For the last couple of classes we have been discussing Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, a non-fiction account of a Syrian-American man’s experience living Post-9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The story centers around Abdulrahman Zeitoun, his wife Kathy and their four children. It was written by critically acclaimed author Dave Eggers who worked side by side the Zeitoun’s in order to produce the most accurate account possible. In the section, Notes about the Book, it states, “This is a work of non-fiction, based primarily on the accounts of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun. Dates, times, locations and other facts have been confirmed by independent sources and the historical record. Conversations have been recounted as best as they can be remembered by the participants. Some names have been changed.” Additionally it states that “it was written with the full participation of the Zeitoun family, and reflects their view of the events”.

Already this statement is making a lot of claims. The issue with any work asserting that it is non-fiction is that it is claiming to be the real truth. But for any given story, there are multiple truths because there are many perspectives involved; we have talked about this idea a great deal in our ASTU class with regards to other texts. If a work is claiming to be the end-all-be-all, is there a way to dispute it? Can we debate the logistics, representations and attitudes portrayed in the book if they are claiming to be one’s true experiences? I believe to a certain extent yes. I do not believe there is such a thing as the absolute truth about an event because as the author of your retelling, you are subconsciously filtering what is most and least important. So while it is important to hear various voices, especially those are are often silenced, it is also important to consider the possible biases that a “truth” may present.

I am thinking about this mostly in context of the abuses that have come to light in the last few years. After the book was written, Kathy Zeitoun came forward about the domestic abuse she has been experiencing since the beginning of their marriage in 1994. How is it possible for Zeitoun, the man Kathy (through Eggers) describes as “an honest man, honest to the core, hardworking, reliable, faithful, devoted to family”, to do such a thing? But we know that Kathy has been abused; that is indisputable. So the question is then: was Eggers simply ignorant to the abuses when writing the book or was he covering them up? Throughout the entire book, the Zeitouns are described as the perfect family, from their perfect love story to their perfect children. They seem to have no flaws; although in one section, he made a point to address that they sometimes had a “spirited back-and-forth”. But this is the only place in the book in which this kind of behavior is outlined and I am not sure if those are necessarily the same words I would choose to describe domestic abuse.

It really begs the question of what other things were possibly tweaked in order to give a more positive spin of the truth. This is the main reason why it is difficult to claim that something is the truth; does spinning the truth also count? What implications does this have on the non-fiction genre as a whole? I think what we can take away from this instance is the fact that self-proclaimed truths should never be taken at face value; it is important to consider the person or persons behind it.

We haven’t read any new material for my ASTU class in a while, so I am going to throw it back to a few weeks ago. We read and discussed Poems from Guantanamo Bay published by Marc Falkoff but I never took the time to really think or write about it. As the name suggests, this book is a collection of poems written by prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. These men are accused of being terrorists of the highest degree and therefore even though we know that their basic human rights are being violated in Guantanamo, we turn a blind eye.

When this collection of poems was published, there was a lot of controversy surrounding all aspects of the book, ranging from the poems themselves to its sheer existence. One controversial aspect that I found to be very interesting was the critique that some of the poems were not even really good. To a certain degree I had to agree that there were a few poems that were a bit… clunky, for lack of a better word. Maybe that is just because I am used to poetry that has nice flow.

But once I was able to take a step back and really evaluate the situation in which these poems are being produced, I realized,

“Who cares?”

Should we really be asking whether or not these poems are good? Is that a fair question to ask in this context? Sure, if this were a book produced under different circumstances, that would be a fair question. But these poems are produced by men that have been removed from society, tortured and abused to the point where they have begun to question their own humanity. I do not know how much harm these men have caused, but whether or not they are terrorists, I do not believe that anyone deserves to be treated as they have. For them, poetry is an outlet, a healthy outlet, a way to stay sane, a way to remind themselves they are human. So while some of these men were poets before they were held captive, many were not and that does not mean that they do not have any less of a right to produce poetry and have their voices heard.

I think that among this debate, what is forgotten is that poetry is an art form. And like any other art, it is meant to be uncensored, raw and subjective. Therefore how can we sit here and judge someone’s expression of emotion based on whether or not it is “good” to our standards? I think that this debate misses the mark completely because that is not at all what Falkoff set out to produce. He did not go to Guantanamo looking for the world’s greatest poets; he set out to give a voice to the voiceless, the forgotten, the abused.

The past two weeks of our ASTU class have been incredibly fast paced: we whizzed through a great number of texts all relating to  the events of 9/11. A common theme that I found throughout these texts was that of “us” vs “them”. What I find most interesting about this dichotomy is the ability that is had to not only cause fear, misunderstanding and hatred, but it ultimately leads to dehumanization.

