Month: March 2017

Hi Global Citizens ASTU! Our first year is gradually wrapping up, and I thought it would be fitting to write about the most important aspects of ASTU that I have learned this year. As the purpose of our ASTU vlogs next week will encapsulate the essential elements of ASTU, I want to use this blog entry as a sort of platform to get my ideas flowing.

For me, the main takeaway I will receive from ASTU is the aspect of ‘remembering’. In all of the novels that we have read, Persepolis, Safe Area Gorazde, Obasan, in particular, share this concept of selective remembering. Those memories that are worth remembering remain a memory, and those that become of lesser importance and/or significance are forgotten throughout history. All three of these books have themes of death, and the ideology behind remembering those who have died is a key argument made by the authors of each of those books.  

I have always loved learning about history through novels. The most enjoyable thing about ASTU was that when we covered very sensitive topics such as 9/11, the Iranian Revolution, Japanese internment, and the Bosnian War, our class discussions eased us into them. For example, I particularly enjoyed watching those videos about Muslims who have been victims of racism in the United States. They were so personal, especially in the way that it humanized the person speaking. It really made me aware of the lucky opportunity that I have when I walk around UBC campus without experiencing racism. I have become a lot more aware of xenophobia.

Another key concept that I will constantly be thinking about post-ASTU is this idea of “thinking globally and acting locally”. As mere students, we are constantly prone to ignoring large-scale problems rather than facing them—simply because it’s easier for us. I think that ASTU, and really Global Citizens as a whole is trying to teach my generation to take a call to action.

Welcome back to my blog! The past few weeks my CAP Global Citizens class has been focused on our final essays. We’ve been constructing them gradually, starting with our essay proposals and our introductions next Tuesday. For this blog entry, I wanted to use this time to do a close reading of a page in Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, the research site for my essay. My essay topic is whether or not comedy can be used to interpret war. On a previous blog entry, I had wrote about comedy and war, and that topic actually inspired my essay.

From pages 24 to 28, the narrator is at a gathering with his friends. They are drinking, smoking, doing normalized actions that all young people do. It is at this party that the narrator, meets Riki, an enthusiastic soldier, and essentially the life of the party. Whenever Rikki is featured in the panel, Sacco shades in the panel to highlight Rikki in order to depict him as the main source of attention. Perhaps it is Riki’s towering stature or his hunched silhouette, but Sacco portrays him as appearing older than he most likely is. The wrinkles on his face show an exhausted complexion, of a man who has been tirelessly fighting on the battlefield. Yet, his expression seems inconsistent from panel to panel; in one panel Riki looks sullen, reflecting on his memories from the war. Immediately in the next panel, Riki is joyful and youthful, strumming his guitar while singing classic rock songs. Sacco’s handwritten captions are also proportionally different; he uses bold font captions for Riki’s lyrics, but then uses less defined captions when the characters are discussing the war conflict.

Riki is perhaps the most dynamic character in Safe Area Gorazde. To me, he is a metaphor for the war itself, and also the character I hope to target in my essay. He represents the vicious side of war, but also the vulnerable, lighthearted side. In a way, he is both a perpetrator and a victim of violence. Yet, he masks the atrocities he has witnessed in war by entertaining others. There are other characters in Safe Area Gorazde who have contributed to the comedic interludes within the story, however I think Riki is the most blatant example of how Sacco interlinks comedy with war.