The reading of the Kappa Child along with the video by Minoru gave me much insight to what is was like to be a Japanese-Canadian in the first half of the 20th century.

Up until now, my knowledge of the subject was very limited. I knew that the Japanese were persecuted in both Canada and the US after the attack on Pearl Harbour. I knew they were put into camps and I knew that they were faced with strong racial stigma even after all the bans were lifted. However, I never once thought of the person struggles each individual must have felt. It’s easy for forget and become apathetic when a topic is spoken about using statistics and groups. But once we hear an individual story that we being to really understand the gravity of history and what it meant. I felt mad just hearing watching Minoru’s video. I can only imagine how he and his family felt after first being told to be prisoners in BC, leave BC for Japan,  and then have receive news they can return.

I have been uprooted. I have gone from living in the Philippines to Canada to the USA and back to Canada in my twenty years. Yet I was never uprooted for my race. I was never sent away or given an ultimatum. My family moved willingly.

How defeating it must feel to viewed as a stranger in your own home. To be subjected to prejudice because of something others did. It’s an issue we are still dealing with today. We are trying to free ourselves from this idea that separation of cultures or races is beneficial. And many try to hide the wrong doings that occurred throughout history due to racial prejudice. There is a saying that goes along the lines of, “History often repeats itself”, and I hope to high heavens that it won’t.

Wow! There is no other word I have to describe this novel by Atwood. Although I find the idea far fetched, I thought the way she painted the word of Gilead was wonderfully done. I do believe that if the world or government were to crumble in some way, women would be one of the first to be disregarded. As a society today, we are getting better at fighting for equality, but  there is still a social imbalance between men and women.

Years ago, and even in some areas of the world today, it is a belief that the purpose of women in to bare children. They are to be vessels of which new lives will come forth. I am happy that I live in a world where I know I am valued based on who I am, not what I can produce. I am valued for my mind, not my womb. Although the world of Gilead executes their beliefs in an obstruct way, I am still able to understand the thought process behind their views of women because it is an idea as old as time.

I wondered why they did not just opt for a polygamist society or in-vitro fertilization to ensure healthy children. I was also curious as to why they made the reproductive process such a ceremony between the mother and handmaid. I would have thought that they would have treated the handmaid’s like mistresses, but they still attempted to impregnate the wives. An example of something odd was during the birth process when the wife would lie down as well. I didn’t see much of a point to it. Today, if a women has a child via surrogate, they don’t lie in bed with their surrogate or act as if they are the ones birthing. I know the idea was to make it seem like the child was more theirs, but I really thought this was an odd detail to the society.

I won’t deny the fact that I was very excited to have an excuse to re-watch Juno this week. I find it to be one of those movies that can somehow manage to make you feel good about a lousy situation, plus I think her step-mother is a hoot and a half.

However, this time watching I concentrated more on how the film depicted the feeling of pregnancy. I was very focused on how Juno seems to act and feel about being a mother. I found her to be interesting when comparing her to some of the women from the “26 Abortion stories” reading. I was rather surprised to see the range of emotion from all 26 women. I had assumed that a majority of them would have the same apathetic feeling since they opted to go through with the procedure. Some women just wanted “it” out of them and haven’t looked back since, some women have had multiple and don’t regret it, some women said they kept the fetus once and opted to not do it again, some women felt pressured to do it, others regret it, and some seemed to go back and fourth. I found Juno a girl who appeared apathetic, yet really did care for her child. In the movie she appears to not have gone through with an abortion for the reason that the fetus had developed finger nails and she didn’t like the clinic. I felt that Juno was very quick during the abortion scene, and in real life there is more of an inner struggle in choosing. Although Juno was presented as a sarcastic and unemotional character, looking closer could we also say that she didn’t want to go through with it because of her maternal instinct to protect the developing organism inside of her? When she said she didn’t want her child to have a life that was “shitty and broken” like everyone else’s’, I personally felt that it Juno was, in a way, a mother. She wasn’t the same uncaring and sarcastic teenager from the beginning of the movie.

My view of abortion is that it is a choice. It should always be an option for women because it is their body. I know that there are many debates about this idea, but that is my belief. Reading the 26 Abortion Stories was very interesting to me, due to the fact that it showed the emotional side to choosing an abortion that Juno failed to depict. I don’t know what I would do if I were presented with the same circumstances as Juno and the 26 women. I like to think that’s a thing no one is sure of until they find themselves sitting in the waiting room.