There are many ways in which the idea of us vs. them gets reinforced through the various texts we have read. Take Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for example. The novel very clearly presents the narrator’s father as the hero, the good guy and the terrorists as the enemy, the bad guys. This is not only the beliefs of the 9 year old narrator, but also that of the author and as a result, it becomes the beliefs of the reader. The text serves as a medium to convey ideas, beliefs and opinions and just as mainstream media molds the way in which we think about us vs. them, Foer’s novel performs the same task. It is through this type of thinking, that there has to be a good guy and an enemy, that perpetuates ignorance and cruelty.

To further this point, Butler asserts that we “mourn for some lives but respond with coldness to the loss of others” (36). This is due to the before mentioned dichotomy. How can we mourn for lives that we didn’t even consider worth living before? How did we get here? Can humans get past this dichotomy? I really hope so because it is this stream of thinking that perpetuates and justifies wars and violence.

On a slightly different (yet very related note), it is just so fascinating to me how malleable the human brain is. We are constantly being brainwashed to believe certain things and to want certain things and we do not even realize it. Roughly seventy years ago, the enemy was Germany; fifty years ago, the enemy was Russia. Today it is the Middle East. We spend so much time in our history classes looking at propaganda, scoffing at its ridiculousness, at awe that citizens of that time actually believed such biased news and yet the same exact thing takes place today!

It sickens to think about the fact that people can be so easily manipulated, into doing things they might not otherwise do, because they live in fear. This is the main and most powerful strategy that militaries utilize: dehumanization. I found this article on my Facebook newsfeed that talks about an American Iraq veteran who is on trial for having raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and then killing both her and her family… reading about it was so incredibly heart wrenching, disturbing and upsetting. I don’t really know what else to say about it besides the fact that it perfectly exemplifies the points I have made about about the us vs. them dichotomy.

I’m back!

It was very nice to take a break from school and go home for the first time since August, but we are right back on that work grind and the novel that is kicking off our second term of ASTU is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I just want to start off by saying that I actually really enjoyed this book. This was quite a shocking revelation because generally I find it really difficult to get through course assigned readings. I’ve already recommended it to a few of my friends; it was that good!

That being said, it does not necessarily mean that I enjoyed all of the characters or choices that were made in the novel. For instance, the protagonist, Oskar Schell, would quite often get on my nerves, but I also tend to forget that he is an eight year old boy who recently lost his father. And of course, it is also quite natural for a child so young to process death and the event of 9/11 in very simplified terms.

Oskar is a very smart kid, with a great drive to educate himself on just about everything, but the things that he learns are simply facts, void of emotional attachment or understanding; in that sense, he thinks in very black and white terms. To explain this, I will cite an example from the text. After 9/11, a day which he names “the worst day”, Oskar developed a great deal of phobias related to the terrorist attack. As he lists off things that make him panicky, he mentions “Arab people on the subway (even though I’m not racist), Arab people in restaurants and coffee shops and other places, […] people with mustaches, […] turbans” (36). Due to the media of the time, Oskar was fed an idea and an image of the enemy, and those people were Arabs, or anyone that looked Arabs, hence the mustaches and turban comment. It is blatant that Oskar is racist, yet he is such a young child when all of this is happening that is it understandable that he is not fully understanding the implications of this fears. By stating that he is “not racist”, he proves that he knows what racism is and that is is undesirable to be considered as such, and yet he still holds these fears.

This response is quite natural, I think, among many young children during this time, and I am sure even among adults who are not so socially conscious. Post 9/11, there was a very strong sense of “us vs. them” and even George W. Bush promoted this kind of cut-and-dry thinking by famously stating, “you’re either with us or you’re with the enemy” (he uses “enemy” and “terrorist” synonymously in many cases).

This kind of thinking is problematic in many ways because it dehumanizes the enemy and categorizes a vastly diverse group of people into one large homogenous group with the label: “terrorist”.

It really makes me wonder about Oskar’s generation, those who are a little older than I am, and how they are currently approaching issues in the Middle East and their current outlook on racial discrimination against Arabs, Muslims, and those who may even choose adorn a mustache. I feel as though because the issue was so close to home, Americans were finally able to victimize themselves: see themselves as the attacked rather than as the attackers. It is a shame that rather than finally being able to sympathize with those that that have made war an everyday reality for, they instead decide to close off their borders and separate themselves even more than before. The intention of my post is not at all to downplay the horrific nature of 9/11, but simply to bring to light some of the issues that were perpetuated after the event and the ways in which the United States made some poor choices in handling the matter.

