My thoughts

Hello readers!

I can hardly believe that we have already reached the time for our last ASTU blog post, so I wanted to take a quick look back at our year. One of the most prominent themes of our class this year was trauma. We read a wide array of what one could call ‘trauma narratives’ that explored the social, personal, cultural, and political factors that traumatic events can have on individuals and communities. For instance, going back to first term, we started with “Persepolis” and explored Marjane’s disheartening upbringing during the Iranian revolution. Then, in “Safe Area Gorazde”, we saw the impacts of the Bosnian War through the eyes of an American journalist. In “Obasan”, we witnessed Naomi’s destructive past that caused poignant impacts to her adult perspective. We read about the deep rooted repercussions that a veteran’s PTSD had on his daily interactions in the short story “Redeployment”. And our past two texts, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, we witnessed the growth of two very different characters in post 9/11 America.

Although the theme of trauma becomes at times extremely heavy and heart wrenching, it is evident that through trauma comes great literature. Not only can trauma narratives provide solace for authors, but they can also give readers a deeper understanding of the human experiences behind the facts and dates of traumatic world events. The traumas experienced by the characters we read about differed immensely in terms of their time frame, scale, and location. However, I think it is safe to say that the characters held the same overarching sentiments of fear and vulnerability. In most cases, this fear was a result of the creation of some sort of social divide. Whether it was the attack on the World Trade Centre, or the construction of Japanese internment camps, the characters we read about were living through trauma created from society’s development of the ‘Other’. After reflecting back, I now see a sort of irony in these trauma narratives: they were based from the establishment of various social oppositions while simultaneously being unified through the raw human emotions felt by the characters. Reading the texts, it didn’t matter where in the world the character lived or what ethnicity they were because we could always relate to their human emotions. In fact, I think the human perspectives in our texts were even more powerful than the various traumas that they were describing.

The impacts of social divides is an idea that we have come back to time and time again throughout all of our courses in the Global Citizens stream. It is also one that is, unfortunately, very relevant to recent current events, such as the bombings in Brussels just a couple of days ago. Traumatic events and attacks such as these are perhaps not easily preventable; however, I believe that literary texts (as well as other forms of self-expression, such as art and poetry) that come out them are necessary in order to voice the emotions and experiences behind such difficult issues. Above all, I think trauma narratives succeed in connecting individuals to form the universal solidarity that today’s world is in desperate need of.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the great year!

Harnoor

Hello readers,

This week in class we have started to explore Mohsin Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, which tells the story of a Pakistani immigrant named Changez on his journey in America. One of the most striking aspects of this novel for me was the narrative structure. From the beginning, Changez entices readers by setting up a unique framework where he participates in a largely one-sided conversation with a mysterious American. Although at this point the reader has virtually no knowledge on the motives of Changez or the American, the nature of the conversation still manages to instill suspicion into the reader. This ambiguous fear sets the tone for the rest of the novel as we’re not exactly sure who Changez may identify as, or if he may be fabricating his whole story. This underlying fear that perpetuates for the entirety of the novel is why ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ has been classified as a ‘thriller’. However, Hamid’s perspective challenges this classification. He says,”many people have said it feels like a thriller. The reason for that is we are already afraid.”

For me, Hamid’s response captured some unsettling realities of American-Muslim relations after 9/11. Why are we afraid reading along with Changez’s narrative? Is it because we as readers have preconceived notions about Changez, who is a Pakistani immigrant who has vocalized his frustrations with the U.S.? Or is it because we are feeding off of the discomfort that the American seems to be having? I think the ambiguous nature between the Changez’s and the American’s transaction symbolizes the ambiguous suspicious that Islamophobia, or even terrorism, is based around. Hamid offers no concrete evidence that either character wishes to commit an act of violence, but based on  few snippets of the conversation that seem to imply a certain message, the tension between the two of them becomes palpable. Hamid’s decision to leave the reader at cliffhanger could symbolize the uncertainty of future Muslim-American relations, and also allows the reader to reflect on what they think happens next. One of the many possible explanations is that Changez has been plotting to kill the American the entire time. I don’t know whether this is the ‘right’ conclusion, but I think its wrong to label Changez as a terrorist. I think one of the things that Hamid’s novel demonstrates is that it is possible for Middle-Eastern or muslim people to develop frustration or contempt about America without it having anything to do with terrorism or religious radicalism. Unfortunately, this is a negative stereotype that exists in America’s culture, media and reputation as a country. This stereotype could have been one of the factors that drove Changez away from America, and could also represent the effects that racial profiling has on real life Pakistani-American immigrants. All in all, I think classifying ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ as a thriller lies completely in the feelings of the reader. But Hamid’s response urges us to question the reasons why we may feel unsettled while reading Changez’s story.

