Hi there fellow bloggers and classmates!

I cannot believe that this is going to be my very last blog post for this school year. “Why are we blogging? this is a very weird assignment especially when you are in an English lit class in this prestigious university”, those were the exact words that was in my mind when Dr. Luger told the class that blogging is going to be one of our assignments for the year. But it turned out that this is more than just a normal blogging, this is where you can share your ideas for the whole class to read and another way to share your thoughts when you are too afraid to share it during class time. This by far is my favorite assignment from ASTU.

Talking about ASTU, at first when I signed up for the CAP program, I already had some ideas about the classes I’m taking except for ASTU, I had no idea what art studies class is going to be like, I did not know what makes art studies and the usual English class different. After a month or two passed by, I already got the idea that this class is totally different than the English class I had in high school, take, for example, my English teacher used to say that we can’t use “I” in our essay, whereas in ASTU, Dr. Luger encouraged us to use the discursive “I” to make our paper more scholarly. After a year taking ASTU, I can say that I have really improved my writing skill, I remember during jump start I went to this essay writing seminar because I had no clue how to write essays in university and what do they expect from me.

In ASTU, I also learned some new interesting concepts such as forgetting, cultural memory, technology of memory and so on. My favorite concept is “forgetting”, if you ask me in the beginning of the year the definition of “forgetting” I would probably simply just answer the the act of not remembering, but now, I’ll say that forgetting is more than just not to remember but we can also can equate the term “forgetting” with “delete” since “forgetting” means, selecting what to remember or delete and what not in order to move on from the past.

We also got the chance to read some amazing novels, poems, graphic narratives, etc. My favorite literary text was Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. My biggest fear is losing my love ones and I would do anything to be able to redo it if something bad happens to them, and that is why I can relate to the book especially the character Oskar Schell.

I think that is basically a recap of my experience in ASTU class and I’m going to end this very last blog post here. If you have any comments or questions, don’t hesitate to comment down below.

Goodbye,

Inneke S

Hey there fellow bloggers! I have a story to tell you guys, so… a few weeks ago, I was in the AMS Nest attending an event that the Indonesian Student Association at UBC held, the event was an eating competition. We made so much noise until there were some complaints from people who also had an event in the AMS Nest. The event was Black Lives Matter, they told us to keep our voice down because they said their event is a sad event. We all had no idea what Black Lives Matter was so we didn’t bother to keep our voice down.

But this week, the CAP program had another amazing joint lecture which we talked about Black Lives Matter. So Basically Black Lives Matter is an organization working for the existence of black life and their intention is to build the Black liberation movement, they emphasis that this is not just a moment or like what Dr. Luger said, not just a hash tag, but a movement.

One of the TAs shared a story about a black guy named John Crawford III which I found very interesting and shocking. So basically, he went to Walmart and stopped by the toy aisle and played with a toy gun while talking on his phone, then someone called 911 and he was shot dead. I was shaking my head the whole time and wondering would it be different if he was white? would people still call the police or just simply ignore him?

Another interesting thing that someone brought up during the lecture was it should be #AllLivesMatter instead of only #BlackLivesMatter since everyone is equal and not only we need to solve issues regarding black people but regarding everyone in the society. Because as a global citizens, not only we should have tolerance to one another, we also should treat everyone equally since we are all the same and have the same responsibilities.

– Inneke Soeyanto

Hello readers, I’m back again with another blog post! This week in ASTU we talked about poems, poems, poems and poems (we literally discussed about poems, not that I was trying to write a language poetry), okay moving on, we discussed about two types of poetry which were language poetry and lyric poetry. We also managed to finish reading the book written by Juliana Spahr titled This Connection of Everyone with Lungs which is filled by her collection of poems.

I was drawn into the idea of lyric poetry which usually expresses personal feelings, thoughts, emotions or mood, these emotions tend to lean towards love, death or loss. Other emotions can be expressed as well, but the emotion is always very intense.They also tend to be written in first person point of view. These characteristics reminds me of a song lyric which kept me thinking, what makes a song lyric and a lyric poetry different except for the tunes and music added in a song or is a song just a lyric poetry with tunes? Can you call a song writer a poet then? Can you even call Adele or Justin Bieber a poet?

Take, for example, a verse from Adele’s most recent song titled Hello which most of you guys already know:

“Hello, it’s me
I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet
To go over everything
They say that time’s supposed to heal ya
But I ain’t done much healing”

Clearly this verse fits the characteristics of a lyric poetry, it expresses personal feelings and emotions about love and loss “But I ain’t done much healing” and it uses a first person point of view “I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet”.

Another example is a verse from Justin Bieber’s new hit titled Sorry:

“Is it too late now to say sorry?
‘Cause I’m missing more than just your body, oh
Is it too late now to say sorry?
Yeah, I know-oh-oh, that I let you down
Is it too late to say I’m sorry now?”

“Cause I’m missing more than just your body” from this line, again, we can already see two characteristics of a lyric poetry which is personal feelings about love and a first person point of view.

So what do you guys think? What makes a lyric poetry and a song lyric different? or can you say that your favourite singer or song writer is a poet now? feel free to leave comments and thoughts down below!

