We watched the American Sniper in our most recent ASTU classes. The film is based on a US Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle’s life, with a focus on his deployment in the Iraq War.

Throughout the term, we have read several scholarly articles and have been introduced to their ideas. The scholars Judith Butler and Joseph Darda influenced my understanding of American Sniper. Judith Butler’s theory of precarious lives argues that all lives are vulnerable (“precarious”), but some lives are more vulnerable than others (“precarity”). She believes that since we share this vulnerability, if we are able to recognise this common ground, it may be possible that we find solidarity and hopefully find peace. Butler also prompts us to consider who’s lives we find grieveable. She believes that if we could recognise this shared grief as commonality, it may help us find peace. Connecting to American Sniper, I see a lot of violence and hatred of Chris Kyle and his fellow American troops towards the Iraqis. For example, the Iraqis were spoken about as “savages” and “evil”. I remember recalling Butler and thinking that if only all sides could pause, and recognise our mutual humanity, that the other sides’ lives are grieveable. That in war, all sides suffer. I don’t think violence can’t be the way out, because it breeds more anger.

This connects to Joseph Darda, who speaks of the “fantasy of mastery”. This is where when one feels vulnerable, one may make attempts to eliminate their vulnerability through war, which only results in continuing cycles of violence. I see this in American Sniper where the event of 9/11, which Chris Kyle sees on television, gave him a stronger reason for military service. The 9/11 event was a violent event, and Chris Kyle’s personal bellicose response and the US’ response of war exemplifies this cycle of violence.

My first-year studies have greatly helped me to think critically about American Sniper. Unfortunately, it is always easier said than done, and my skills need to further development. In our classes (ASTU and others), we have become acquainted with different scholars’ theories, concepts and analyses over a text. I think that knowing what other scholars have said or interpreted provides me with a lens to view the texts we read. The scholars often bring ideas that I might not have thought of, and inspire me to build on what they have said on a related tangent. They prompt me to consider my ‘position’ – whether I agree with the scholar or not.

Moreover, knowing what other scholars think enable me to see beyond the surface. Instead, it allows me to notice and consider the different levels of understanding and interpretation. To give an example – Patrick Deer’s observation of the militarization of everyday, civilian life – that there is a blurring between the warfront and society. If I had not read Deer, I would have passively watched American Sniper and likely forget most of it. However, having read Deer and been prompted to think deeper, I took note of moments in the film where I could see examples of this – such as Chris teasing his wife in the kitchen with a toy gun at the end of the film.

Finally, reflecting on the other ASTU texts, I see a connection between the other texts on the syllabus. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Juliana Spahr’s poems, the American Sniper, and Redeployment seem to portray the story of 9/11 and its aftermath in a sequential way. In Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, we see America before 9/11, the event of 9/11 itself – which sparked the “War on Terror” – and the immediate response in America – the rise of a fearful and nationalistic atmosphere. Then, in Juliana Spahr’s poems, we wait with Spahr to see whether there will be upcoming wars. This links to the film American Sniper, where we see Chris Kyle in Iraq, the home front response, and portions where Kyle is back in the US. The short story Redeployment ends this narration as we follow Sergeant Price home from the Iraq War. We are given an insight to the thoughts of a returning soldier, and the disconnection between a veteran and civilian life. I am glad to have a greater understanding of 9/11, its aftermath, and much broader implications through the different texts and scholarly articles that we have read. Thank you for this journey.

Our most recent ASTU were about poetry. Having studied a range of poetry over the years, I understood that poems could take many forms. Hence, I was not surprised when some of the poems we covered might not fit our presumptions of a “model” poem.

Nevertheless, from the past two weeks, I came to understand the importance of understanding the context in which literary works were created. Reading In Flanders Fields and The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner in succession brought out the contrast in mood for me. A more positive mood – a stronger sense of glorification of war and hope for justice – is present in In Flanders Fields, which was written at the beginning of the Great War. In contrast, the second poem is more down and gloomy. It was written at the end of the Second World War, and may reflect the war-weariness many might have felt after two wars.

In addition, I found the class discussion about the place of poetry in culture and politics particularly interesting. It is an angle that I had not looked from previously. When I first read the last section of Butler’s book chapter, I was confused as to why the US government found it necessary to censor the poetry of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. I knew that poems are outlets for people to express their thoughts and feelings at a personal level, but I did not consider them as threatening to some at a public level.