Thanks for reading and let me know whether you would classify TRF as a thriller!

Harnoor

This past week in ASTU, we have read and discussed Juliana Spahr’s book of poems, This Connection of everyone with lungs. Spahr’s writing style has aspects of conventional lyric poetry such as personal narration and the use of aesthetically pretty language, but the uniqueness of her poetry lies in its hypnotic and soothing quality. Even though the content of the later poems in the book touch on heartbreaking and tragic events, to me they still had the calmness that a lullaby would have. Her ability to incorporate these very real tragedies and juxtapose them with the romantic nature of a lyrics poem interested me because it almost feels unnatural. Yet, I think her style mimics our reality in terms of how we, as well as news broadcaster, often deal with world tragedies.

A passage from page 25 of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

Spahr’s use of “I” throughout her poems seems more like a seeing-all and knowing-all collective entity rather than a single individual. Due to this, to me her narration resembles a news anchor, or some sort of internet database that is spewing out the latest news topics in a slightly erratic, but nonetheless nonstop form, similar to a Facebook newsfeed. Typically, news headlines reduce tragic events to statistics and factual descriptions. But I think by personifying these headlines though repeating phrases such as “I speak”, “I wake up”, and “I hear”, it gives them a slightly more haunting and hard hitting perception than if the reader were simply scrolling through their newsfeed. Even the structure of Spahr’s poetry embodies news coverage in modern media. The scope and variety of the events that she covers, as well as how as she jumps quickly to new events, is similar to the nature of news contemporary media in that the reader spend a few minutes, or even seconds, skimming over them and then promptly moves on to the next story. This also relates to how Spahr mimics the nature of our current ‘trending’ media culture where celebrity gossip tends to receive equal, if not more, of the public’s attention than tragic instances like warfare in the Ivory Coast, or the rapid melting of Arctic glaciers. Overall, by adding a personalized voice to these headlines I think Spahr is challenging the idea that reading a headline on your iPhone about a bombing incident thousands of miles away should make you feel isolated or removed from these events. And it challenges the role that distance may play when sympathizing or reflecting on foreign tragedies, as a running theme in her book is that of connection, that we all breathe the same air, and that “our bed is a part of everyone else’s bed” (30). I think the value of our innate connection with others in this world is often lost through the robotic and cold nature of a much of our media, and Spahr challenges the isolation that we often feel because of our that. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, as engaging in the stories behind all foreign tragedies would would be exhausting and overwhelming. However, Spahr’s point of view can make us question the nature of the headlines that we come across daily, and cause is to look more closely at how we choose to engage with them.

Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear your thoughts on Spahr’s poetry!

Works Cited:

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

This week in ASTU we started to explore the first chapter of Judith Butler’s book, “Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?”. Butler’s writing is not the easiest to analyze; however, once her argument becomes more clear she points out very thought-provoking philosophical questions. One of her main questions surrounded how the everyday ‘framing’ of our lives influence how we perceive the value of others lives as well as our own. This ‘frame’ consists of one’s location, media, or anything that has the capacity to affects one’s perspective. She states that although all actions of violence can be morally questionable, some prove to be more impactful than others because “what we feel is in part conditioned by how we interpret the world around us” (Butler, 41). An example Butler uses is the actions of the U.S. following 9/11, and the ways in which sending troops to the Middle East was collectively justified by many Americans. Unfortunately, Butler’s question can be applied to many violent and destructive events happening around the world even today, such as the migrant crisis.

In my experience, the stories that catch the most empathy from the public are those that seem the most relatable. These would be the traumatic events that invoke people to say “that could have been me”, and provide feelings of vulnerability and fear. However, it is difficult to relate to people who aren’t often, or properly, represented in our daily ‘frames’. Being presented with insufficient or inaccurate information about a certain group makes it easier for people to detach themselves from that group, and in turn make them more vulnerable to wrongful accusations and blame. Further, when groups of people who are associated with certain lifestyles of war and violence as a result of their location in the world are killed, their lives gain much less of the public’s attention. And I believe for this reason, certain destroyed lives become more hard hitting than others. Possessing this frame of mind that casts certain individuals as a part of “we”, and others as “them”, is dangerous, because it creates divisions among people. Evidently, people are all different from each other, but these differences should not be used as justification for hate or blame like they often are. To counteract this frame of mind which has become almost ingrained into Western media and news outlets, Butler proposes that before speculating about a certain event or trauma, we should possess a “dislocation of perspective” (47). Butler’s proposition is spot on because once you become aware of the frames attached with your location, you are left with the factors that unite all human beings: precariousness and vulnerability. So, before criticizing refugees by associating them with stereotypes associated with their countries of origin, it is important to realize that the more appropriate response would be to see them as ordinary families in need of help.

