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During our first week back in ASTU, we mainly discussed the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book is about Oskar Schell, a boy whose father died during the occurrence of 9/11, and how he and his family cope with the incident. Simultaneously, the book blends in the traumatic experiences of Oskar’s Grandfather and Grandmother during the Second World War. In class, we focused on the theme of “absence”, which is an aspect of the book that Foer seemingly includes in deliberate fashion. We agreed as a group that these absences signify the trauma that the characters suffer from the two tragic incidences. The most obvious absence shown in the book is the lack of words coming from Oskar’s Grandfather. There were some other examples of this thrown out by the class, such as the lack of other narratives, and the unsent letters.

Anyway.

To me, there seems to be another absence that did not come out during class: the lack of criticism or anger by Oskar and his family shown towards the terrorists, and the Muslim community – a community widely vilified by the American public then. The storyline consists of each character trying to get their lives back in track after what had happened, each in their own way, but those methods do not include bashing or criticizing Muslims. Instead, Oskar goes on an adventure looking for the lock that fits the key that his father left him, his mother attempts her disrememberment by listening to music needlessly loud, and having her close friend, Ron, accompany her. The same could be said for Oskar’s Grandmother and Grandfather, who experienced bombings in their hometown when they were in Germany. Their hatred toward those who bombed their town (primarily America) cannot be found, and we can even see some portrayals of Oskar’s Grandmother trying to spontaneously assimilate herself into the American culture after moving there. “[…] she wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else […]” (108). These actions/inactions illustrate how the characters in this book are passive towards what had happened. Even though they each show some kind of action, those actions are not taken to tackle the reason why their loved ones passed away. I am in no form taking this passiveness as a negative, inactivity towards justice or anything like that. What I took from this is that the narrative of this book is going the opposite direction of where the general narrative of post 9/11 in America was going back then. I support this opposition, because I feel this portrayal might have possibly been pretty accurate. Although this is only my initial feeling, and I do not have much evidence or knowledge to back it up, I have a feeling that the majority of those who roared, “revenge!” against terrorism, were those who were not directly involved in 9/11. Yes, every American citizen was “involved” in the sense that it was their land that got attacked, but most did not have any connection to those who were actually in the building and died. The only mental connections the American population had with them were that they too, are Americans, and that the same could have happened to them. I speculate that the majority of those who actually were involved in the incident, such as the characters in this novel, did not display such reaction, because of the traumatization that put a very big scar in their lives. Though the repercussions of 9/11 can still be seen today, those who were not directly involved in the incident were not traumatized by it in a true sense; they were only shocked by it, and reacted towards that shock. Those who were truly traumatized, on the other hand, could not react, because it did not matter to them who were to blame. What mattered most to them were the deaths of their loved ones.

It has been a while since my ASTU course touched on literary scholar Hillary Chute’s essay on the graphic narrative Persepolis,  but nonetheless I have decided to go back to it. In her paper, Chute is especially interested in the memory of trauma within the story of Persepolis. For instance, Chute explained how the black and white visual Satrapi uses for her story is a deliberate plan to emphasize the “horror of history” through “a pointed degree of abstraction” (98). Since I was also intrigued by the topic of trauma, I explored other ways of representing traumatic messages. Today, I’d like to introduce a particular way of doing so, that I found interesting.

The advancements in trauma studies in recent decades, has led to the heightened understanding of traumatic experiences being overwhelming and incomprehensible. This created the need to interpret the situation in a different way from the past. Literary scholar Laurie Vickroy, in her book Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction, argues that “trauma narratives” – A form of fictional story-telling that helps readers in understanding traumatic experiences – is the answer to that need of an alternate interpretation, as it has assembled “an important place among diverse artistic, scholarly, and testimonial representations” (1). She argues that the style clarifies “our relationship to memory and forgetting within the complex interweavings of social and psychological relationships”.

Trauma narrativists try to reach out to their audiences (readers) in various ways. One-way of doing so is to make the story personal to the audience by presenting a character in a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions and beliefs (2). Briefly going back to the story of Persepolis, this method can be seen when Marji, the main protagonist, struggles with the understanding of her own religious beliefs, because of a traumatic experience of her uncle getting killed (71). Another possible method is what I call, “fill in the blank”. Authors draw readers in by deliberately, or unintentionally, not giving the full story in the book. Because the author does not give the whole picture to the reader, the readers are forced into imagining the picture themselves; consequently getting more involved with the story. Again, this can be found in part of Persepolis, for example when Marji saw her friend dead after getting hit by a missile (142). Satrapi does not give any descriptions on what it was like; sometimes, silence speaks more then words. This could also be connected with one of the topics we are tackling in class right now, “trauma and forgetting”.

