I have yet to meet someone who was in the thick of the action, through the various instances where I got to meet veterans in remembrance services, the Bosnian War was clearly something traumatic. In one instance, shortly after the Remembrance Day Ceremony held in UBC, a major who served in Cyprus during the Bosnian War whom I had a conversation with, noted how although some of his friends were in Bosnia during the war, the Bosnian War itself was something not talked of and that they did not want to talk about it.

Another instance when I encountered a peacekeeper from the Bosnian War was during the Canadian Commemorative ceremony organized by the Consulate General of Canada in Hong Kong and Macau, who served in Yugoslavia during the time of the Bosnian War. Though he stated he wasn’t always on the front line as a peacekeeper, one thing he did note was the high amount of ambushes and snipers in the Yugoslav Civil War, a scenario, in which I believe would be not too far from the one described by Joe Sacco in Safe Area Gorazde. From the experience shared by him, it would not be hard to understand the difficulty of having access in and out of war zones by the peacekeepers themselves and the psychological and emotional barriers that they themselves have to face.

All in all, while I certainly appreciate the efforts of Joe Sacco in reflecting the experiences of those he kept in touch with in the Gorazde Safe Area, and utilizing Safe Area Gorazde both as a technology of memory and as a tool to allow the outside world to further understand the Bosnian War in safe areas like Gorazde as a whole, a subject which, as reflected in Safe Area Gorazde, which was not as important in the eyes of the press, and was often subject the the stereotypes imposed by western society.

Yet at the end of the day, having read Safe Area Gorazde, the book, coupled with my prior research and relevant experiences with people who were in Bosnia both during and after the war, one of my greatest reflections was that how it was truly remarkable, in my opinion, how a population of 3.5 million, of Bosnian Serbs and Muslims, from the words of one of my Bosnian friends, half the size of the population of Hong Kong, the place I grew up in, could develop so much hate based on the lines of ethnicity and religion in a short span of time, with certainly long lasting consequences such as memories and trauma acting on not only in the immediate victims, but also the others who were there, such as the peacekeepers. It sometimes makes me wonder how fragile and imperfect this world actually is.

Blog #5: Required Topic: Respond to your experience at the Kogawa Fonds with one of these questions in mind:

-What kind of artifacts does the Fonds contain? Reviews of Obasan? Reader letters to Kogawa? Historical documents that Kogawa used for research? Consider the kinds of genres that you find.

On tuesday, instead of our regular ASTU classes, we went on a trip to the Rare Books Collection beneath the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and were given the chance to explore the Kogawa Fonds, which included a wide variety of documents that Kogawa donated to UBC. Throughout the visit I was able to find a number of documents of different genres, with five particular types being reader letters, book reviews from newspapers, historical documents that Kogawa used for research, scribblings of ideas, along with documents relating to the publication process of Obasan, all which have been both pretty interesting and inspiring to me to some degree at the same time, and thanks to this experience organized by Dr. Luger, I was able to learn much from the visit to the Rare books section.

First, there were the reader letters that Kogawa received from students who were studying her work, especially from lower grade students who included drawings and interesting comments in regards to Obasan, such as the queries into the fate of some of the characters. This, I believe, is a very distinct genre from so many of the academic work we have been reviewing and reading in the process of getting our Literature Reviews done throughout this week. However, what surprised me the most, was the complexity of the literature that schoolchildren here in Canada were exposed to when compared to the literature that schoolchildren back in Hong Kong were exposed to in local secondary schools,  how very junior schoolchildren here are already exposed to the understanding of the histories behind Obasan in their curriculum, comapared to how local Grade 7 schoolchildren were still studying books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was simply surprising, and is something, which I believe, is something that is much more beneficial to the development of society in general, which sort of leads back to the importance of Obasan as what communciations scholar Marita Sturken coins as a ‘technology of memory’, where society would not only remember but also renew and improve.

