Hello readers!

This week in my ASTU class, we have been analyzing Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It provides a fictional account of twenty-two year old narrator, Changez’s, experience as a Pakistani in New York City before and after the traumatic events of 9/11. Changez attends Princeton University, obtains a job at the prestigious valuation firm Underwood Sampson & Company, and falls in love with an American girl named Erica all before returning home to Pakistan. Throughout the novel, Changez struggles to find his identity — is he Pakistani or American? What does it mean to be one or the other? This point is especially prevalent in the structure of the novel itself.

The novel takes the form of a dramatic monologue. In other words, the story is told through a one-sided conversation between Changez and an American in a Lahore café in Pakistan. Literary scholar Peter Morey discusses the novel’s form in his essay, arguing that this particular structure allows Changez’s character to exemplify the contrast between our pre-conceived assumptions and perceptions as readers — with regards to “war on terror” discourse — and reality (139). Morey focuses on this “deterritorialization” and destabilization of both the reader and Changez throughout his essay (138). That is to say, The Reluctant Fundamentalist challenges the assumptions of “war on terror” rhetoric, opening up the space for new interpretations to take place (Morey 138). This point is exemplified by the title of the novel itself. As readers, we would assume that Changez would be a “religious fundamentalist”, confirming our pre-conceived ideas about Muslims in a post-9/11 era. However, as Morey points out, this is not the case (139). Religion, in fact, is not the main focus of the novel. Once this point is identified, we — as readers — can choose to see Changez’s character in a new way. Changez no longer adheres to the stereotypes that plague society’s discourse; we are therefore “destabilized”. 

With regards to the dramatic monologue as the form of the novel, it makes Changez appear to be a relatable character, giving him a sense of authority to tell the story. However, the one-sided nature of the dramatic monologue also means that Changez’s narration could be unreliable. In other words, it is unclear as to whether or not Changez is making up his story or telling the truth. Are the characters he describes real? Are they allegorical? What happens at the end of the novel? Many questions are left unanswered.

After our discussions in class, I realized that Hamid may have chosen the dramatic monologue for the very purpose of not answering these questions. In other words, there is not supposed to be a “right” answer; that is not the point. Changez’s character and the form of the novel are meant to destabilize our assumptions. How we interpret the potential answers to these questions shows the extent to which we opened ourselves up to new perspectives, if we chose to do so at all. I found this to be an effective method and found The Reluctant Fundamentalist to be much more impactful as a result.

This is my last blog post, readers! It has been quite the year; thank you for participating. I hope you enjoyed our journey together as much as I did!

All the best,

Taylor K.

Work Cited

Morey, Peter. “The Rules of the Game have Changed:” Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Post-9/11 Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47. 2 (2011): 135-146. Web. Taylor & Francis. 18 Dec. 2015.

Hello readers!

This past week in my ASTU class, we analyzed a section of Phil Klay’s book Redeployment (the section we looked at is also entitled “Redeployment”). It provides an account of the Iraq war, solely from the perspective of Sgt. Price — a soldier returning home to his wife and dog after seven months of combat.

Sgt. Price describes his experiences in flashbacks, remembering his friends perishing and the odd sensation of returning home. Through his narration, it becomes evident that the alert mindset one must obtain in order to survive during times of war is hard to turn off when reacquainted with peaceful civilization. This point is exemplified when Sgt. Price and his wife, Cheryl, go shopping at an American Eagle Outfitters (12). He describes how there is a “colour code of mental awareness” that soldiers use, which acts as a preparedness scale. “White” is equivalent to unawareness. In other words, one is a “potential victim”; this is the state that most civilians are in all the time. Cheryl is one of these people. She walks around completely oblivious to any and all threats that may be apparent in the mall (12). Sgt. Price, on the other hand, can only think of Iraq as he obligingly heads to the change room with a pile of clothes to try on. He can no longer communicate with his wife, for he cannot turn off the militarized mindset that he acquired in combat (12). He knows that as much as she tries, Cheryl will never understand what he has gone through.

Through this experience, “Redeployment” shows the traumatic effects that warfare has from the soldier’s perspective, both on the battlefield and during the return home. Sgt. Price can no longer go back to his old sense of unawareness that is described as “white”. He struggles to communicate with his wife, who will most likely never move up on the preparedness scale and be able to understand the constant fear and stress that embodies soldiers 24/7 while in battle. In contrast to this, Johnathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — which I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts — focuses on the civilian aspect of warfare. It does so specifically through Grandma and Grandpa’s accounts of the Dresden bombings and the events of 9/11.

