J.Chase T.R's Blog

Good afternoon readers,

          In this week’s blog I be discussing the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. First off, I’d like to say that I really enjoyed this novel and that Hamid’s work took me off guard. The novel ends leaving readers with many mixed emotions and many unanswered questions. In this post I’m going to be discussing the impact of Erica’s death. Erica is a main character throughout the novel who is both the main character’s, Changez, love interest, and dearest friend. Heavily burdened by the death of her highschool boyfriend, she struggles to find meaning in her life, eventually taking her own, or at least it is heavily alluded to that she does. Hamid rights with such purpose throughout his novel, therefor I do not believe he purely wrote this in to develop pathos. Perhaps her death is a physical representation of Changez’s love for America dying. Or maybe Hamid’s meaning is even more complex, and the death of Erica represents 9/11s impact of Muslim people in United States of America, resulting in the event isolating Changez. But why? Personally I believe Erica’s death is incorporated in the novel both in order to mirror and balance the dominant themes of 9/11. By balance I am referring to how Hamid perfectly renders both the political and the personal aspects of the novel and the relationship between them. I would suggest that Erica’s death is used as a tool to create the balance.

          What troubles me most about Erica’s death, is that it is unconfirmed. The doubt created brings Changez a miniscule amount of hope in Erica’s possible reappearance. Changez explains how he emails her year after year until finally her account is disabled. He also desperately reads her manuscript for “the conviction that [she] was dead or alive”(pg. 167). What does Hamid aim to show the reader by leaving Changez tortured by the unknown?

Works Cited

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Orlan

Good afternoon readers

        In my ASTU class we have been discussing the first chapter of Klay’s novel “Redeployment”. The chapter we read was about a returning soldier, Sgt. Price, and his experience with the difficulties of returning home and finding normality with his wife Cheryl. Klay states that the major aim of the novel is to promote conversation between veterans and civilians. Klay discusses current issues of absence of speech, and most importantly addresses the root of the issue mutually shared between those who serve and those who do not: soldiers not wanting to talk and civilians seemingly unmotivated to genuinely and truly connect with the soldier’s experience abroad. Klay discusses how generating conversation is vital to our cultural understanding of war and I think Klay is aiming to reduce rash aggressive political decisions by creating an understanding of the consequences.    

        This reminds me of my Father and his relationship with my grandfather. My grandfather returned from WW2 silent, lost and disconnected, much in the way that Klay depicts redeployment in his novel. It took years for my father and him to develop conversation on the topic of WW2. Even though I never got the chance to truly know my grandfather, the impact he had on my father was massive. As a result he has taken a keen interest in the history of the world, specifically war. Over the years my father has developed a strong pacifist approach to life and understands much of the implications of war. A state of mind I believe Klay deems extremely important. I wonder if an increased understanding of the influences and affects of war were promoted in High School would result in the creation of ideals aligned with Klay’s.

Once again, thanks for reading,

Chase

Works Cited

Klay, Phil. Redeployment. Penguin Group, 2014. Print.

Good afternoon readers,

        My ASTU class has taken a short break from reading novels and has begun analyzing poetry. Up to this point we have gone over various poems all related to traumatic events, such as the tragedy of 9/11. About a week ago the class passed around a collection of 22 poems called Poems From Guantanamo, which I found to be quite interesting as they provide an eye-opening account of the emotional state of the detainees. Poems have the ability to encapsulate a feeling that other traditional literature is often unable to do. It’s not only the poetic nature of this collection that I find captivating, but also the rarity as it is some of the only information to come out of Guantanamo.

        As the the book circulated the class I was only able to quickly flip through the pages and read one introduction and a small biography of an author. Near the end of the biography the author describes a situation where US soldiers tell him that if he can convince them that he is not associated with Muslim extremists he will be let go, but until then he is to be held captive and tortured. His reply was something along the lines of “Why do I have to convince you? Doesn’t the code of the United States legal system state that you are innocent until proven guilty?”. The weight of truth that his words bear cannot be turned away from, regardless of whether or not he deserves to be detained. How can we justify the mistreatment of others on the basis of citizenship? Putting the horrendous torture techniques aside, the United States had no right to imprison many of the people there. They seize people of abstract connection to crimes without any real evidence and this poem help shed light on this, as well as attach a name and emotion to the the people of Guantanamo. Although the poems give a more intimate glance into the prisoners and help to humanize them, they are still extremely limited. They are both poorly translated and censored by United States military personnel, which means that they are far from an exclusive look inside the camp.