Thanks for reading!

Works Cited:

Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?  London: Verso, 2009. Print.

Hello readers!

Last week in our ASTU class, we got the chance to take a look at Joy Kogawa’s fonds in UBC’s Rare Books Library. We got to look at folders and folders of archives including first drafts of Kogawa’s work, letter of recommendation, reader fan letters, scholarly articles, and many other documents concerning Kogawa’s novel, ‘Obasan’. It was my first time in an archival library and I was really intrigued by the amount of documents, as well as the type of content in the primary sources that Kogawa had donated to UBC. When you look at any novel, it is natural to see it as a singular and individualized entity of an author’s thoughts. However, this is far from the truth as every published text derives from some sort of inspiration or event, and undergoes numerous revision processes. The collection of archives at this library allowed me to look at ‘Obasan’ as not only a novel, but as a combination of many stories and memories surrounding Canada’s internment of the Japanese. Just like the Joy Kogawa’s fonds, Kogawa introduces various perspectives and primary sources into ‘Obasan’, that although may be fictional, still reflect the circumstances that exist apart from Naomi’s single narrative. One of my main takeaways from the field trip was the amount of similarity between the various types of files in the fonds and the written style of Obasan. Both the fonds and the novel contain fragments of various different overlapping perspectives that give the content its meaning and importance. For instance, in the fonds there were many fan letter addressed to Kogawa, showing the rippling impact that ‘Obasan’’s story had on its readers. One reader, named Michael S. Hiranuma, beautifully described his experience with reading ‘Obasan’ as “unearthing a rare gemstone at a point in my life where I needed to find a bit of treasure”.

Some of the documents in the archives were rejection letters and editor notes, which are an essential part to any published work. In one example, an editor argued that ‘Obasan’ should focus less on the historical aspects of Japanese internment, and further develop the plot around Naomi’s story. However, I would argue that Kogawa made an effective decision in choosing to include other sources such as letters and government documents in her novel. I think that Kogawa’s purposeful choice in not letting Naomi’s story to be the ultimate focus of ‘Obasan’ relates to the importance of theme we’ve been discussing in ASTU about the dangers of producing only one story. It is important to remember that collective and cultural memories are comprised of a collection of perspectives rather than one singular one. As emphasized with the visit to the Rare Books Library, there are often various layers to any form of storytelling, whether it’s writing a novel, or personally reflecting about a past event. Thus, Naomi’s presence, which is neither overpowering or vague, provides the perfect balance between the macro level of events and traumas surrounding Japanese Internment in Canada, and the more individualized and personal issues that derived from it.

Overall, looking at the tiny universe created by Kogawa in ‘Obasan’ and comparing it to the large scale of people it has impacted really emphasizes the collective nature of the novel. Visiting the Rare Books Library after reading ‘Obasan’ was a great experience because it provided me with a really tangible feeling of the power behind a single narrative, and I will definitely be coming back for future research and exploration.

Thank you for reading!

Works Cited:

Kogawa, Joy. Letter to Obasan. 23 Nov. 1993. Box 156 File 9. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada. 

Hello readers,

This past week, my ASTU class has read and discussed a scholarly article called The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’, by Hillary Chute, who is a literary scholar and expert in the genre of graphic narratives. Throughout the article, Chute examines a variety of aspects present in Satrapi’s Persepolis including its feminist standing, the style of its illustrations and how it affects the audience’s interpretation, and the process of “never forgetting” in Marji’s narration (Chute 97).

One of the many unique qualities of Persepolis in my eyes is Satrapi’s use of two narrators: Marji, the child protagonist, and Marjane, the older and more experienced narrator. As opposed to being one sole act of recall that we typically see in memoires, Persepolis shows the audience her “state of being of memory”, and her development of perspective as she grows up and reflects back on her previous self (Chute 97). A benefit of experiencing the narrative through a ten-year-old’s eyes is getting to see the simplistic and minimalistic visual interpretations of events that in reality are horrifically traumatic. A section of the article that was of particular interest to me examined the ease in which Marji, the child protagonist, visualizes and stylizes occurrences of horrific trauma so casually. By using black and white, and drawing with clean lines and literal translations, Marji takes violent events that people are not even used to reading about, let alone seeing, and overtly illustrates them with simplicity and innocence. For instance, when Marji learns that one of her prison heroes, Siamak, has been “cut to pieces” (Satrapi 52), the last frame on the page depicts her interpretation of the news which includes a hollow doll-like figure cut precisely into seven even pieces. Examples of these representations of trauma appear consistently all throughout the text and occasionally right in the middle of Marji’s daily personal routine, which emphasizes the eerie ‘normal’ quality of trauma in her everyday life. Surely, events such as torture, executions, bombings, and murder, are not remotely normal, yet the way in which they are presented in Persepolis suggest otherwise. I think Satrapi purposely used uncomplicated drawings to depict these appalling acts of violence to emphasize the normalcy of violence that people often tend to associate with Iran and the Middle East in general.