The grandparents’ inability to communicate with each other is especially exemplified by the fact that both characters write unsent letters — Grandpa writes to his son and Grandma writes to Oskar — because they do not feel capable of discussing their traumas with each other. The death of Anna and the longing for Grandma to be Anna, as experienced by both Grandparents, is a major absence throughout the novel that ultimately leads to unspeakability between this couple.

The overall feeling that encompasses Foer’s characters, especially the grandparents, is one of victimhood and the asking of ‘why did this happen to me?’. In contrast, Sgt. Price feels more involved in the process of warfare, as he was fighting on the battlefield. Although this may be the case, both Foer’s characters and Sgt. Price obtain a sense of unspeakability after experiencing the traumatic impacts that warfare places on them. Both books may address the issues associated with incommunicability from different perspectives — the soldier versus the civilian. However, the residual feelings and memories that result from the trauma afflicted on these individuals remain similar, as Sgt. Price fails to communicate with his wife and the grandparents fail to communicate with each other. Ultimately, the reactions that these characters have to traumatic experiences associated with warfare leave me with a question: is unspeakability inevitable with regards to trauma and war? Further discussion and analysis will be needed to answer this question.

Until next time, readers!

Hello readers!

This week in my ASTU class, we are continuing to analyze the remembrance of 9/11 through Johnathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I mentioned in my last blog post. However, we also have read “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect” from literary theorist Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When is Life Grievable. As the title suggests, Butler focuses on the vulnerability of the body, as well as the impact of interpretation and perspective regarding the lens through which we see and remember trauma.

Something that really struck me about “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect” is the idea of valuing peoples’ deaths. Butler claims that “by a cultural reflex, we mourn for some lives but respond with coldness to the loss of others” (36). In other words, some deaths affect us more deeply than others. Therefore, we value different peoples’ deaths at varying degrees. This idea is exemplified by the character of Oskar Schell in Foer’s novel. He lost the person most important to him during the bombing of the Twin Towers: his father. Oskar is completely shocked by his father’s death and his reaction is scattered throughout the novel. Sometimes he gets “heavy boots”, which is his way of expressing sadness. Other times he is cruel, such as when he tells his mother that he wishes she would have been the one to die in the bombings instead of his dad. Yet, he also feels frustrated. “It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can’t, because it happened here, and happened to me, so shouldn’t it be mine?” (256). In this case, Oskar is referring to the censorship of images by the USA government regarding the events of 9/11. Oskar wanted to find out how his father died, so he tried to Google search for images to see if he could locate his dad. The death of his father affected him so deeply, that Oskar felt compelled to connect with him once more — in this case, by discovering how he died. If he did not value his father, Oskar would not have made the effort, despite how difficult it was for him to do so.

On the contrary, Oskar has no trouble giving a presentation in class about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan towards the end of WWII. He shows his fourth grade class an interview of a women describing in vivid detail the horror that she experienced while looking for her daughter after the bombs decimated the cities. He then went on to tell his class facts about the bombing, including the diameter of the bomb. Oskar felt no connection to the people who died in these bombings; he learned about facts that had do with the bombs themselves, but displayed no sense of empathy towards the lives lost.

Ultimately, the value of death appears to be a prominent topic in both Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Butler’s “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”. Oskar displays this idea throughout the novel. He highly values the death of his father, as he was an extremely important figure in Oskar’s life. However, Oskar displays a sense of apathy with regards to those who suffered during the bombings of Japan. After analyzing both pieces of literature, I find that I am left with some questions: why do some deaths affect us more than others? Shouldn’t the fact that someone lost their life be enough to warrant grieving? How do you put a value on someone’s death? Is this desirable? These are questions that will require further debate and analysis in order to be answered.

Until next time, readers!

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect.” Frames of War: When is a Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009. 33-62. Print.

Happy New Year, readers!