The idea of using fiction for this particular topic did not seem adequate to me at first, but after giving more thought to it, I came to the conclusion that it is better for traumatic stories to have fictional parts in it to some extent. I say this because once trauma stories become completely non-fictional, not only does it become a very sensitive read for the audience, but also the writers will have to recollect every single detail of their traumatic experiences, which could be extremely taxing to them mentally. For both writers and readers, the inclusion of a bit of fiction could prove to be beneficial.

Works cited:

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (2004)

Laurie Vickroy, Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (2002)

For the past couple of weeks in our ASTU class, we had been continuing our discussion on the graphic memoir “Persepolis”. The class material has moved on from the book, but there is one more aspect of the book that I want discuss in this week’s blog.

The storyline of Persepolis conveys messages from various themes: history, feminism, family, war and peace… and also religion. In the book, religion is swirling around Marji’s world. The Islamic revolution – the main focus of the book – was triggered from religion. Religion remains relevant throughout the story, so it is natural to think that Marji becomes deeply influenced by it.

As expected, at the beginning of the story, Margi is deeply religious. As she proclaims: “I was born with religion” (Persepolis, page 6, frame 2). She has big discussions with God every night, and he has high aspirations of her becoming a prophet. She would embrace God’s nomination, and tell her grandmother how, once she becomes prophet, she would solve everything that she deems problematic, from inequality in society, to fixing her grandmother’s knees.

However, God’s presence starts to fade in time. In the year of the revolution, Marji decides she needs to start an action, so she “put [her] prophetic destiny aside for a while” (10, frame 2). At this point, she has already left her aspirations of becoming a prophet. Despite all of this, God comes to see her from time to time. She still had space for God in her heart. One night, Marji overhears her parents talking about a theatre being burnt down (16, frame 1). She tells God, who is present, that she wants to join her parents to go demonstrate. In the next frame, God leaves the room without telling her; and he would not come back for the night.

From that moment, God’s appearance in the book becomes scarce. He appears in one frame in page 25, where he asks Marji “What are you doing?” (25, frame 8), a question of which she does not reply to, and another appearance in the last frame of page 53, where he is embracing Marji who is lost in the understanding of what “justice” is. This insinuates that, though God’s presence was not as big as it used to be for Marji, he still was somebody she could rely upon from time to time.

Then came Marji’s encounter with uncle Anoosh. She idolized her uncle, because he had gone through many hardships, including escaping to the USSR, and being thrown in jail for nine years. His presence, which was bigger than God to her, took out the existence of God in her life. God no longer appeared in any of the frames until Anoosh gets executed, and Marji, being in a miserable state, kicks God out of her life. She goes on in the book, saying “And so I was lost, without any bearings… What could be worse than that?” (71, frame 1).

So why did Marji eliminate God from her life, if he was the only one lest that she could rely on? It seemed odd to me at first. Then, I realized why she could not have had God with her anymore: because religion was what brought this tragedy to her life, and the thought of God was directly related to religion. Ironically, it seems, God was eliminated by religion.

At first, Marji’s faith was spontaneous. Religion was not oppressive, and her parents were not sources of religious ideas, as they were “very modern and avand-garde” (6, frame 1). Then, the revolution happened, and a different, oppressive religion was pushed into her life, directly affecting her surroundings, forcing her to abandon her religiousness and God. However, I believe what young Marji did not understand at the time, and what the grown-up Marjane Satrapi, as an author did realize, is that those two religions – one coming from her own mind, and one from an outer source – are completely different things. In the latter half of the book, she despises religion, as it oppresses her and her family, but the author perhaps did not want the reader to comprehend Marji’s thoughts on religion as one sided, but instead, conflicted and agonizing. She did not intend to scrutinize religion as a whole, but instead, the oppressive natured religion that was pushed into her life at a young age, by showing that she, too, was very religious at one point in her life.

Works cited: “Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood”

In my ASTU class, we have been discussing the graphic memoir “Persepolis” written by Marjane Satrapi. I really, really enjoyed reading this book. I am going to use today’s post to explain what exactly I liked about Satrapi’s work, and what I obtained from those positive thoughts towards the work.

The graphic memoir fascinated me in two aspects. First, I want to point out the genius in Satrapi’s style of art. The pictures are all black and white, which, in my opinion, gives the book an authentic yet serious feel to it. Many scenes in the book demonstrate why exactly this book was written in a comic book style. For example, the big, single frame in page 71 of the book shows Marji, the main protagonist, floating in space with nothing around her, with the caption on top, “And so I was lost, without any bearings… What could be worse than that?” and on the bottom written, “It was the beginning of the war.” These words and the picture fit together so well; I am certain that there was no better way in this particular scene in understanding and feeling the emotions of the main protagonist, than imagery. I would like to talk about the connection between imagery and memory on a different date, since it is another fascinating topic worth looking into.

