Hello Class!
The visit to the Rare Books and Special Collections library was the topic of discussion for this week’s blogs. The class blogs were supposed to be about sharing the experience of our class field trip to the Rare Books and Special collection library at Irvin K Barber Library where we analyzed Joy Kogwa’s fond. Even though it was a field trip and we went there as a class, it was interesting to see how everyone learnt something different and had their own ‘individual’ experience despite of the whole experience being shared ‘collectively’ by the class.
Deigo’s usage of the term ‘forgetting as humiliated silence was attention-grabbing. He also made a bold statement about the ignorance of the ‘traumatic’ Japanese- Canadian’s history by the Canadian schools in reference to that term. Deigo’s opinions shared a common ground with Rachael, as she also feels the importance of educating students about the history of Japanese Canadians in order to preserve this important historical struggle. I could relate a lot to Mariana’s blog as the ‘shady’ history of Canada was shocking for international students like us. We were only aware about the existence of ‘multiculturalism’ of Canada but little did we know about its traumatic history. While all these blogs focused on the ignorance of the history of Japanese Canadians, other blogs focused more on the experience of analysing the Joy Kogwa’s fond and their ‘individual’ views about her fond.
Kaveel in his blog, referred his experience of being able to analyse ‘primary’ sources for the first time as ‘eye-opening’. He also shared pictures of various artifacts which was stimulating especially the brainstorming sheet titled ‘’SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM A NOVEL IN PROGRESS” which was compared to a scholarly article by Kaveel comprising of arguments, knowledge deficit and contribution to the larger argument. Carolina expresses her disappointment at Joy Kogwa’s fond, providing more information about the author’s work and not the author. I also appreciate how she got inspired by the field trip and decided to personalize her blog that represents the ‘real’ her and shared a picture of her bulletin board (I personally loved it, check it out!).
Overall everyone did a great job on their blogs and I really found all of them really thought-provoking. The blog posts this week were good end for this semester.
Good luck on the short essay and the finals!
See you all next semester!
-Priya