01/29/14

Ramble…Ramble…Fanon…Ramble.

I’m really happy that we are finally getting into the books that I find interesting and actually enjoy reading!

As I said in seminar today to my groupies, I find it completely strange when I think about race  and how people are still excluded from different things or treated differently because of who they are. It is weird to think that the history books we read about discrimination and racism are from merely 50 years ago and how it is still presented in today’s society.

Although we focused on the intro and conclusion in today’s seminar, the topic of and the word “white-washed” cam e up quite a few times and it is weird how that word is interpreted. I consider myself 100% “white-washed” and often forget that I am not of Filipino-Chinese decent since I live alone and  do not practice or even see any Filipino or Chinese food, traditions, or even hear the language anymore. I kind of find it sad that when I tell people I am Canadian (because I do not consider myself any Filipino or Chinese), I have to clarify and tell them that I am “white-washed”. It definitely reminds me of a part in the book where I can’t find right now where he says that we are tied to our image, that black people will always be viewed “black” and white people will always be viewed as “white”, being “tied to an image that we are not responsible for” (18).

Another quote that really stuck out to me was:

“Subjectively and intellectually the Antillean behaves like a white man. But in fact he is a black man. He’ll realize that once he gets to Europe” (126)

this quote makes me feel both happy and sad.

When I first read it I felt sad because It says that no matter how he acts. No matter how educated, proper and “white-washed” a coloured person can be in their own civilization, once they go to another region, they will be treated differently in another way. In a less civilized way.

The reason it makes me happy is because although I am completely “white-washed” and although through the years equality between races will hopefully be a completely natural thing, I will still have my roots. I will still be able to go back to my ancestors country and see their society and their way of living. I am proud of my roots and I believe that everyone should be proud of their roots too. That even if equality between different races is reached, that people from Canada would be able to look at a “white-washed” Asian and be able to say “Wow, it is so cool that your ancestors came from China! They have really interesting traditions and awesome food” and stuff like that. I feel like a lot of people are ashamed* of their roots if they are completely white-washed when that shouldn’t be the case at all.

I don’t know where I’m really going with this. This post went from a lot of different thoughts. So yeah I’ll just end it. ahah.

I also really liked Jon’s lecture the because I felt that he touched on every topic and question that I had in mind and that it was really interesting!

 

*ashamed as in telling people “no, my ancestors may be from Asia but I DEFINITELY DO NOT HOLD THE SAME TRADITIONS. I mean it’s fine to have your own traditions and be able to carry Canadian or American traditions and stuff, but different countries around the world have super interesting traditions, religions, foods…it would be a shame to try to erase all of that from your lives!!

P.S: Sorry for the late post! I usually write what I have to do for the day in my agenda, and since “blog post” wasn’t in it, I assumed it wasn’t my week…SO I FIXED IT SO NOW IT WILL BE ON TIME.

P.P.S: B.F.A audition prepping is really stressful and consumed my mind since…December. So wish me luck and please forgive my tardiness and spaciness for the next week.

Joc 🙂

01/15/14

Northanger Abbey (?)

So I did not realize that this week was my week to blog so here is another post from yours truly.

Let me start off by saying that Macs are very hard to work with and I deleted this post 100x before publishing this (accidentally). Anyway, I used to collect Jane Austen books as a high school student and although I started the books “Emma”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility”, I found Austen’s texts really hard to get into. The only book I really “finished” was “Pride and Prejudice” because I’ve seen it so many times in theatres that it was easy enough to follow along. That being said, I was really dreading reading Northanger Abbey and afraid that I would hate it. 

Was I ever wrong.

Northanger Abbey is probably the easiest text to read (so far) for me and I got into it pretty quickly. I loved Austen’s style of writing in this book and found it a lot easier to visualize the story and follow along. I like how she added a gothic tone to her traditional romantic story; this made it a lot easier to read.

After reading this book, I realized that Catherine is a little different than the usual Austen character. Although she was plain and mousy and was not like any other girl (like a lot of Austen’s characters in other books), I liked how she was curious and suspicious about the place she was living in. I felt like Catherine had a real personality so it was easier to relate to her and picture the scenes.

I like how different this text was from Austen’s other works and how the book was funny, romantic, gothic, and altogether very well written.

Anyway, I want to know what everyone else thinks of this book and things they want to discuss! Maybe ill actually talk about this book in class because I just really liked it!

So before this entire post accidentally gets erased , tata for now.

 

back to monologue memorizing.

– joc, xoxo