When considering my own exposure to Iran as a North American, non-middle-eastern teenager, I’m bombarded with images of war, poverty, and Islamic extremist groups like ISIS that have been depicted to me through news outlets and other forms of media. Unfortunately, these horrific events have acquired a certain normalcy, and they tend not to make much of an impact on people until their truths are fully realized through a deep emotional connection and understanding. For instance, everyone is aware of the shocking photo of a Syrian toddler who washed up on the shore of Bodrum. This photo spread rapidly on social media and caused an uproar in the general public to increase humanitarian efforts towards the migration crisis. Sadly, there are thousands of children who have reached this same tragic fate; however, this little boy made a larger global impact because of the photo’s horrific and difficult-to-ignore emotional content. Likewise, a humanities website called Human of New York photographed and interviewed several refugees, and the comments on each post are filled with people expressing how this direct interaction with real people behind the crisis have changed their frame of thought towards the issues. Above are examples of HONY’s photographs of refugees during his visit to Greece.

I think Satrapi’s portrayal of Marji’s perspective has a similar effect as it provides a shocking juxtaposition between the simple drawings and the violence they are producing, rejecting the face that it should be normal at all. Although no horrific and traumatic events, such as the ones that occur in Persepolis, can be adequately visualized, I think the minimalistic and innocent take on the images creates a more powerful effect than a realistic one ever could, as it forces readers to reach for the truth in their imagination. This overt visualization is one of the factors present in graphic novels that challenge the typical characteristics of written narratives.

Thanks for reading!

Harnoor

Works Cited:

Chute, Hillary. 2008. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly. Vol. 36(1/2) pp. 92-110

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003. Print.

Stanton, Brandon. “Humansofnewyork.” Humans of New York. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Dear readers,

This is currently in an exciting time in my ASTU 100 class, as we have cracked open our first text: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis is a graphic narrative depicting the childhood of a girl growing up in Iran during the time of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. I was thrilled to spot Persepolis on the syllabus at the beginning of the year as I was somewhat familiar with Satrapi’s work:

Growing up, if there was one thing that I was good at, it was drawing. My love for art, combined with my fondness of reading served as the perfect combination for my interest in comic books and graphic novels. Not only did I enjoy reading them, but I remember doing an entire unit in seventh grade on creating graphic novels and thinking to myself that it was right up my ally. So naturally, when my older sister had brought home Persepolis as an assigned class reading, I couldn’t help but dive into it. Reflecting back on my first impressions of the text, I remember my admiration for the crisp black and white illustrations that were so simple, yet conveyed so much substance and emotion, all while managing to highlight the text perfectly. Marji’s rebellious and spunky character, who paralleled my age at the time, also appealed to me as she added a layer of relatability and lightness to a text that otherwise depicted a world so drastically different from my own.

Although it is clear that the visual aspects of Satrapi’s work made a lasting impact on me, I was surprised to discover how little I remembered about the actual events and occurrences surrounding the story. In fact, opening Persepolis up again after so many years made me come to the realization of my how little I know in general regarding Iran’s dethroning of the Shah and  the rise of the Islamic Regime, which had an extensive impact on the lives of thousands of Iranians as well as the future of Iran’s international relations. The majority of my knowledge surrounding Iran’s history comes from my “interpretive community”, a term recently exposed to me through an article that my class has been analyzing in my ASTU class by Farhat Shahzad. According to Shahzad, who is a scholarly educator, an individual’s remembering and learning strategies not only derives from textual sources, but also from a “collectivity of significant ‘others’”, such as teachers, family, friends, and other technologies of memory (Shahzad). For me, the interpretive communities that have influenced my learning about Iran consist of friends and media. A close friend of mine who was born in Tehran, Iran, has offered me great insight on what it is to be an Iranian citizen. She actually reminds me a lot of Marji’s character, mostly due to her rebellious and outspoken nature. Personally interacting with her and her parents has exposed me to Iran’s rich culture, as well as the reasons behind her family’s motivation for leaving their homeland. My second influence comes from a reality TV show that I occasionally watch called “Shahs of Sunset”. Obviously, reality TV shows such as this one should not be considered as fully credible sources of information, however, the cast of the show, who is made up of wealthy Iranian Americans living in Beverly Hills, often share how being Iranian has directly affected their lives and personal experiences. If there is one ide that I’ve gained from these two sources, it is the realization of the amount of rapid political and social change that has taken place in Iran over the past several decades. Cast members of Shahs of Sunset, who are all relatively young, have all expressed the drastic changes that prompted them and their families to leave Iran to lead lives that allow them to be fully free in who they are and what they do. This reaction is similar to my friend who left Iran for Canada, a place where she can find more opportunity and flexibility with her decisions. Both of these “others” have led me to conclude that it is not traditional Iran that has built this strict and radical reputation, but rather, it is the result of several recent shifts in power.