Secondly, there were various book reviews from newspapers from around the world discussing Obasan and the history behind it, with a copy of the Ubyssey included in it, which sort of gave me a sense of deja vu. Most of these book reviews from newspapers and journals, coming from many different places such as the Washington Post from the United States and the Daily News coming from the United Kingdom, seemed to play a huge emphasis on what their audience might encounter in regards to Canadians, and what their audiences may have perceived Canadians to be like in their stereotypes, with the United States initially comparing Canadian morals to American actions in the Vietnam War, which itself was an event not far behind at the time of the publication of Obasan, while the Daily News seemed to point out the cases of Americans in Europe trying to identify as Canadian over American. Both of these book reviews also try to, as in their genre as part of newspapers, to inform readers about the background in regards to the books that they are reviewing, which explains why many of those book reviews seemed to have described more about the contents of the book rather than give commentary on Obasan itself, as the Japanese-Canadian internment in Canada was an event which was less heard of outside of the specific communities in Canada. From that, I understood more about the nature of book reviews from newspapers, as I haven’t really touched much upon book reviews in newspapers back then.

Thirdly, there were some of the material that Kogawa had based on in the making of Obasan, mainly the scribblings in Kogawa’s process of writing the book, such as the ideas, family trees and other information. To me,as someone who aspires to write books, and who is in the process of planning layouts and other ideas of such things, it allows me to have a glimpse at how Kogawa tackled the planning in the writing and brainstorming process in the making of Obasan. This has been facilitated mainly due to the importance stressed by the UBC library in keeping these documents in order such that people would learn what the donor might have been thinking in arranging these documents in such an order. To me, it allowed me to glimpse into the mind of another author and discovering how someone like Kogawa would try to make a sense of the mess of so many notes.

Fourthly was the historical documents that Kogawa had utilized and worked with as research in the making of Obasan. Even though this visit to the Rare Books Section was not my first time, and I have seen much more older and more genuine historical documents such as papal bulls and 13th Century manuscripts and bibles during my last visit to the Rare Books Section as part of my Medieval Studies Course. The historical documents, or rather, their copies, were much more interesting to me due to the fact that they were not only significant because of their history, but they were also significant in that Kogawa had used them to create a much more believable background in the making of Obasan. Aside from that, I suppose another difference is that the documents I was able to encounter were mostly also different as a genre compared to the manuscripts I have encountered. While the medieval documents I have encountered were mainly used in a more official sense, the historical documents that were in the Kogawa Fonds had more of an emotional touch to it– the telegrams showing the restriction of movement of people caused by war and suspicion, conveyed an emotion which was very much present in my reading of Obasan, which was something I could not encounter in my reading of historical documents and medieval manuscripts in my last visit to the rare books section.

Lastly were the documents pertaining to the publication of Obasan, from the rejection letters from various publishers to Kogawa in the process of getting Obasan published, to the letters and replies made between Kogawa and her publisher, which included exchanges in opinions and suggestions of improvements which perfected Obasan into the book we know today. Once again, this was not only something which allowed me to further understand the process of being a writer, and how that there is no silver bullet in the path of getting your work published, but rather, it is a process of encountering failures, improving, and moving on. This also reminded me not only of the process of getting work published as mentioned in lectures in my Creative Writing Course in UBC, but allows me to have a first hand look at things such as rejection letters in a context other than just the pure mentioning of rejection letters in a lecture, and allows me to understand that even though the genre of the rejection letter has more or less the same aim, they could still vary from letter to letter, depending on the amount of information provided in the rejection letter, and whether publishers would be willing to give comprehensive feedback in regards to manuscripts. In addition to that, it also allowed me to understand that even if a manuscript is accepted, the process of getting it in place and published is still a long and hard road.

All in all, many of the items in the Kogawa Fonds comprised of genres of many natures, and all have more or less inspired me, or contributed to my increased understanding of not only society but also emotion, and the process of publishing and many other things.

Blog #4: What kind of knowledge(s) of World War II did you bring to Obasan and how has the novel affected your understanding of this history?

I know, it’s just roughly a week after Remembrance day, but still, “We will remember them”, “lest we forget”.

This week, right after Remembrance Day, and Remembrance Sunday, our ASTU class began discussing about Obasan by Joy Kagawa, and one of the things that was inevitably discussed, in conjunction with content delivered by Professor Greer in Sociology on racial discrimination, was the fact that Japanese Canadians were discriminated against in World War II, and the resulting internment either saw them in overcrowded internment camps, or sent to the interior where they all led hard lives, with many of them ultimately losing their possessions to the Canadian government which then sold them to White Canadians. Obasan discusses the issue from the different attitudes held by Naomi’s different aunts in regards to the traumatic event, and also plays a major role in bringing forth the reconciliation movements made by the Canadian government towards the Japanese Canadians affected.