Till next time,

Inneke Soeyanto

Works Cited:

-Adele. 25. XL Recordings, 2015. CD.

-Justin Bieber. Purpose. Def Jam, 2015. CD.

Hello Readers! it has been awhile since I last written a blog post here! Last two weeks I was the class blogger so I didn’t get a chance to write my own opinion and perspective on the amazing book that we had the chance to read that week which is “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” written by Jonathan Foer.

After reading the book and got so amazed by it, I decided to googled it for more information and suddenly came across to the movie version of it and decided to watch it. The book and movie was quite similar but the movie missed some aspects of the story that the book covered like the story of the grandparents and many other aspects. But anyway, the movie made me so emotional till I shed tears. I can imagine how Oskar feels losing his father, a man who is very fond to him. I am lucky enough to say that I’ve never lost any of my loved ones but I do miss the presence of my loved ones since I’m living far away from home and my family in Indonesia.

Talking about my family, Oskar’s grandpa’s story reminds me of my grandmother who is currently living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Even though Foer’s novel is fictional, my grandma has experienced something similar like what Oskar’s grandpa experienced. Back in the year 1998, there was several huge riots that happened in Jakarta or now known as the 1998 tragedy. The riots were triggered by the economic problems which then led to the fall of Indonesia’s president back then, Mr. Suharto. The main targets of the violence were the Chinese Indonesian. It was estimated that more than a thousand of people died in that incidents and at least hundreds of women was raped. 

It was a very traumatic experience for my grandma, she had to move and hide from one place to another place along with her family hoping that no one will caught them. If a traumatic experience has caused Oskar’s grandpa to not be able to speak, this traumatic event had made my grandma so shock till it leads her to have a parkinson disease.

Even though I’m not the one experiencing it, I can feel a certain connection with the book because of my grandma is experiencing something similar like what Oskar’s grandpa experienced. Traumatic events that led to a great shock for individuals and has affected them personally does not only happen in the book but also happens in real life.

– Inneke Soeyanto

Do you guys remember the thrill you got back in your elementary school days when your teacher said

“Students, we’re going to have a field trip..”

Yeah.. that feeling popped up to me again last week when Dr. Luger announced that our class was going to have a field trip to the library. It might sounds a little bit childish, but trust me, that was just what a university student needs after tons of assignments and midterms. We went to the part of the Irving Library that collects rare books, special collections, maps, archival materials that focuses on people from BC that I never knew it existed before.

Chelsea Shriver was the kind librarian who first gave us brief explanations about archives and how it differs from libraries. Archives are collections of documents created and received by a person or organization as records. Archives are considered as primary resources in forms of unpublished letters, journals, etc. Archives are unique materials since there are only one copy of each item and you can’t find it anywhere else.

It was so fascinating to see archives from a book titled Obasan written by Joy Kagawa that my ATSU class had been discussing for the past two weeks. Seeing the drafts of the book got me thinking like

“Wow.. this is what the book that I read supposed to be like..”

Not only the drafts that amazed me but other documents such as letters from the readers (especially the drawings and little notes from the kids, they were so funny), rejection letters, appreciation letters, her collections of data before writing the book and many more (pictures below). It was so cool to be able to see the documents of the book that you already read, you somehow can relate to it. I also came across to just a blank ripped piece of paper and still, it looks cool.

Draft of Obasan

Kagawa wanted to use the title If I Must Remember at first instead of Obasan

Shriver also mentioned that If we got famous one day, they will accept our documents and store it alongside with the other archival documents. Since being known for something good is what I always want in the future, I will gladly send my documents to UBC one day if that dream really come true.

I’m gonna end this blog post now, again, if you have any questions or anything to say please don’t hesitate to leave comments down below!

– Inneke Soeyanto

Works Cited:

• Kogawa, Joy. Manuscript draft of Obasan. n.d. ms. Box 8 File 2. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.
• Kogawa, Joy. Manuscript draft of Obasan. n.d. ms. Box 8 File 11. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

“Forgetting”, what do you guys think when you hear the word forgetting? You probably define it like the way I used to, the act of not remembering.

Used to?

Yeah, used to.

How? Why?

Because last week, in my art studies class we had an assignment where we had to read scholarly articles and examine on how those scholars define the word “forgetting”. As I was reading the last article I found titled Technological remembering/ forgetting: A Faustian bargain? by Yoni Van Den Eede, she defines the word “forgetting” as “Forgetting – that means, selecting what to remember and what not” (Eede 171). She then relates it in terms of digital memory which we can equate the term “forgetting” with “delete” which means selecting what to delete and what to keep. Then there it was, that eye opening moment I had and million things, feelings and memories went through my mind and how suddenly I can relate so much to a simple word like “forgetting”.