        This issue of censorship triggered me to think more broadly of about the United States’ actions and those of other nations. So much of what governments do is privatized and their information remains withheld. This train of thought causes me to further question what the role of the government should really be and whether people have the right to know exactly what their nations are doing. In my Geography course, we learned about the Edward Snowden incident and how he is currently protected and in asylum in Russia. For those of you that don’t know, he was the one that leaked to the public regarding the United States government, and how they are tracking and monitoring what people do to an alarming degree has rendered him an enemy of the United States. Despite the truth that his action did break the law, most people praise what he has done, in my eyes that makes his actions warranted. The government is supposed to be representative of its people and so are its laws? I acknowledge that just because a lot of people approve of something doesn’t make it right, however to some degree this must be true. Bringing it back to the topic of Guantanamo bay, despite the harshness of the reality is it not better that we know what’s going on instead of living in ignorance? Is it our responsibility as global citizens to pressure governments into being open?

Works Cited

        Falkoff, Marc. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 2007. Print.

Hello loyal Readers,

      It has been a while since I’ve last blogged. I hope you all had a relaxing Winter Break. Today’s blog will be a response to the novel my ASTU class has been reading called “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Foer. By approaching the themes in this novel from a broader perspective, I seek to locate parallels between the dominant American response to the 9/11 attacks and the trends and policy platforms arising in the ongoing 2016 presidential race, specifically those connected to Republican nominees.

      Foer’s work aims to provide a fictional account of 9/11 attacks that avoids asserting the neoconservative perspective that dominates the political spectrum in order to promote a more humanized perspective. However, the existence of fear and anger, which empowered many Americans to seek retaliation, can still be glimpsed in influencing Foer’s novel and its characters. Foer likely includes this to reflect the reality of the times he is writing about. A key example of this can be seen in Oskar’s fear of Muslim people and their head garments despite his statements that he “isn’t racist”(Foer, 2005, pg. 36). Little remarks like this are often overlooked and evoke feelings of sympathy for the ‘innocent’ little boy, but it is, in fact, these “innocent” remarks that manifest into a fear-based culture, especially in our children and youth. When the World Trade Center was hit the whole world watched as thousands of first responders and civilians were killed. Following the initial shock and sadness of these horrific attacks came a violent response as the United States later joined by NATO in the mission to destroy the terrorist organization of Al-Qaeda. They way that this war was portrayed by the media exacerbated the idea that retribution, fueled by anger and fear, is the most valid response. This drawn out war slowly spread and conflict heightened in the Middle East. For nearly a decade and a half, caskets returned home to the United States as its soldiers fell. As time goes on and the conflict’s complexities became increasingly hard to decipher, the blame, initially targeted at fundamentalist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, transcended into the current trend of hatred toward the entire Islamic population known as “Islamophobia”.

      I do not wish to assert that the 9/11 attacks do not give people reason for immense grief, concern and assertive action. I do argue that the ripple effects of 9/11 have become ingrained in many Americans, and at their worst can manifest in harmful, racist, and fear-based actions and policy. A current example of how politics take advantage of tragedy and use fear to support their objectives can be seen in the monstrous support of racist and dysfunctional Republican nominees such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson.   

        The platforms on which many of these nominees stand promote harsh generalizations that are leading to mistreatment and misrepresentation of entire communities and societies. Donald Trump’s ideals polarize the United States against many other nations disregarding natural laws and presenting an alternative in which American citizens are held to a higher standard than others. And even within the United States, foreign people would be viewed as second class, destroying decades of civil rights movements and achievements. In fact islamophobia is not the only example of this, Trump and others have also slandered any and all Mexican’s labelling the majority of them as murderers and sex offenders. This mentality is exactly what Foer was and is trying to counteract through his novel. Unfortunately it’s stronger than ever today, and something needs to change.

Thanks for reading,

Chase T-R

Works Cited

Jonathan Safran Foer. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York: Mariner Books, 2005.