To begin with, by ‘knowledge’, I do not believe that bringing out facts, the details of battles,or things learned from history classes, important as they may be, are that relevant to the discussions presented in the blog, as historical facts are different from memory but I would discuss the knowledge, as in the knowledges of the memories possessed by various people looking back at World War II as the basis for the knowledge that I bring into reading Obasan.

Quoting from Obasan, “That is one telling. It’s not how it was“, with World War II being a worldwide conflict, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from Asia, to Africa, and to Europe, there are many stories and narratives from different people, differed not only by geographical differences, but also from racial differences. No two narratives are the same, but people are more or less affected by the backgrounds that they are raised in. Coupled with how

communications scholar Marita Sturken argues that ‘all memories are created in tandem with forgetting’, and how ‘the writing of a historical narrative necessarily involves the elimination of certain elements, we see that different peoples have different perspectives of World War II.

Having lived in Hong Kong as a Canadian citizen, one of the things I was aware of was the two major narratives that surrounded the history of Hong Kong in the course of World War II. One was the resistence presented by the Chinese, especially communist resistance fighters in Hong Kong, though their role was limited in the grand scheme of things, and the other was the sacrifices given by the defenders of Hong Kong in the Battle of Hong Kong, especially the British, local Hong Kong people, and most importantly, the Canadians, like the Winnipeg Grenadiers, though the latter narrative seems to be diminishing with the local government’s emphasis on the former, and currently the latter, from my knowledge, is mostly remembered in the form of the dwindling traditions of Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph, and the ceremonies from organizations like the Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong in places like the war cemetary in Hong Kong. While I was acutely aware of the diminishing of one narrative as presented by Sturken, I was also aware that what I have been presented has mostly been from the perspective of the victorious countries, with the Canada being one of the victorious countries, along with the Commonwealth, in which Hong Kong was once a part of.

To me, it was only relatively later, probably during my learning of, and the reading of books by various Japanese Americans that I began to be aware of the internment of Japanese people in North America, in both in the US and in Canada, but I was never aware of the scope of the damages brought to the Japanese Canadians until my Sociology lesson, and further understood in Obasan, when these memories are brought forth in paper, and presented by Kagawa.

However, perhaps one of the most overarching thing I bring to Obasan, from my knowledge of World War II, and my personal experiences, is that, people seem to forget all about

by reading Obasan, I continue to understand the importance of protecting all these various narratives, as both Joy Kagawa and Aunt Emily in Obasan use these various channels to deliever their memories in their narrative. Another thing that I have learned from Obasan, was how the present affects the past, as gleaned from the most recent ASTU lesson, which sort of helps me understand why some people back in Hong Kong were buying poppies merely to ‘increase their Britishness’, as I understand how contemporary ideas do influence and even take over the original meanings of some memories.

How has reading Running in the Family shifted your sense of identity?

Throughout the past few lessons in my CAP courses, be it sociology, ASTU, or political science, identity has been a theme that has more or less been touched upon. In political science, ideologies such as nationalism has been touched upon, where people identify themselves as members of a nation through something they perceive as common values or interests, from values such as liberty and freedom to things such as hockey and maple syrup. In sociology, theories such as those proposed by Focault’s have been touched upon, on how the concepts of surveillance and self policing has killed the man beneath us, and how we are never really free to do anything, which could easily expanded upon and be seen that there is not really much we can truly do out of our volition, never mind possessing a unique identity for us to speak of. And here, for the past few courses in ASTU, with my professor and group in the course, I have begun to explore Michael Ondaatje’s ‘Running in the Family’, and how he provides, through his historiographic metafiction, a fictional memoir showing portrayal of his memory, and how his so called ‘memoir’ despite not being true, portrays, in a unique way, how he has identified himself when trying to reconcile and explore his past. As a global citizen in the CAP program, this is especially important since whilst we try to understand how the world works and so on, it is also equally important to determine by ourselves, the line where our various identities are separated, and ‘Running in the Family’ has enabled me to rethink of how I try to identify myself, both in society, and also in daily life, such as in family affairs and so on.