My biggest takeaway from class was the recognition to the extraordinary power poetry held. I learnt to tie the idea of personal expression to the public – that poetry humanizes the poet. Since the audience are given an insight into the poet’s personal thoughts and feelings, they become able to emphasise with them. In a political setting where a government desires the people’s support for its actions and agenda for the detainment of certain individuals, the public’s sympathy for the government’s “enemy” would be dangerous and a first step of the government losing legitimacy and control the people.

In previous blog posts, I had written about my realisation of the power that graphic narratives and novels held. Reflecting on the place of poetry, I think that poetry has its own unique “powers” because of its genre. Yet, this is not to say that one genre is superior to another. One “power” of poetry is that they tend to be relatively short in length. As a result, they can immediately transport the reader to another realm, and evoke within the reader a stronger feeling that would take longer to settle into in novels. Furthermore, their short length enables changeability and flexibility – poets can write “on a whim” and do not have to stay consistent to a story line. Lastly, the shorter length of poems are likely to have greater political survivability because they are easier to hide or smuggle out, and unlike novels, it does not matter as much if a chapter is lost.

We have been reading “Obasan”, a novel by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kagawa in our recent ASTU classes. In “Obasan” the Japanese-Canadian protagonist Naomi’s learns more about the nature of the Japanese-Canadian internment in WWII, which she and her family lived through. The novel may be considered very informative of this event in Canadian history.

As part of ASTU, our class visited UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). We were given the opportunity to read and discuss selections from Kogawa’s fonds. The fonds included Kogawa’s drafts and outlines; official documents from Japanese-Canadian committees that sought redress from the Canadian government; letters of critique from unsuccessful prospective publishers; and letters from readers.

The visit to RBSC has changed my view and understanding of the relationship between historical novels and history itself. While my realisation goes for all artistic works based on history in general (e.g. historical novels, poems, films, TV dramas), I will focus on historical novels for the purposes of this blog post.

Our visit made me realise how historical novels can a trustworthy source to learn history – that they can present history accurately, reliably, and be taken seriously. The novel genre often holds associations that it is fictional, imagined by the author, dramatized, or romanticized. Hence, they are inaccurate portrayals of history. This commonly held belief is clearly demonstrated through a letter from one of Kogawa’s fonds. In response to Kogawa’s request that former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau should read “Obasan”, Trudeau wrote that he would read the novel during his holiday.

However, I have come to realise that events in a historical novel can be presented with great historical accuracy after seeing the documents that were part of Kogawa’s research. In the author’s note at the beginning of “Obasan”, Kogawa writes that she wishes to thank “Muriel Kitagawa in particular”, “whose material was used freely, especially throughout the writing of Chapter Fourteen”. Chapter Fourteen is the chapter of Aunt Emily’s diary-letter entries where she recounts in great detail their deteriorating standards of living in British Colombia. From Kogawa’s acknowledgement, it implies that much of what she wrote are tightly based on writings of a person (Muriel Kitagawa) who lived through the time. “Obasan” is where Kogawa weaves primary historical sources into a novel, but perhaps with minor edits. The interesting compilation of documents ‘from the time’ provides a very true idea of what the original documents are like even if the originals are missing. This loyalty to the primary documents, with minimal inventive input from the author, is what makes this novel such a reliable source of history about the Japanese-Canadian internment that even scholars can use with confidence.

In fact, “Obasan” reminds me of one of my favourite historical novels – “Beyond Shades of Gray” by Lithuanian-American author Ruta Sepetys. It tells of the deportation of a Lithuanian girl called Lina, along with her mother and younger brother, from her home country to a labour-camp in Siberia under the Stalinist regime during WWII. When interviewed, Sepetys revealed how the majority of the happenings in her novel were based on real-life stories told to her by survivors of the Soviet Genocide in the Baltic. This novel is similar to “Obasan” in two ways. Firstly, it tells of an aspect of WWII history that is not widely known. Second, and more importantly, the role Sepetys plays is similar to Kogawa in that they acted as weavers who incorporate multiple real-life stories into a narrative with minimal imaginative input. Hence, the narratives they tell stay relatively true to a group of people’s experiences and can reliably inform us of a version of history itself.

