CAP – ASTU

Wow the last ASTU post of the year already?! The school year went by so quickly that I’m sure I’ll get my undergraduate degree before I know it… yet I felt like I learned so much but not enough at the same time?

Honestly, I’m very happy with how everything went this year (except maybe my grades) and I think I had a pretty fun first year of university experience. I felt like the biggest challenge for me this year was to really be efficient with time management and learning how to avoid distractions aka socializing… But 2015/16 was good to me.

Something I learned in relations to ASTU was definitely how to read papers quickly and efficiently, because the research materials for almost all other subjects are in the forms of scholarly essays, and considering that in ASTU we learn the break down of how a scholarly essay is formatted, I find myself able to get what the author is trying to say in a precise and accurate way. This skill made my research process so much easier, and I’m sure I’ll be using it for years to come!

On another note, I also want to discuss what it means to me to be a global citizen. When I signed up for the CAP global citizens stream, it was because I really enjoyed geography in high school and I was curious about the other subjects that the stream had to offer as well. But I wasn’t sure how the program was to fulfill the role of a global citizen – I mean what did this term even mean right? And it was only a brief moment at the beginning of the school year that ‘global citizen’ was addressed (the definition) before it just became a routine of learning things. Classes became focused on topics relative to their subjects, and I wasn’t really sure I could see the ‘global’ connection between the classes and students who seemed so distinctly apart. But looking at the situation now, I was very much reminded of the VICE documentary (about a trash island in the middle of the ocean somewhere) in which the explorers were trying to find a physical trash island. In reality, the island didn’t exist, just as how I imagined the global connection between the classes and everyone in the program to be something that I could physically or at least consciously acknowledge – but rather something else was in its place. Each of the subjects in this stream covered something that the other subject couldn’t, and while that may be the nature of the subject (like math can’t teach you about history), I found myself to be exposed to a lot of new and different perspectives – which may be the global connection, or should I say lens, that I gained from this program. And furthermore, this global lens is always followed through with why and how things happen the way they do, and the consequences of everything.

So, after all this, I guess I could say that the biggest thing I learned was probably to be more aware of the unexpected, and to not fall into the trap of expecting something. And to always keep learning I guess?

Thanks everyone for reading my blog until the end and until next time,

Peijia Ding

PS. I always feel super guilty about my trash/waste now after that documentary, so keep recycling/saving the planet!!

From what I heard this week, our ASTU class been on the topic of trauma through an article by Judith Butler, “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”. I have not been in class this week because I have caught one of the worst infections I have ever experienced – STREP THROAT (search it up if you don’t know and AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS). If any of you guys know what this is, I will never take my throat for granted again because it is EXTREMELY PAINFUL to swallow even my own saliva (feels like your throat is being pricked with fish bones 24/7). Furthermore, I found out that I was allergic to the penicillin that they gave me for treatment, so I just started on a new medication.

Anyways, aside from my terrible week, I found the article by Butler to be confusing to understand and a little bit repetitive to read. But I thought her argument that the use of the human body as a “bounded kind of entity” (52) to be really interesting. She uses this point to emphasize how precarious the human life is, which also connects to her point of which human lives are deemed as valuable and which ones are not. Despite the fact that all human lives are precarious and fragile, “lives are divided into those representing …” many things such as state interventions or destruction (53). Her examples using the United States as a major player in invading and influencing other countries without provocation stood out to me because that is exactly what I am learning in history. The US has had a very unstable with its neighbour, Central and South America because it has deemed itself as a bringer of democracy to countries it deemed as illiberal and authoritarian. The US has achieved its influence through coup d’etats and by supplying certain groups that it believed would bring democracy to certain countries. For example, the coup in Guatemala of the 1930s was supported by the CIA in order to bring in a new government deemed better by the US. But during the process of all of these “liberations”, thousands of people lost their lives. This goes perfectly with that Butler says, “war is precisely an effort to minimize precariousness for some and to maximize it for others”(54).

In my opinion, as long as any war goes on, there is always going to be alternative sides that do not agree with each other and will use one another as supporting reasons as to why certain actions (such as attacking) should be taken and why they should not. Therefore, I do not really know what solution to offer than perhaps agree with what Butler keeps repeating in her article – the fact that all humans are peculiar. I feel that fact needs to be made extremely clear, because there are a lot of stigmas attached to different groups of people (female, minorities, from the developing world, etc) but ultimately, it links back again to the idea of the precarious human body.