              This past week my ASTU class visited the Archive of Rare Books and Special Collections in UBC. The purpose of this outing was to examine the “Kogawa Fond”, a special collection donated by Joy Kogawa, the author of one of Canada’s most treasured novels: Obasan. This was a unique experience; being able to see such exclusive and rare artifacts, as well as being able to follow in Kogawa’s footsteps before, during, and after she wrote the novel was incredibly powerful. Reading all the personal and raw material that surrounds the novel allowed myself and the rest of the class to peek into Kogawa’s mind and immerse ourselves in her creative process. This furthered my understanding of the literary work and author, because we could see far more than the finished print. Her creative process, as I mentioned earlier, spans far beyond just comments on drafts. The Fond is a collective of letters of reference, rejection letters, reviews, and include pieces as fascinating and historical as a comment from former PM Pierre Trudeau. Personally, I found the rejections exceptionally interesting because they showed Kogawa’s creation of as an authentic success story, with struggles and failures along way.

              As I was reading through a jumble of reviews sent by an elementary school class it made me think about the importance of the novel as one of Shahzad’s “technology of memory”(Shahzad, 2015, pg. 303). Which she defines as resources like books, documents, media that human beings use to “interpret, relate, select, record, share, and tell their memories.” Despite the novel’s fictional nature, the story of Naomi and her family is highly informative and provides the reader with a detailed view of what life was like for Japanese-Canadians during that time period. I found her approach to the novel highly unorthodox as she uses silence, a main theme in the novel, as a powerful method to portray a story and impact the reader’s memory.

Works Cited

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.

Shahzad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning.” Canadian Journal of Education                 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 1 Sept. 2014.

Hello Readers,

My ASTU class has been collectively reading through “Safe Area Gorazde”, a graphic novel by Joe Sacco, that chronicles multiple accounts of the Bosnian war that devastated Eastern Europe and challenged the international community throughout the last decade of the 20th century. This unique combination of literature and art provided me with a perspective on a historical event that I previously had very minimal knowledge of, if any at all. The story is one of mass atrocity, global injustice, cultural tensions, and immense failure on the part of the United Nations and I was immediately shocked by the extremity of the events and the reality that this was my first encounter with it. I was pushed to wrestle with the concept of cultural memory in relationship to this major world event and try to explore why it is the Bosnian war is pushed to the background, behind memories of events society has deemed more important. Sturken writes that, “cultural memory is a field of cultural negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history”, and it seems that the stories of the people who were affected by this conflict did not, for whatever reason, make the cut (1). It is my observation that Joe Sacco realized the importance of a comprehensive narrative that documents this event in the prevention of forgetting this story. The unique genre of graphic narrative, allows for a type of storytelling that works against the traditional “desire of narrative closure [that] forces upon historical events the limits of narratives form and enables forgetting” (Sturken 7). According to Sturken, we are tempted to neglect complex memories in an attempt to bring clarity, and Joe Sacco works to avoid this (7).

As I read, I was able to connect the events of the Bosnian war and the international community’s response with other events that are occurring today, leading me to believe that this story is not an outlier on the world stage. Cultural, religious, and nationalistic allegiances continue to disrupt peace between and within states, even within those which rank high on development scales. As religious and cultural diversions wreak havoc in Syria and neighbouring nations, the world is at a loss at how to respond with compassion and urgency. Meanwhile, racial tensions within the United States are at a breaking point, manifesting in uprisings such as those occurring at the University of Missouri, and it seems that no one has the answers.

Tragedies continue to unfold and the world continues to be unprepared to prevent and address them, which causes me to reflect on the role of global citizenship in these trying times and question whether it can truly take root and lead to peace or whether the idea is merely a utopian idea that is confined to academia. Perhaps, the test of the power of global citizenships is in the response that we as individuals take in the midst of these crises and the work that we do to ensure stories, such as those affected by the Bosnian war, the Syrian refugees, and Sandra Bland, are rewarded with a place in our cultural and social fabric.

Works Cited

Sturken, Marita. “Introduction.” Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: U of California, 1997. Print.

Currently, my ASTU class has been analyzing the graphic novel, “Persepolis”, by Marjane Satrapi. We have discussed a wide variety of its elements, drawing out both higher and lower levels of abstraction. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised by this novel and I appreciated how it was easy to read and engaging, while maintaining an arrange of complex; personal, emotional, social, and cultural aspects that you expect from a respectable novel. As a student who relies heavily on visuals to learn and compute information, I welcomed this type of reading with relief. It is my assertion, if I am permitted to generalize, that the visual nature of graphic novels give them the power to heighten the portrayal of these aforementioned aspects to the audience in a unique way.