Yet, my discovery that historical novels can be “accurate” sources of history because they stay faithful to historical events should not be generalised to all historical novels. There is often a need to dramatize or imagine events because of insufficient rich historical sources, as a part of the author’s creative expression, or to gain viewers.

Nevertheless, regardless of how historically accurate or inaccurate a historical novel may be, I think that historical novels are an excellent starting point for further investigation of a given historical event or period. No matter how creative the work, historical fiction still informs us something of history – it introduces and acquaints the reader to key people, events, or customs from the period. Of course, the more it is closely based on historical facts and artefacts, the more one can take its word with confidence.

Learning about history is important – the past shapes the present, and often repeats itself. Historical novels are a powerful tool in transmitting this knowledge to a new generation.

Hi,

We have recently started reading a graphic narrative called “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi in ASTU class. It is a narrative of the author’s childhood in Iran amid the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. When I first saw the inside of this assigned reading, I was surprised. A comic? After all, they tend to be associated with younger audiences, for recreational reading and to provide humour.

However, as I read, my preconceptions quickly changed. Instead, I found Satrapi’s use of the graphical narrative medium incredibly effective in presenting the serious topics of the book, such as war and violence. Let us look at two pages from the book:

Picture 1. Page 51 of Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”. Picture taken by myself.

Picture 2. Page 125 of Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”. Picture taken by myself.

The graphical narrative genre also has conventions of short phrases or sentences. The simple, straightforward language of “They burned him with an iron” in Picture 1 (p51) is direct and does nothing to veil the horrific reality. Similarly, Picture 2 is the narrative of Niloufar’s execution with descriptions of her being “spotted”, “arrested”, and “executed”. The fact that it is broken into three frames, with gutters separating them, slows down the pace in which the reader reads. This heightens the tension, and allows the reader to feel full force what is happening in the story.

Likewise, I was intrigued by how impactful the illustrations are despite their simple and iconic form. They are far from being realist, yet they are very real and conveys the message clearly. In Picture 1, the squint of Ahmadi’s eyes, and how wide his mouth is opened as he is being tortured is enough to convey the screaming and agony he must have felt to the reader. With Niloufar’s execution in Picture 2, the third picture is particularly striking as I have seen similar pictures in the news and can imagine it.

Since reading “Persepolis”, I have come to realise the power of graphic narratives and animation. I believe that it is an effective therapeutic strategy that should be promoted. Unlike many other forms of art (writing, poems, composing music, film-making etc.), the graphic narrative genre is accessible to the masses. In general, it is not restricted by age, literacy, education or skill level, or specialized equipment.

Furthermore, a graphic narrative is advantageous because it generates a visual representation of something. The clients are often people who have difficulty expressing – often young children, or people who had experienced traumatic events and the memories are too painful to be recalled and spoken about. Seeing it in front of them may be helpful for the client to reflect, gain some insight to long-unanswered questions or confusion in the mind, and become more self-aware. Visual representations will also enable the therapist to better understand the client’s inner thoughts by interpreting the story and asking the person to elaborate, and let them come up with “next steps” tailored for the client.

The “filtered” iconic illustrations of the graphic narrative genre may also help those who experienced trauma to revisit their memories when seeing real photographs is too much. They see, but don’t see. And often, word descriptions just aren’t as good. Hence, it also has wide applications in the education sphere. The filtered images are a good way to introduce or transmit knowledge about difficult topics to younger children where the gruesome graphics may be too much. While they may be light-hearted on the surface, nevertheless, they can effectively get across the deeper, darker topics at hand and plant questions in the children’s minds.

The graphic narrative genre is also superior to other art forms because it allows the creation of an “experiencing I” or “narrating I” that may be similar, but is separate from the person themselves. This may provide enough detachedness so that the suppressed, traumatic memories may be accessed and grappled with more easily, while staying true to the reality.

Through engagement in this therapeutic activity, the hope is that the client will be able achieve some kind of release from whatever they may be dealing with and possibly move forward.

As the saying goes: “A picture paints a thousand words”.

Works Cited:

Pages 51 and 125 of Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”

Hi!