Butler, Judith. “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”. Frames of war: when is life grievable?. Verso, 2009. 33-62. Print.

Hello and welcome back to my first blog of 2016! This semester started off with our ASTU class reading the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer – a book that focuses on the journey of a young boy named Oskar and his quest to find out about a key seemingly left by his father. The storyline is further complicated by the fact that his father, Thomas Jr., died in the 9/11 attack and the intertwining narratives of Oskar’s grandparents – grandma and grandpa (Thomas Sr.).

After reading this novel, I have to admit – I did not like the main character, Oskar. I found the way that he approached situations and ideas to be not really normal, and I mean that in the sense that he overcomplicates/twists the situation. For example, when he was meeting Abby Black, he was adamant about getting to know her better and having a strong need to enter house (pg. 91). He did so by making up lies and manipulating the conversation. To me, I just did not see how he could validate himself to do such actions. How does he think he has the right to do whatever he wanted? And why did he want to do such a thing (such as having the need to visit an absolute stranger’s house)?

But as I was thinking about this, I also noticed that Oskar had a lot of blunt and straightforward moments, such as Oskar’s various comments regarding different races. For example, on page 10, Oskar comments how “if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word ‘fragile’.” Another instance where he makes a racial remark is on page 36, where he makes several comments about how he dislikes Arab people even though he is not racist.

The more I thought about how Oskar approached all these things in his life, I got the idea that perhaps by portraying the main character as a child narrator, it gave Foer the opportunity to express such blunt and weird thoughts that he wouldn’t otherwise to able to in an adult character. Like could an adult get away with saying racially sensitive remarks and making up lies to get into strangers’ houses? Most likely not. But a child saying these things and doing such a strange thing? More acceptable. And in a way, I think Foer did this because he wanted to express a sort of racial fear – especially regarding the fear/suspicion of Arabs after 9/11. The things Oskar said about Arabs were probably some of the thoughts thousands of Americans were thinking after the attack – but they couldn’t directly say it. The strange actions Oskar took to help heal himself after his father died were probably what some Americans wanted to do as well (after dealing with 9/11) – but they couldn’t because it was strange. So in that sense, Oskar could have been an outlet to express the thoughts and opinions  Americans might have had at that time.

However, there are certainly more questions to consider about Oskar and his weirdness, and even more questions to ask about the parallel to his grandparents’ narration. That is to say, those are just some more ideas that I’m interested in exploring in my next blog!

For the past few weeks, our ASTU class has continued to focus on Obasan by Joy Kogawa for analysis regarding trauma and forgetting as common themes. However, on Thursday, Nov. 19, our ASTU class took a much more interactive approach to the work of Kogawa by going to the Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC.

First, just some thoughts about the rare books archives first:

The archives were a lot more modern than I thought, and it looks just like a regular library. For some reason, I kept on thinking it was going to be more like a dudgeon or something, but what I thought was really interesting was that our UBC location holds some of the original manuscripts from the biblical era (I think?) and to know that those artifacts are the only existing versions of it in the whole world really emphasizes the importance of the artifacts. To know that you are in a place where you can view the items created by people thousands of years ago is really amazing.

Another perspective of the archives that I never really considered are online archives. It’s just strange to think that anything considered to be rare exists in an online form, with technology only growing within the last century. This, compared to thousands of years of using paper or animal skins to document human thoughts is quite strange when you think about it.

Anyways, moving onto the Kogawa fonds. These collections held Kogawa’s process of writing her fictional novel, with a huge part of the collection consisted of factual items, such as newspaper articles, letters, government documents, etc. There were also reviews of the novel, personal letters reaching out to the author and historical articles regarding the Japanese Internment in Canada.

What I found that was similar to my initial reaction of the book were how so many people were related to what I was feeling – that unexpected connection with the novel because of simple details or relatable incidents. I think Kogawa’s close narration of Obasan touched a lot of people, because she played a very familiar role of an aging grandmother/aunt taking care of you (or should I say Naomi). Some of the letters were from Japanese – Canadian children, who I think really connected with the book because often times, it is an older female member (like the grandmother or aunt) of the Japanese family that takes care of the household.

It was Kogawa’s ability to reach out to her readers in Obasan and the fonds expressing that process and its end results that made me really see her as a fellow human being (same as me except an author!). Seeing physical drafts, brainstorms, reviews, and personal response letters created the atmosphere that these were all the collections and artifacts directed at a very real living person. The emotions she expressed in her novel and felt the readers were from a very real living person. The facts and fiction on her work were based on very real situations.

