Not just another blog

It’s been quite some time since my last blog post but alas! I have returned from the dead (aka from studying for my midterms!) On November 19th, my ASTU class went to the Rare Books and Special Collections at Irving! My first field trip in university!

I must say, it was amusing to take a glance at Joy Kogawa’s fonds. It has given me an exceeding amount of information about the novel Obasan. I enjoyed how I was informed about the differences between archives and libraries. A challenge on collecting archives would be the increase usage of technology. Isabelle made an important point at how drafts nowadays can be just deleted and replaced.

I did not realize how every little piece of object/paper can be important. For instance, a train time table from the 1920’s may become important for an author who is wanting to write about that time era. In Joy Kogawa’s fond, photographs, family trees, drafts, rejection letters, and reviews just to name a few, were donated by Kogawa herself. It was fascinating to grasp a look at the drafts because it is amazing to see how how many handwritten drafts Kogawa took in order to produce her final draft. What I found was that on the back of the drafts, there was what seems to be a Chinese version of her draft. It is astonishing to see how an author can create all these characters and give it so many characteristics to make it seem almost as if they have once existed.

One of my favourite items I have found upon this visit would be the letters from the students of Belvedere Parkway School. This reminded me of when I was in elementary school and I when had to also write to an author and thanking them. This shows how depending on the age, a book can have multiple meanings. Some of the children did not quite get the meaning of this novel, and they have focused on different aspects of the story for example, in one item, Ainseley Deanne writes how she enjoyed it because of how Naomi and Mitzi became friends. I do not blame them for not fully understanding the novel as the content is quite descriptive.

All in all, my experience at looking through Joy Kogawa’s fond has given me a better insight on how much research and effort is put in towards a book and how many people have written to Joy Kogawa.

This week in ASTU, I continued to learn more about Persepolis as well as I had to read Literary Scholar, Hilary Chute’s article “The Texture of Retracting in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” I wanted to continue on my thoughts on Persepolis after analyzing the comic memoir furthermore.

In my Sociology class, Professor Dilley discussed on the topic about perspective conflict in Canada and focusing on Stephen Harper’s opinion on niqabs. Stephen Harper stated ” I will never tell my young daughter that a woman should cover her face because she is a woman. That’s not our Canada.” On the website http://cce-wakata.blogspot.ca/, the blogger points out that women should have the right to decide if she needs to cover herself and men do not have the right to tell her to wear a niqab/hijab. This made me do a little bit of research on the niqab/ hijab.

Just because men find it distracting to look at a woman, they have to wear a niqab to cover themselves. What if women find it distracting to look at men? Why don’t they have to wear something to cover themselves?

In my opinion, Steven Harper feels like this religion is not Canadian because it does not treat everyone equally. He wants to enforce a law to ban Muslim niqab for public servants. By making this such a hot issue, people are now taking more notice and are judging people who do decide to wear it. This immediately made me think of Persepolis and how the women are forced to wear “the veil” because it is a distraction to men. To a certain degree, I can see why Stephen Harper wants to ban the niqab. He feels like it is a security issue and a woman’s right issue. Marjane Satrapi would agree with him because she was against wearing the hijab. But I feel like Harper is also taking the women’s freedom away by doing so. A woman should have the right to decide for herself. If Harper wants equality, then I do not feel like he should ban it, he should respect a person’s religion. This was never really a big issue and I believe that it should have only been brought up if there was a big threat.  I agree with Satrapi and how it is not fair to wear a hijab just because men cannot control themselves.

This is such a troublesome topic because if a Muslim women decides to not wear the niqab, the men in her life can punish her. An example from a National Post article, a father murdered 3 of his daughters because they have decided to live a ‘regular Canadian life.’ The issue was never the women, it is the men who believe they have control on the women in their lives.

I never really thought of the niqab/hijab as such a controversy topic. I respect a woman who wants to wear one but it should be their decision and not anyone else’s. They should not be punished for not wearing one. Banning the niqab is in a way just like how in Persepolis it was made mandatory for all women to wear one if they are in public. Either way, some women will feel out of place an pressured.