First of all, from outside the classroom, I feel that throughout the world there seems to have been an increasing emphasis on the so called ‘national identity’ that countries continue to promote internationally, from blatant propaganda from the likes of countries such as China, those from the UK before and after Brexit, and those of France in the wake of Islamic fundamentalist attacks. And indeed, this is something which is also not left unnoticed in the study of ‘Running in the Family’, with Matthew Bolton in ‘Michael Ondaatje’s “Well-Told Lie”’, reveals how various critics such as Arun Mukherjee who criticize Ondaatje for negating the dominant themes of ‘displacement’ and accusing him of ‘race blindness’ due to his background of immigrating to the UK and Canada. However, looking at ‘Running in the Family’, I see that Ondaatje doesn’t blatantly reject his past, as his mentionning of his Tamil history and his revealing of how he feels about his ties to Sri Lanka have indicated so. What is interesting, however, is how Ondaatje criticizes the concept of other people enforcing what they think on other peoples and cultures, such as in ‘The Karapothas’, where the quoting of various westerners in regards to Sri Lanka have shown their ignorance under the umbrella of so called ‘orientalism’. Perhaps, as I would believe, criticisms of Ondaatje would fall into the same categories. Indeed, perhaps, by forcusing so much on national identity and marginalizing the identities of others, the world outside is simply repeating everything and doing the same all over again. From this, Running in the Family has allowed me to further enforce my viewpoint that sometimes, society has been increasingly been making us believe in the marginalization of others, whilst accusing others for not believing in their same values, and sometimes, it is important for us to defend our own identities whilst not completely forgetting who we are.

Secondly, Bolton also points out how other people have criticized Ondaatje for not being accurate, from accusations even coming from within his own family, espeially on cases such as the nature of Lalla’s death and the nature of Ondaatje’s father. However, what was discussed in the ASTU classes, I understand that from Bolton’s analysis of Running in the Family, we can see that Ondaatje focuses on emotional truths over historical truths, and that even though these truths may not necessarily be the literal truth, they not only create a literally effect, but have also helped in shaping the identity of the ‘I’ in ‘Running in the Family’. Similarly, I can easily think of how people, especially children, could easily romanticize about the unknown, and that how Ondaatje presents his so called emotional truth on the things he didn’t know, such as his father, and how Lalla was, by portraying them in the way he wants them to be portrayed in, was not so different from how children roleplay and conjure up their fantasies when looking at the outside world and the unknowns out there. From that, Running in the Family enforces my feelings on how sometimes our fanatsies should be preserved, and how that these are things that are ‘unique’, and that society and family shouldn’t look down upon such thorughts.

Thirdly, we see how Ondaatje, in ‘Blind Faith’ states how we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed, thus prompting him to reconcile himself with his father through his book at the end of the book. Similarly, this also makes me consider the unique identity that I am in, as the next generation, in relation to the family. As young people nowadays, we often forget about the past, and yet, it is something which should not be forgotten, because once gone, there will be no memory left for us, not even to dream of.

As a result, Running in the Family has changed my view on how I view myself, be it my identity in a national perspective, as a unique perspective or that of a family perspective. Indeed, sometimes we all need to rethink and further understand our identities.

Consider the current issues occuring globally, Does Persepolis change your perspective your perspective on any aaspect of these debates

For the past two weeks, in the Global Citizens stream of the CAP program I am registered in at UBC, I have explored ‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi in detail with my professor and my group in my ASTU course, a graphic narrative written by Marjane Satrapi describing her experiences growing up throughout the fall of the 2500 year old Persian empire and the increasingly changing society of revolutionary Iran, till her departure from Iran to study in Austria. In this course, one of the most interesting questions raised by far was ‘What is the difference between “memory” and “history”. Memory is something which is more personal, and tries to give details that a person is aware of through senses and feelings while history gives only a general briefing of a situation, being objective and specific in times, places and dates without really putting much of personal feelings in question. As a global citizen in the CAP program, examining the writing of national memory in this ASTU course, determining the difference was by far one of the most important areas in which to explore works such as those by Satrapi, and from this experience understanding this through persepolis has not only increased my understanding of this difference, but has also enabled me to change my view of many standing current issues, of which I have personally previously tried to understand and discuss about throughout my experiences in MUNing in high school, where I find parallels between the feelings and memories conveyed in Persepolis and what is actually happening in the world right now..