That is to say, by visiting the Joy Kogawa fonds, it bridged the missing connection between the final production of the work Obasan and the author who created it. But would my experience with the fonds be different if Kogawa was not able to initially “hook” me through my personal experience of my grandmother? If I were not really interested, would I have looked into as much as I did?

It’s been a quite while since my last post but today I am going to talk about the two works that we are studying in class: a graphic narrative called Safe Area Gorzade by Joe Sacco and a fiction novel called Obasan by Joy Kogawa. Although these two works are different in how they express their story through styles and context, both works convey messages of trauma and remembering.

Personally, I felt that Safe Area Gorzade was a lot more aggressive in portraying trauma than Persepolis. This, in turn with its raw and realistic drawing style, made me (the reader) feel a lot more ‘stunned’ by the narrative. What I want to draw attention to with this graphic narrative is that it had a common theme: the use of black and white as its colours. This use of stylistic design kept me kind of aware and distant from the actual storyline – as an outsider looking in and being aware that I am an outsider. If the use of colour were introduced in both graphic works, I think I would focus more on how gross/realistic/good the illustrations are rather than the message the image is trying to express. It would also desensitize me to the gruesome nature of the work, such as the people injured by war (123) in Safe Area Gorzade, to repetitively see the blood and gore in realistic colours over and over again. With that said, the controlled black and white colour scheme reminds me of a lot of real life investigation TV shows or murder documentaries where the reenacted crime scene is usually always in a colour filter or in black and white. This again, in my opinion, has the same effect on the viewers – creating awareness as a viewer and retaining sensitivity to the nature of the topic (death, war, murder etc.).

On the other hand, Obasan by Joy Kogawa brought up a very personal act of remembering for me. In the scene where Naomi (the main character) describes her Aunt, referred to as Obasan, as being a part of her house reminded me of my own grandmother. Naomi goes on to explain that Obasan keeps every little thing that she comes in contact with, whether it be eraser stubs or paper doilies in the “house [that is] now her blood and bones”(15). This is just like my grandmother who also keeps every little thing, whether it is useful or not. I’m not sure why but if I ever have any questions about any of the things she keeps, she always has some kind of story or comment to tell about it. In that sense, my grandmother and Obasan are alike because both the houses they live in have a part of their identity. This memory was just very touching to me because it was so unexpectedly relatable – I didn’t think Kogawa would have felt the need to include that in her novel.

After discussing these aspects of the works we are studying in class, it only leaves me with other questions about why Sacco and Kogawa chose to express the way that they did.

Could Sacco’s narrative have been more powerful if selective scenes were coloured?

Was it Sacco’s choice to leave it black and white, or was it influenced by some other force that set boundaries as to what could be exposed to the general public?

Why does Obasan collect everything? Is it to gain control over what she could do versus a reality she could not control before? (Future VS past)

Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Gorzade. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2000.     Print.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Books,1981. Print.

In my previous blog post, I mentioned the value and importance of learning history as well as my personal change in perspective of historical events from the views of a child to who I am today. Once again in ASTU, we continued to discuss the various aspects Iranian author Marjane Satrapi wanted to draw upon through her graphic memoir, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, in which the concept of trauma stood out to me. In today’s discussion, Isabelle brought up a comment that made me want to look deeper into trauma and how it is portrayed from a child’s perspective. She voiced that she had witnessed a (live, I am assuming?) chicken killed as a child in relations to how Satrapi drew abstract and unrealistic depictions of the terrors occurring in Iran at that time. Specifically, how Satrapi portrayed traumatic incidents such as the dismemberment of her uncle as if a hallowed, disjointed mannequin, deaths as ghostly spirits or in some cases, nothing but a black emptiness. The manner in which Satrapi created these visuals are nothing like the real thing, which led me to question why and how she chose to represent trauma the way she did.

While discussing, we came to the conclusion that one of the possible reasons why Satrapi chose this style of simplistic and unusual art form was that it allowed a meaning of what we know of trauma and what we imagine trauma to be transcended through multiple levels, ultimately to a place where trauma cannot be fully represented in any form at all. That is to say, the abstract graphic form allows the reader to visually see what Marij (the protagonist) imagined as a child as well as in a sense, allow opportunity for the reader to imagine what really happened through the use of her narrative. I found this to be an engaging and interactive way of expressing and representing Satrapi’s personal experience with trauma, because it not only showed what she believed but also allowed me, the reader, to imagine through my own perspective what she was trying to convey.