Eede states that keeping digital memories may cause individuals to become completely wrapped up in memories that we would not rather remember which then make us unable to move on from the past (Eede 172) or like your friends might say “you have to delete every pictures you’ve taken with your ex so you can move on”. Honestly, I am the type of person who is always have a hard time of letting go of the past which means I always find it difficult to delete pictures, posts, etc that I know I should delete in order for me to look forward in life, but I usually chose to keep them instead. Because I personally think that by deleting pictures or any types of digital memories from the past, it feels like I’m deleting bunch of memories or feelings from a certain period of time in my life which is something that I hate. I think digital memories are supposed to be kept no matter how bad it is because it represents a certain period of time in our lives that we might wanna look back someday. I also think that by deleting digital memories, it would help us to forget about those painful events, but just for awhile and not forever though, nor getting rid of the painful feelings, since digital memories are just tools or representations of the memories/events but not the memories itself.

Talking about digital memories, I want to add that pictures are the same as music, a very powerful tool to bring back old memories because just by looking at it, we will recall of what was happening that time, it will also bring up old feelings either bad or good and getting emotional, e.g, crying, laughing or even pissed by recalling of what happened when that picture was taken or the memories that pops up in your head when you look at it.

You guys may only see a picture of a window above, but for me, it means so much more than just a window. That picture was taken on winter 2012 while me and my family were enjoying cheese fondue in the cold weather of Switzerland. That picture never fails to make me smile because it reminds me of how happy we were at that time.

Hahah, this post is getting kinda personal, eh? I remember getting a feedback from Dr. Luger saying that my first blog post was great but it needs to be more personal, yet this blog post is way too personal. I think I’m just gonna stop now before I start telling you guys my whole life story. Again, if you have any thoughts or questions just leave comments down below!

– Inneke S

Hello fellow readers and bloggers!

In this blog post I’m going to talk a little bit about memoir. Memoir, usually known as a collection or records of memories of an individual about their life experience. What makes memoir and biography or autobiography different is that instead of telling the whole story of a life, memoir focuses on just a certain meaningful event from the author’s life.

This week in my Art Studies class, we’re reading a memoir titled Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Instead of telling her stories in a boring way, she made it way more interesting by making her memoir into a graphic novel (comic). As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post, graphic novel is another way of how English/literature can express ideas about social and political issues such as social justice, human rights, etc.

Persepolis Part 1 Book Cover

I can say that this book is somehow connected to social and political issues is because basically, in the first part of her book (There are two parts of the book, but we’re only reading the part 1 which is the story of her childhood), Satrapi depicts how is it like to live in Iran during the Islamic revolution. Satrapi also mentioned detail information about the war between Iran and Iraq that she experienced.

Anyway, going back to memoir itself, I think Memoir is a great way to tell your past experiences especially the ones that is connected to social and political factors because it gives you the inside look since its the authors itself that experienced it. I also wrote a paper back in high school about a little boy’s memoir, called The Way of a Boy written by Ernest Hillen, he is talking about his childhood when he lived in Indonesia during the war era. Even though he is Dutch he tells us how the Indonesian and Japanese culture affect him and how the intersections of the cultures had affect his personality as a boy.

The Way of a Boy by Ernest Hillen

I think that is it for today’s post! again, if you guys have anything to say or ask, please do not hesitate to leave comments down bellow!

Till next time,

Inneke S

Hi there fellow bloggers and readers!

This is going to be my first blog post here, so I’m going to tell you guys a little bit about myself. I am currently a freshman in UBC studying in the faculty of arts. In UBC, they offer a program for arts students called CAP. CAP has many different streams such as Individuals and Society, Global Citizens (the one I’m in), Media Studies, etc.

So for global citizen’s students, we had an online mini discussion about what being a global citizen means. There were a lot of great ideas, definitions and thoughts about global citizens. But for me personally, a global citizen is someone who understands what is happening around them i.e the world. Understanding the world locally and globally through political factors, social factors, etc. A global citizen is also someone who shows concern of their surroundings and feel the urge to make a better change for their society because they feel like it is a part of their responsibilities.

Another great thing about being a CAP student is that we had two events last week which is the CAP gathering where students and professors from all CAP’s streams got to meet for a “tea time” and had small talks. The other major event was the joint lecture which all Global Citizen stream’s professors and students were gathered in one room to discuss further more about what a global citizen really means in political, sociological and literature/English view. We had so much fun and gained so much knowledge that deepens our understandings about global citizens

In sociological view, a global citizen usually translates local issues and problems into larger global context and provide possible explanations or the other way around. They also understand local and global cases of inequality to understand better about social problems and provide more effective actions.

Sociology and politics have different views of global citizens. In sociology it focuses more on how people act, think, reason and understand social life whereas in politics, it focuses more about being a cosmopolitanism, which means citizen of the world. Politics focuses more about system of orders in the society and how it creates conflicts about people’s different purposes.

Last but not least, the English view of global citizens. The main focuses of English is how they can create analyses, imagines solutions and reproduces about social issues and experience. English can also create personal stories about political and sociological phenomena. English can also express politics by rewriting dominant ideas and express sociology by cultural practices i.e poetry, graphic novels, etc about social issues such as social justice, human rights, etc.

I think that is it for today’s post and if you guys have any questions or ideas to share, please don’t hesitate to leave comments down below!

Till next time,

Inneke S