The term is coming to a close and we are finally on our last book for this year. For the past two weeks or so, my ASTU class has been working through Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. On Tuesday, we went on a mini field-trip to the Rare Books Library to explore the Joy Kogowa Fonds. For those that are unfamiliar with archives and fonds, I will provide a (very) brief overview.

An archive is a collection of documents and records that serve as a resource of a great number of primary and secondary sources. In an archive you may find several fonds. A fond is more than a just collection of documents created by a person or organization; it is distinct in that it is organically accumulated materials over time by the creator. So at the Rare Books Library, we looked at Joy Kogowa’s Fonds, more specifically, at the documents and records dated around the time she was writing Obasan.

In the box that I was looking through, the files mainly consisted of drafts for Obasan. There were some pages that were typed on what looked like a typewriter and there were some that were just scribblings on practically anything that she could find. I even found a take out napkin with writing on it! It is interesting to think about how the process of writing a novel, or anything for that matter, is not always clean or organized inspiration strikes and often times there is nothing else to write on but the scraps of paper sitting before you. It felt really cool to see the materials and records that all played a role in her writing of the novel. It makes me think about all the “crap” I have sitting on my desk and how I hate throwing things away because they all have some sort of significance for me, no matter how big or small; everything has a meaning that I feel like I would be forgetting by simply throwing it away.

Anyways, after flipping through a great number of drafts for her novel, I finally stumbled upon something quite interesting. I found a page in Box 10, File 7 that looked like a university style cover page for her novel. The title “Obasan” was crossed out and there was a massive list going down the middle of alternate titles! Some of the legible ones (and slightly illegible ones) included: “A Package From Aunt Mur”, “If I Must Remember” (x2), “Death of Silence”, “The Silence Never Dies”, “Everyone Someday Dies”, “Read ______ ______ Braille”, “That We Might ____ Sight”, “Hope Amidst (?) This Mountain” and “Propagation of the Species”. After reading these alternate titles, I really got a sense of the key messages that Kogawa wanted us to take away from her novel. There is a repetition of themes of silence, death, remembering and hope which are also seen very clearly throughout Obasan. Kogawa wrote a novel about an issue that is very little talked about in Canada; the whole purpose is to talk about the experience of Japanese internment so that it is not forgotten and you can really see that in these alternate titles.

But I like that for whatever reason, she chose “Obasan” to be her title. I feel like not only does it require a little more analysis to postulate why she choose to name the novel after the quiet aunt, but it also incorporates many of the above elements in a simpler, cleaner title. I think that Kogawa chose to name her novel “Obasan” because she represents the element of silence that is so important to the theme of her book. Through Obasan’s character, the novel shows that silence is not equivalent to not caring or not hurting; it is actually quite the opposite. Silence is what hurts Japanese-Canadians and Canada as a whole because it pretends as if the suffering that they endured never happened as it was never acknowledge. It is also important to note that Obasan’s silence can have a different cultural meaning, meaning one thing in the “West” and other in the “East; silence may be her language. Obasan was a woman of few words unlike Aunt Emily, who was very vocal about the injustices their family faced. Often times, the protagonist, Naomi, would think to herself that Aunt Emily sometimes talked a little too much. She even once noted that “people who talk a lot about their victimization make me uncomfortable. It’s as if they use their suffering as weapons or badges of some kind” (41). Simply put, it is the quiet ones that are battling the most demons inside because usually the ones that announce it are only calling attention to themselves and their suffering; it is the silent ones that you should be most concerned about. Therefore, it is hard to know exactly why Kogawa decided to name her novel after the character of Obasan but there are definitely links between the traits of the quiet aunt and the silence of Japanese-Canadians and Canada as a whole.

It has been a long time since I’ve written a blog post; and in that time, we finished analyzing Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, whizzed through Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Saco and are now currently working through Obasan, a novel by Joy Kogawa. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I wanted to write about this week and there is one topic that is constantly comes to mind: Naomi’s sexual abuse in Obasan. This is probably because this is a topic that is very personal to me and something about the way in which Kogawa wrote about this experience really touched me.

As a little background, Obasan is a novel narrated by a woman named Naomi Nakane set in the 1970s as she recounts the events of Japanese internment in Canada. The novel jumps between the present and past and in one of these time jumps to the past, Naomi tells us about a secret she has kept from her mother all these years: the fact that Old Man Gower used to repeatedly molest her starting at the age of 4. What is very interesting about this segment of the novel is the fact that Naomi does not just tell us what happens as a grown woman, but she tells us the story from the perspective of her 4 year old self.