Despite the strengths that graphic novels may possess, the genre appears to lack respect in the academic, adult-world and it is this that has caught my attention and curiosity. I first observed this while reading “Persepolis”. On more than one occasion, my peers questioned my choice of book and I would be required to explain the novel to them, testing my understanding. My description of the literature held their interest until they discovered its graphic nature. Once they heard that it was “a picture book” they immediately disregarded it as juvenile and lacking credibility. Throughout secondary school, I was never exposed to any sort of graphic literature, and from this absence it has been inferred that they are undeserving of a holding a place in academia. They are too easily dismissed and categorized as being of the same low level abstraction and substance as a Marvel comic book or a childhood bedtime story. Despite my observations there has been notable progress; in the scholarly arena graphic novels are currently enjoying a “newfound respectability” as exemplified by the fact that “Persepolis” has made it into our agenda this semester at all (Chute 92)! Perhaps it is only a matter of time before this is integrated into mainstream culture, exemplifying an acceptance of and movement towards the many diverse types of learning styles that exist in our societies.

Graphic literature has grown far beyond the typical comic book. To take this point further the graphic novel “Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War” uses similar visual elements to those in Persepolis to engage the reader. This heart breaking story of an abducted boy is presented in a digestible manner as to immerse and educate the reader in the life of child soldiers.

Works Cited

Satrapi, Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Random House, 2003. Print

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36.1&2 (Spring/Summer 2008): 92-110. Web. JSTOR. 7 July 2015

Humphreys, Jessica Dee, and Claudia Vila. Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War. Print.

Hello Readers! The dialogue that we have had in class, in combination with our reading materials, has provoked thoughts about how foreign cultures are actively misrepresented in the western world, and how Global Citizenship -as a concept and as a reality- may be playing a role in mitigating these influences. This topic of discussion stems from “Persepolis”, a graphic narrative that my ASTU class is currently reading and unpacking.

“Persepolis” provides a unique view of Iran from the raw perspective of a young girl. The defining feature of this literature is that the author, Marjane Satrapi, writes with purpose and with an agenda. She uses the writing to demonstrate how Iranian people do not fit the negative mold that the media and that western society has confined them to. Mergi, the protagonist, is a typical girl in a loving family that, along with the rest of their community, has the misfortune of having the corrupt and extremists views of the few poison their political system. Bravely, the community fights against this undemocratic and unjust state, defying the label that our society is so quick to blanket them with.

I find the inherent purpose behind this novel unsettling, not because of what Marjane Satrapi is trying to convey, but due to reality that it is necessary for her to do so. The question is raised as to how have we allowed ourselves to be so ignorant and blind to the strife of others just because we see differences? How have we permitted fear, confusion, and distorted media to influence us enough to discriminate against a group of people, casting blame upon them for the wrongdoings of a repressive and violent radical group? Despite the group’s claim to legitimacy neither the Shah nor the Islamic Republic upheld or acted according to the Iranian people’s needs and wants, yet this is not what we are led to believe, and most people don’t do the work of really digging for truth. The answer to these questions are complex, yet from my perspective one part of the problem is that we have left the politics to the politicians and it’s time for change. To prevent recurrences of this phenomena increased Global Citizenship is paramount. I am not yet sure the ways that this concept becomes a tangible reality, but this world needs individuals whose interests and allegiances are not tied back extricably to the state and whose minds are shaped by shared experiences and cross-cultural immersion. Minds like these are characterized by a deeper empathy and a respect for difference, not a fear of it.

As Global Citizenship and what it means to embrace that concept and transform it to a reality has been on the forefront of our academic agenda, I have been struck by the coverage that has surrounded Pope Francis and his speeches in America over the past weeks. From what I have heard, as someone who does not necessarily subscribe to his faith, his values and his practices exude my perception of Global Citizenship. He does not advocate for assimilation, he does not use the fear mongering methods that dictate so much of the political system, as we’ve seen in the coverage of the Iran war, and he is able to genuinely connect with all people on a level of humanity, setting an example of how we can rise above the ignorance that has become commonplace regarding differences among people.

-Chase T.R

Works Cited

Satrapi, Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.