Here are some links to articles on this issue:

http://www.nationalpost.com/

http://ottawacitizen.com

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/

Link to the photo:

http://cce-wakata.blogspot.ca

Hello once again! I have started to incorporate university into my everyday life; getting the hang of all the work load, keeping up with all my readings, taking notes, reviewing, getting enough sleep, and most importantly, finding the time for FOOD. So far it has been pretty manageable, and I would definitely say that I am not the same person I was on the first day as cliché as it sounds.

This week in ASTU I had to read and finish the comic memoir, Persepolis, by Marjane Strapi. Strapi  depicts her experience with the Islamic Revolution. Not only does she illustrate her perspective from her own childhood point of view, she notes how she views the revolution after she has grown up. I don’t have a lot of previous knowledge on the Islamic Revolution and this memoir has brought me to a curiosity.

In my opinion, this book has given me quite a bit of insight on the Islamic Revolution. As I have previously read the article, The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning, by Farhat Shahzad, I have  noted that this memoir is a technology of memory, which gives me a knowledge on the revolution.

On page 6, Strapi points out at how she wants to be a prophet, this made me think about what I have learned in Political Science recently about Feminism. Just because she is a female, does not mean she cannot be a prophet. Why did everyone in her class laugh at her and think she is crazy? In her dream, she draws out a few past prophets and they all ask, “a woman?”  Personally, I feel like anyone whether male or female should be able to aspire what makes them happy.

Strapi shows us that at one point there was a food shortage but the black markets have helped solved the shortage issue (page 132). This made me think about Economic class when Professor Gateman discusses about how government control can increase the amount of black markets. Black markets inflate the prices of goods which Strapi and everyone else in her community had to encountered.

Overall, in my perspective, young Marjane was a very rebellious girl and still is. She stands on her ground and is not afraid of expressing herself. I really admire Marjane and adore the writing style she uses in the memoir, it made it easier for me to understand and imagine what it was like to be in her shoes.

Taken from the book Persepolis.

http://knopfdoubleday.com/

https://ncacblog.wordpress.com/

http://cbldf.org/banned-comic/

Here is the UK Trailer of Persepolis the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch

Hello and welcome to my journey in ASTU at UBC! I hope you enjoy your time here on my blog. During the first few classes of my ASTU course, it was kind of like a wake up call to myself that I am no longer in High School where I had teachers baby sitting me and guiding me through life. Instead, I am a fully independent women that has been thrown out into the real world. You know what I found interesting? In High School, I was taught to write all my essays structured in the way my teachers required me to, but now in university I am told to forget all the techniques I have acquired from the past 5 years and to learn how to write a “proper university paper.” I am baffled by this and do not know where to start. But thankfully I have the Academic Writing: An Introduction textbook to guide me through this transition. Also, something interesting that I had found out on my first day, teachers no longer exist, instead,  theres a new species called “professors.”

I have recently just read my first university article The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning by Farhat Shahzad which is about her studies on the War of Terror. She has interviewed 99 university students to observe their view on the War of Terror and what has influenced them. She notes that there are 3 important concepts on remembering and learning this topic; the person him/herself, the internet, and memories.

I myself personally do not read all the gritty nitty details about current events or the past major catastrophes, but I gain knowledge about them from people’s experiences and memories. I listen to friends, family, and my teachers on the view and opinion on them. In my perspective, I believe that someone can truly educate themselves by going to monuments and museums to learn about the past events that has occurred in our world.

I feel as if sometimes as us humans, we are bias and do not look at both sides of a situation and we tend to only highlight the negatives and not the positives. Sometimes the news on television, such as FOX news, do not tell us the entire story of an event. I feel as if after the 9/11 incident, everyone in the middle east were seen as a terrorist, but in reality, they are not. A group of people had attacked USA and all of a sudden, everyone in the middle east is now seen as the bad guy? There are so many amazing achievements that have occurred in the middle east such as how Malala fought for education for not only herself but for all the girls against the Taliban.

In the past couple of weeks that I have been in the Global Citizenship CAP program, I have realized a bigger picture in life, the world is no where close to perfect.  As a student, I need to learn the flaws and strengths in our world to create a better future. ASTU, Sociology, and Political Science has really made me think critically and has given me a wake up call to engage in the world and to stop focusing on the irrelevant news about celebrities.

Here is a link of Malala’s biography:

http://www.biography.com/people/malala-yousafzai-21362253 

Photo retrieved from http://eyesopenreport.com/tag/911/

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