Indeed, by comparing the circumstances mentioned in Persepolis to something current such as the Syrian Civil War and Refugee Crisis right now, having watched the fall of Syria into chaos and further oppression, and war, and the subsequent refugee crisis, one would realize that the history that the news reports and documentaries have given us, are simply not enough, and that we need more memories to convey the horrors and feelings of victims to the world. We need more memories because people begin to fail to show empathy to the refugees and the suffering from situations such as the Syrian Civil War, standing by and do nothing to help the suffering and the refugees, sometimes even resorting to hostile propaganda and violence against refugees through stereotypes without actually trying to understand them. Thus, the world needs more Satrapis and Persepolises.

First of all, throughout the first few classes of ASTU we have been taught the importance of considering genre when it comes to reading and writing in general, genre in that one should consider not only the form of the  but also the situation, the audience, and the purpose in which the work is being addressed to, such that establishes it as a genre. The introduction of Persepolis mentioned the very purpose of why it was written, as Satrapi believed’ that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.’ and that she doesn’t ‘want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten’, establishing its genre as a graphic narrative attempting to  address Western stereotypes and misconceptions about the so called axis of evil in the Middle East, especially in regards to Iran, where she comes from. Many of these misconceptions and stereotypes which remain similar to those of how some in the western world view refugees from Syria with suspicion and skepticism. Given how Persepolis has come to become a work of literature that has been explored, and even studied by prominent academics, Persepolis has changed my view in that such narratives can indeed be useful in trying to reverse stereotypes made against certain peoples, in that they can show the human nature side of those ‘who are not us’.

Secondly, we can see that Persepolis has inadverntly, through Marji’s growing up in revolutionary Iran and up to the Iraq-Iranian War, in a situation that is unique to her, where she grows up in a rather affluent family who has a maid and cardillac, that many issues have been addressed and mentioned throughout Persepolis, such as how the issue of nationalism continues to drive people against each other, as Marji blamed historical hatred of how ‘the Arabs never liked the Persians’, and how they attacked the Iranians ‘1400 years ago’ and ‘forced their religion on’ them, in page 81 shows the increasing nationalism shown in nations such as China; how her cousin Shahab, serving in the army, as mentioned in page 101, stated how the poor kids become attracted to joining the army as child soldiers with the promise of paradise through the issuing of cheap plastic gold keys, who had little better fate than being sent to explode in the minefields, whilst richer people such as her were wearing necklaces without being aware to the violence in the Iran-Iraq War, shows the issue of child soldiers that are also prevalent in places like Africa and by organizations like ISIS, where the latter also indoctrinates children to its propaganda in a format not completely different from the methods mentioned in page 101, how people continue to suffer from the trauma from war, such as when Marji noticed the death of Neda during a bombing in the Iran-Iraq War in page 142, as Marjane narrated how ‘No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger’, continues to reflect how people continue to suffer in the shadow of war. Even though I have increased my understanding of these world issues through my participations of MUNs, or the watching of documentaries, none of the above would have allowed me to understand the emotions or feelings conveyed through these events as well as what I have read from Persepolis. When discussing these global issues in MUNs, I often resort to the historical, the official accounts of government entities, or the version of events mentioned by the news, which often lack the emotions acutely felt by people affected by these issues, or fail to mention the normality of life of people, as news would often focus on the unique and the special. Though documentaries and reports such as the report ‘Srebrenica’ written by the NIOD, or the Human Rights Watch report of the Srebrenica Massacre often involve the interviewing of witnesses, or people who were at the scene, these often pertain to the only the actual event, and questions for the most time only serve a specific objective purpose, and fail to truly relay the changing emotions and feelings of the people involved, such as the complexity of how Marji sees heroes throughout Persepolis, such as the martyred soldiers in page 102, or the political prisoners in pages 47 and 51, or how the revolution and the war and the personal loss of her Uncle Anoosh sort of signalled in the loss of Marji’s childhood innocent and leading to her growing up in ‘The Trip’ These serve to influence me, and allow me to recognize the importance of memories aside form history from understanding how historical events make an impact on people, in which most conventional media have overlooked.

All in all, Persepolis has indeed changed my worldview of many current affairs, and changed how I viewed memories and their importance in allowing people to effectively understand history, to have empathy and to make effective changes to it. Indeed, the world needs more Satrapis and Persepolises.

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