On page 74, Naomi says, “I am a small girl being carried away through the break in the shrubs” and similarly on page 75, she simply states, “I am four years old.” There is something about the short, direct sentences that she uses in this section that give off the impression of being emotionless and disconnected from this experience. Moreover, the way in which she describes her surroundings and mechanically describes the event as “this happened, then this happened, then this…” suggests to the reader that Naomi has not yet analyzed how this event has really impacted her. I would go so far as to say that Naomi was very confused at the time in which it was happening, and therefore she was not capable, at the age of 4, to fully comprehend the extreme impact that this event had had on her. She may have even thought that because the event was not documented or shared, that she would be able to simply forget it and act as if it never happened. She had been silent about her abuser for a very very long time and the following is her rationale for her silence: “If I speak, I will split open and spill out. To be whole and safe I must hide in the foliage, odorless as a newborn fawn” (76). So from a young age, because of this experience, Naomi was taught silence and shame. She came to understand that she had to be silent in order to be safe; she had to disappear so that no one could notice her suffering. From a young age, Naomi learned how to be afraid of her emotions.

The way in which she interpreted and understood this traumatic experience goes on to shape how she interprets and understands Japanese internment in Canada. She does not see the need in creating an uproar the way her Aunt Emily does, rather she simply wants to forget. It isn’t until she learns of her mothers death years later that she understands the importance of sharing secrets, stories and emotions. Naomi wants to remember; she wants to feel. She realizes that not talking about events or experiences doesn’t make it go away or disappear; it just makes the suffering even more unbearable.

To be honest, I know very little about current conflicts in the Middle East; it is shameful, I know. But I am trying to be get educated. With that in mind, it is important to note that all media is biased and generally all you can find online about the Middle East is that it is synonymous with terrorism, the people are terrorists and their religion promotes terrorism. Although I know that this is not the full story and that it is really dense to generalize a whole population, I really hadn’t thought about it that much. That’s why when I stumbled upon this video on my Facebook newsfeed, I was floored. The argument the CNN people were making is one you hear all the time but when you actually start to think about it, it’s super wack.

Anyways, I thought I would share it just because I thought it was relevant to Persepolis due to the content matter; enjoy!

Boy oh boy, is it time for blog post number two already?!

Well, for the past two ASTU classes, we have been discussing Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi in relation to its genre. The book is a “graphic narrative”, you could look at it as a kind of morph of a graphic novel and autobiography. It is not a graphic novel in that is it simply not a novel, but it is not just an autobiography because the illustrated aspect of the book plays such a key role in relaying Satrapi’s story to the reader. In fact, that is exactly what this post is going to focus on.

Why did Satrapi choose to tell her story in the form of a graphic narrative? What are the advantages of publishing a comic book over a generic autobiography?

For starters, comic books are generally easily accessible and quick reads; that is to say, there is not a lot of thought or effort that goes into reading a comic book, versus say a 200 page autobiography. Considering her topic, a comic book is a great vehicle to get her story into the cultural mainstream. She is telling a story of her childhood growing up in Iran, a topic that many people in the Western world know nothing about, so to deliver it in a way that is very comprehensible, accessible and in many ways relatable for all readers is a brilliant strategy. Not only that, but throughout the entire book she plays with the juxtaposition of war and terror with child naivety and humor which would be difficult to portray through a written autobiography.

Take for instance page 133.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Page 133)

Here is an example of a serious event that she is able to depict with humor. The two women are part of the women’s branch of the Guardians of the Revolution and they had the right to arrest Marji because she was improperly veiled. On the next page, she explains that if she were to be arrested, they would have the right to detain her without notifying her parents and torture her; anything is fair game. But despite it being a serious incident, Satrapi uses humor to recount the event. For instance, one of the women calls her shoes punk and as the narrator Marjane notes, “it was obvious that she had no idea what punk was”. Not only is her narration witty and sassy, so are her retaliations in the speech bubbles. When one of the women comment on her tight jeans, she quickly repsonds, “they shrank!!” I found this page to be really funny despite the fact that it is depicting a very serious issue for many women of that time.

Throughout the book, Satrapi expertly utilizes humor as a tool for conveying very heavy themes and it poses a very fascinating juxtaposition and makes for a very interesting read.