We are being introduced to academic writing in our ASTU class. Since the term began, we talked about genre, citation, and summaries. I find the Giltrow textbook useful because it presents and explains this new style of writing in a very understandable manner.

For example, it called academic writing a genre, with the equation:

Genre = Situation + Form

In ASTU class, we discussed how different situations with different aims would give rise to different forms of writing. Relating to our context, the different setting of university – with the goal of research and “production of knowledge” – would require a specific style of writing different from high school. Similar to what Anna H. wrote in the class summary, my previous view of citation was merely giving credit to the researchers to avoid plagiarism. I have never considered academic writing as a genre or “scholarly conversation” before. Hence, after hearing it being put this way, I experienced a “eureka” moment and understood.

Similarly, the musical analogy of “Orchestrating voices” left a strong impression on me. In class, Professor Luger built on this with terms like “conductor”, “full symphony”, “duet” and “solo”. She talked about how the academic article writer is like a “conductor”, with full control of which scholars speak, when, and how.

These eureka moments shed light to academic culture, and are significant in bringing me out of my state of confusion. I did the IB Diploma programme in the last two years of high school. Students were required to complete an “Extended Essay”– a coursework component on a research topic of their choice, and it is like a mini-dissertation. My Extended Essay was a literature review of research articles about my topic from Psychology. Likewise, I had to search and read many research articles.

I struggled with comprehension. I could not identify what the researchers were trying to say easily. The sentences were lengthy – each one consisting of several clauses, and tightly packed with jargon, new concepts, abbreviations, and psychological inventories that I was not familiar with. While I did not look much at the statistical elements, the p-values and tables nevertheless broke the flow of reading. The citations did too. It was very difficult orientating myself around what the results showed (because in Psychology, it is often a comparison between two conditions). I felt stressed, frustrated, and thought that it was my problem for not understanding the articles. I believed my reading ability was diminishing because I was losing the flow.

The writing process was equally difficult. My teacher told us that it is like “building a story” – add levels by finding arguments that support, refute, or from alternative viewpoints, evaluate them, and add “lots of nice discussion”. Hence, I seemed to have an idea of how to write it, yet I just didn’t know how to start and write SOMETHING.

There is much to tell and much to learn from the entire process. Needless to say, I found the experience very challenging and traumatic. And rightfully so! Because I hadn’t been trained yet.

So probably because of my own experience in academic culture, I am able to relate to the ASTU course content more. Seeing academic writing as a “genre”, thinking of it as me contributing to an ongoing “scholarly conversation” through critique or extension of what previous scholars had said, and the musical analogy of “orchestrating voices”…something clicked and I have better understanding. Yet, I am still learning. For example, I currently still find it a challenge scavenging through the lengthy sentences or paragraphs to pinpoint the researcher’s main arguments or identifying their position.

So…what?

Firstly, I think that the use of analogies, metaphors, and narratives like the ones used in the Giltrow text and Professor Luger is an excellent way to explain and teach students new ideas. It is also a great memory strategy. Drawing connections by comparing a new concept to “old” knowledge/something relatable in the student’s life makes it easier for them to understand the new idea. For example, my high school Biology teacher explained the photosynthesis electron transport chain mechanism by telling a story of an energetic classmate tumbling down the stairs. My point is, I think that it this is useful because many students (at least many in Hong Kong where I come from) still use traditional methods such as rote learning. Students should be introduced and encouraged to experiment with creative methods to aid learning. It also makes the learning experience more fun and less tedious.

Lastly, I think that it is important to normalize issues. It is important to talk about challenges one face so that others don’t feel like that it is them who are finding things difficult. And that makes them (at least me before) hesitant to seek help. A few months ago, I wondered whether it was good or bad to normalise. I thought: “Knowing that you are not alone may be somewhat comforting, but that doesn’t change the situation. I still have to face my own situation and do something.” Moreover, people may simply dismiss it as “normal” and leave it as such. However, I now find normalization nice, liberating, and even empowering to know that a person is not alone, because then, people can support each other and find ways to overcome the problems together. We shouldn’t merely stop at the “dismissal” stage, but instead, move forward and find ways to actively solve the challenges. And one of the ways is to seek help.

A long post for today. Until next time!

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