When Isabelle mentioned the chicken, I was instantly reminded of my past experiences with deaths of animals. Growing up in China, I was aware of and allowed to witness the deaths of different animals (chickens, ducks, pigeons, fish, even a pig) for food. Keep in mind this was over 10 years ago, so at the time, I was around 6 or 7 years old when I saw these animals having their throat slit and watched them bleed to death. Although it may sound cruel and insensible to see these animals die and expose their act of death to a young child, this was very much a norm in some parts of China. I remember thinking that whole thing was very disgusting, and how sad it must have been for the animal to die. But at the same time, it seemed very ordinary, how animals must die to feed the human population. Looking back now, if I were to draw what I saw as a 6/7 year old, my visual representation would not be more than a scraggly shape of a chicken with X-crossed eyes and a spew of spiky blood coming from its neck.

At the age of 6/7, I clearly lacked the skills of drawing what I saw realistically. But at the same time, it was hard for me to even imagine drawing realistically (even if I could) because it was an act you do not particularly want to remember in exact details. It is hard to comprehend death of anything in any form of representation, because it is not something you usually desire to represent. I can imagine a sense of naiveness and childish innocence through Satrapi’s graphic representation, because that is how I would have drawn it myself. I also think that if Satrapi had drawn her traumatic incidents in a realistic manner, she is setting a tone for readers to believe that what she drew is the true depiction of trauma. To clarify that, I mean it in the way that readers would be more likely to associate what she presents (if it were drawn realistically in her graphic memoir) as what trauma might usually look like. That to me, is not as powerful as if a reader were to imagine the reality of trauma themselves, because everyone’s own interpretation of trauma is different. With that said, someone who actually witnessed a traumatic incident in person would not view it the same as a person who say, viewed trauma through TV or in Satrapi’s case, a graphic memoir.

The literature work that is the focus of our ASTU class this week is the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This memoir documents Satrapi’s experiences of living through the Islamic revolution in Iran as a child and how events during the conflict affected her. What personally made Satrapi’s memoir stand out to me was how well she explained the historical context through the plot of the memoir. This not only gave me a general understanding of Iran’s history, but urged me to think of other similar events of war and corruption around the world. It also led me to question my own accountability of history and how my own perspectives of historical and current events had changed through time.

Prior to beginning her memoir, Marjane Satrapi included a brief introduction about the history of Iran – how it developed from the nomadic Aryans to the great Persian Empire and finally the formation of Iran itself. The history of Iran rang a familiar sound to me, particularly when Satrapi explained that the Islamic revolution was initiated with the support of USA. In both my high school history class and my current history class at UBC, it seems common that powerful countries such as the US often manipulates and twists the government of the country in focus for their own benefit. Similarly, the Shah of the Islamic republic came into power through a coup d’etat – the french term for a sudden upheaval of the (current) government. In supporting this coup, the US was able to gain access to the oil riches located in Iran, yet ignored the chaos that soon followed this new government.

This reminded me of several cases in Latin America where the American government would assist with a coup in order to establish a new [puppet] government, and often times the US would benefit by gaining some type of resource or trade agreement. For example, Chile and the 1973 coup of its democratically elected leader occurred because CIA covert troops assisted in the coup. But what does this mean, and why does it matter if it happened in the past?

In hindsight, my method of thinking about these important issues has developed in a way similar to Marji, the protagonist of the memoir, from naiveness to a more mature perspective. I feel like I did not care about past historical events such as Chile and Iran because I just assumed that it happened (and that was it) and which ever was the first logical version of history I heard about it, I would believe it to be true. I also assumed that “democratic” countries such as the US would never be largely at fault for anything because they were suppose to be the good guys, right? Much like Marji herself, I was quick to assume and judge both historical and current events because I could not see the same story from multiple events. As Satrapi reflects upon her child self, she remarks that “[she] realized [she] didn’t understand anything”. Likewise, I did not question why things had happened the way they did, nor did I look further into the issue. In this sense, I never really could relate to past historical events – I was just someone reading about it and then forgetting it. That is until I heard multiple perspectives of historical events, it was not just from the perspective of the victors anymore. I realized that history is constructed from the perspectives of victors, victims, allies, bystanders and attackers (and more). And it was up to me to chose for myself which history was the “right” one.

It is true history is subjective, and the fact that she had recalled her experiences as a child does not mean it is any less true than other historical accounts. That is to say, historical context may wield more insight and questions than the dry, boring material is it known to be.

Peijia Ding

Citation:

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003. Print.