On a slightly unrelated note, what also struck me on this page and in a couple of other places throughout the book (particularly pages 93 and 74) was the use of the word “whore”. Marji was just a teenager and she was classified as a whore based on her veil positioning. The words “whore” and “slut” are tossed around loosely in this book to describe women who don’t follow the dress codes and that is a very mature concept for a child to understand – not only to understand but also deal with being called one. 

After reading Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and realizing how little I knew about Iran, its people and its culture, I started to wonder what else I had no clue about and that is when I realized that I have never tried Iranian food!

This is anarchy people!

So that you can truly understand just how devastating this is you must know that I eat as a hobby. There is literally never a time when I am not thinking about food; probably because I am always either starving or overeating. So that being said, I have not yet had a cuisine that I do not enjoy; I love (in no particular order) Chinese, Italian, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Mexican, American, French, Japanese, Korean, El Salvadoran, and the list goes on. There is no cuisine that I have tried that I do not enjoy, but that is not to say that I have tried them all. Iranian is one of these cuisines! I was curious what Iranian cuisine looked like and I that is when I stumbled upon this glorious feast (and of course, promptly, my stomach growled).

Photo Creds to Grow in Grace Life

It looks so wonderful! The colors are just beautiful and it looks like a really balanced meal. It slightly resembles Indian and Mediterranean cuisine, with the kabobs and what not but boy oh boy what I would give to get my hands on some Iranian food. But on more of an intellectual note, it really is a shame that there is not more of a cultural exchange that happens between the states and Iran. That is to say, the ONLY reason I have never tried Iranian food before is because it is not accessible! Given our rocky relations over the past years, all you hear about Iran is negative and very rarely do you see Iranians represented as anything but evil in the media. So not only are we told a very limited amount of information about Iran, but we also see very little of their culture. As a result, it is easier to see them as an other, because we are not seeing representations of how we are all similar, only of how they are different and unlike us. This deprivation of culture is something that I never considered before as a result of the War on Terror, but it plays a key role in shaping how we understand it.

So it looks like I have two options if I want to get my hands on one of those kabobs. I can take a trip to LA cause I hear there is a lot of Iranian food spots down there, or I can make my way to Iran in order to experience not only the food, but also the culture, the people, the architecture and all the other beautiful things you don’t hear about in the media. Only time will tell.

“What is your earliest childhood memory?”

The answer to that question will invariably differ from person to person, but it will also vary depending on the person’s generation. For instance, if you were to ask me what my earliest childhood memory was, I would have no answer for you. Not because I don’t possess any, but simply because I cannot distinguish what memories I have retained on my own and what “memories” I have from one of my many home videos. This may not be the case for my dad, for instance, because he does not have access to videos of his childhood simply because the technology was not readily available the way it is today.

It makes me wonder if the way in which we are remembering things today are altering due to constant technological advances. Everyday thousands of photos and videos are being captured; does this mean that we are remembering more because we have a constant desire to record every moment of our lives? Or are we remembering less, because we are now reliant on technology to retain memories?

Momma taking home videos (Circa 1995)

My curiosity of this recent phenomenon was triggered by a new word that I came across in Shazad’s The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning, “technologies of memory” (Shahzad, 302). In her article, Shahzad states, “cultural and individual memory are constantly produced through, and mediated by, the technologies of memory” (Shahzad, 303). These include, but are not limited to, “media, textbooks, documents, the Internet, museums, monuments, or landscapes” (Shahzad, 303). In other words, the purpose of technologies of memory is to make sure that we don’t forget, to make sure that we remember, but to remember it in a certain way.

Take for instance, a history textbook. They are not subjective; they are very much opinionated. The authors have a certain worldview that frames the way in which they process and narrate certain historical events. And alongside the rest of society, they are telling the story they want to be told. Home videos serve the same purpose. My parents are the filmmakers, in the same way that historians and professors are the authors of history textbooks. My parents didn’t record their fights or all the times I got in trouble, rather they recorded the time we went to the Toronto zoo, and the park behind our apartment and the first time I rolled over. Similar to history textbook authors, they shaped the technology of memory to translate what they thought was important, what they thought was worth remembering.

Moreover, it is interesting to consider that the photos we upload on Instagram and the Youtube videos that go viral are technologies of memory in the same way that home videos and history textbooks are; one could argue that they carry the same weight, if not more. They are simple tools, that are very much a part of our everyday lives, and yet we often forget the power that they hold to shape not only our individual memories, but also our collective memories. So next time your teacher catches you on Facebook, you could say that you are simply making your contribution to framing our collective memory; after all, Shahzad said it herself that “learning is a social experience” (Shahzad, 313).