Another intriguing part of the book was how it made me look at history in a different way. Since the story is being told from a young girl’s perspective, the story has a highly subjective narrative to it; and yet, the book is highly informative. I learned a lot about the history of Iran, specifically about the “Islamic revolution” and the “Iran/Iraq war”. But the book does not feel like a history textbook, or any form of history document. This is because it is a memoir, the personal memory of Marjane Satrapi. What we learn in history class is a collective memory of the nation or state. In classrooms, I was always taught the so-called objective views of history, and never subjective views. However, looking back, I can no longer say that those lectures were objective. Why? Because after reading Persepolis, I started to think about objectivism and subjectivism, and came to the conclusion that objective views, when discussing history, is not very realistic. History, in my opinion, is a compilation of personal memories, such as Satrapi’s. The compilation gets generalized at the national or community level, and it becomes the “official” memory, or the history we learn in history class. What that means, is that those subjective memories, once they are compiled and generalized, suddenly become “objective”. I do not see the logic in that. I believe every historical document has subjectivity, or biases, and I do not consider that as a bad thing. What I do not appreciate, though, is that some claim to be objective when they are not. Satrapi does not pretend to be objective; everything in the book seems to have come straight from her heart. And that is something that impressed me and made me like the book even more.

I do have some criticisms for the book; but in total honesty, I do not have the time to write all of that. So for this week, this is all I am going to write about. Thank you so much for reading!

Ken Sakamoto

“What is a Global Citizen?” This question has been dancing in my head all week long. We have been talking about this topic extensively in our ASTU classes, but I am not sure what to think of it. Being in the “Global Citizens” CAP stream, it was a rather obvious question that needed to be answered, but the more I think about it, the more confused and lost I get.

So what is a “Global Citizen”? I found the question itself to be pretty straightforward. We had a discussion thread on the Connect site, and many of my fellow students shared their thoughts. The answers were diverse, but the consensus of the group’s opinion seemed to focus on two aspects: having “global awareness” and “global perspective”. I shared similar thoughts as them on the thread. I believe, too, that these two qualities are must-haves when trying to become a global citizen.

But as I kept on thinking about this topic, this feeling that becoming a “Global Citizen” is not a plausible feat to accomplish started to develop in my mind – that is, if the criteria of being one include those two things – and I do believe that those are two essential criteria in becoming one.

To me, if it is necessary for a person to understand the perspectives and cultures from all parts of the world, it is going to take that person a lifetime trying to achieve that. It is one thing to learn “cultures” and “perspectives” of other parts of the world at school, sure, but that knowledge comes with biases and misunderstandings of some level. This is unavoidable. To me, in order to gain real cultural understandings and perspectives, you must live in that part of the world for some period of time, and have direct interactions with the culture, the people, and the problems that lie within that society. I am making this argument from my own experiences.

I am mixed (half Japanese, half American), and lived most of my life in Japan. However, when I was younger, I always regarded myself as an American kid. I always heard stories from my American father, watched American TV shows, and tried to immerse myself into “American culture” as much as I could. I took my American side very seriously, and tried hard not to lose it. At one point in my life this even led me to an identity crisis. I could not relate to my peers at school, because our interests were completely antithetical. I was that much devoted to my American side. But here’s the thing: at that point, I never lived in America. When I was 11 years old, for the first time in my life, I went to America and lived there: that was when I realized how much of a different, false perception I was gaining through not actually living there.

Me living in America made me realize how important it is to have direct, first-hand contact with any culture in order to gain real perspective. I also realized how much my peers in Japan, no matter how much I thought of them as different people, ultimately had huge influences in who I am and what I do; all because I lived there and interacted with them directly. Going back to what we are currently doing in ASTU class, I found Shazad’s essay on “Interpretative Communities” very relatable. Those who were around me, without me knowing it, deeply influenced what I remember and shaped who I am today. This is why I believe it is very difficult to become a “Global Citizen” without living in every part of the world, and interacting with people from every part of the world.

That being said, I believe it is a very positive notion to have the idea of trying to become a “Global Citizen”. It may be an extremely difficult task to achieve, but I think UBC students have a great chance in doing so, with so many people from so many backgrounds coming to study here. It certainly is not the same experience as actually living there, but learning and interacting with people from all around the world is definitely a great place to start!

Works cited:

Connect site: What is a Global Citizen?    https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/discussionboard/do/forum?action=list_threads&nav=discussion_board_entry&course_id=_75710_1&conf_id=_212718_1&forum_id=_279920_1

Shahzad essay on “Interpretative Communities”   http://search.proquest.com/docview/903202568?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14656

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