As a result of my scarce exposure to Iran’s history, there is a clear deficit in my knowledge concerning the historic events that occur in Persepolis. Reading Persepolis this time around, hopefully I will be able to better understand Satrapi’s deliberate visual choices, as I will be better equipped to more carefully examine the essence of the story and discover the realities of Iran’s past.

Works Cited:

Image:

“More than Words.” : Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the Visual Construction of Identity, and “The Veil” Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

Article:

Shahzad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning.”Canadian Journal of Education 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 28 Sept. 2015.

Throughout my first two weeks of the Global Citizens CAP Program at UBC, I have been exposed to many questions surrounding topics such as authority, memory, individual identity, and sociological and political phenomena. These questions have challenged me to perceive the ordinary macro structures around me more critically and acknowledge the flaws and unanswered controversies present in society.

A few of the questions that were of particular interest to me were raised in my ASTU 100 course, and regarded the issue of who has the authority to share certain stories and whose viewpoints are the most authentic. This leads to the question of how important authenticity is outside of particular scholarly genres, since creative freedom and free speech, in my opinion, should be inherent rights. These questions make me speculate whether unbiased writing and storytelling is even a possibility since objectivity leaves only facts. Additionally, I believe subjectivity can help us become aware of people’s honest viewpoints and impressions over sensitive issues.

For this blog post, I wanted to apply the first question to contemporary issues, such as the debate over the usage of Aboriginal oral traditions as evidence in Canada’s courts of law. Many First Nations societies rely on the use of oral storytelling to maintain history and pass down knowledge from generation to generation (Hanson, 2009). Yet, this tradition is only recently becoming a credible source of evidence in the Canadian legal system since Western culture historically prefers the usage of physically recorded information. This leads to the question of what makes oral messages less reliable and more biased that an author’s written book or article? Part of the answer is because, as oral historian Alessandro Portelli stated, written text tends to “flatten emotional content” (as cited in Hanson, 2009). In other words, I think the reason why authors of published texts tend to have more authority is because readers are left to interpret the facts with more independence over the emotions that the text conveys, while verbal narratives provide an overt human layer to the spoken content. In additions, oral presentation allow varying emphasis and perspectives depending on when and whom the history is being told by, whereas a text serves as an unchanging and enduring resource.

However, for this case, I think Aboriginal oral narratives provide an equally reliable source of information as written documentation. First, I believe human storytelling provides a unique and tangible perspective to the historical content as it is easier to relate to, whereas words on a page are naturally more impersonal and have an administrative tone. Also, transcribing certain information may diminish from original meanings, especially if text is being translated from one’s native language to English, where some terms, punctuation, and grammatical approaches may not exist. Last, arguing that Canada has historically practiced the use of written records is not sufficient enough to downgrade Native traditions. Stating that  a certain method should be considered better simply because of the group of people that use it is an unjust critique, especially when oral storytelling has been a longstanding and effective tradition in Aboriginal culture.

All in all, I believe there is no singular defining attribute that grants someone total authority; however, there are a number of social, political, and historical factors that contribute to one’s reliability. Certainly, verbal tellings add an emotional layer that is otherwise not as apparent in texts, which can be seen as an advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation. More importantly, I believe that authority does not necessarily have to derive from Western precedents.

Works Cited:

Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Oral History Reader, 34.

Hanson, Erin (2009). Oral Traditions. First Nations Study Program. Retrieved from The University of British Colombia website: indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/culture/oral-traditions.html  

Image:

“Telling Stories.” Too Long in This Place. WordPress, 5 Dec. 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.