Over our winter break, my ASTU class read Johnathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This novel focuses on the traumatic events regarding September 11th, 2001, specifically by following the story of Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy who loses his father (Thomas Schell Jr.) in these bombings. After finding a key hidden in his father’s room, Oskar sets off on a journey around New York City to find the lock it opens in an attempt to remain close to the father he can no longer look to physically. Although the storyline itself is intriguing, I found the structure of this novel to be the most compelling aspect; this is what sets it apart from the other technologies of memory that I have analyzed throughout my educational career.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close proceeds at a brisk pace, quickly moving from one event to another. Aside from Oskar, there are two other main narrators: Grandma and Grandpa (Thomas Schell Sr.). The grandparents’ chapters in the novel take the form of unsent letters — Grandma writes to Oskar and Grandpa writes to his “unborn child”. These chapters also take the form of flashbacks to earlier times in the grandparents’ lives, including the events they witnessed during the bombings at the end of World War II in Dresden, Germany. In other words, the novel jumps from Oskar in the present day to Grandma or Grandpa’s accounts of the past.

Within each of the narrators’ sections, there is a variety of visuals. These include photos of doorknobs, buildings, keys, and locks taken by Oskar’s camera, newspaper clippings with red pen used to circle grammatical mistakes, letters, and pages where pens were tested in an art store. The pen markings throughout the novel appear in colour, while the photos are black and white. These visuals do not appear in any particular pattern; they are placed in a somewhat random order. I find this last point particularly unusual, as I have not read any other novels with a similar format.

In general, the novel’s structure can be described in one word: sporadic. This choice in layout emphasizes the fact that each of the characters is traumatized. When one is traumatized, nothing makes sense or appears normal. Therefore, the random order of the visuals and jumping around from one character’s thoughts and actions to another makes sense. It gives Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a sense of honesty and authenticity with regards to both the events being described, as well as the characters’ emotional turmoil.

In contrast, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, which I mentioned in my last two blog posts, has no visuals; it relies solely on detailed description. Although this detail is effective in describing the traumatic events experienced by Naomi Nakane’s family, especially the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it does not show the sporadic mindset that the Japanese-Canadians most likely experienced as explicitly as Foer’s novel does with regards to 9/11.

Ultimately, I found both of these novels’ approaches to trauma effective in their own ways. Even though the structure of Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close shows the lack of normal functioning after experiencing an event like 9/11, the visuals were somewhat distracting at times and made the novel feel disjointed. Although this was the point, I personally prefer the approach that Kogawa took in Obasan, as it was somewhat easier to follow and felt more cohesive overall.

Until next time readers!

Hello readers!

In my ASTU 100A class this week, we were lucky enough to visit Joy Kogawa’s archive collection (as mentioned in my previous blog post, she is the author of Obasan) in the Rare Books and Special Collection area in UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Before moving on to some of things that are present in this collection, I feel as though I need to identify what an archive collection is, as I myself had little knowledge about this subject prior to this “field trip”.

According to the woman supervising our visit, archives can be defined as documents that are created or received by a person or organization. Such documents are essential to these peoples’ every day lives; examples may include diary entries and letters. Archives are especially important to scholars because they act as primary sources, or first-hand accounts, without outside analysis. These documents are organized by the person/ creator in contrast to libraries, where they are organized by subject. In other words, archival collections follow the principle of provenance — the bringing together of documents naturally in the original order of creation. With regards to archival organization, Kogawa’s collection of archives is referred to as a “Fonds”, which involves various paperwork, versus a “collection”, which deals with objects.

Moving on to Joy Kogawa’s Fonds specifically, it was really inspiring to see the amount of effort it took for her to write Obasan. As a student, I am constantly exposed to various types of scholarly articles, books, etc., as well as the graphic narratives and novels that I have mentioned in previous posts with regards to ASTU. In any case, every scholar appears incredibly intelligent; I cannot picture them writing anything that resembles a terrible first draft. This mindset also applies to Obasan; I could not visualize the piles and piles of drafts that Kogawa went through before even sending the novel to an editor in the hopes of it being published. However, my experience at her Fonds changed this mindset. Somehow, Joy Kogawa — the greatly revered Japanese-Canadian novelist — became a real person.

I witnessed scrap pieces of paper, in the form of an invoice and the outside of an opened envelope, with character analyses scrawled across it. There were drafts upon drafts of the novel present, with various changes written throughout by Kogawa and a variety of editors. I skimmed through an old catalogue, where the first version of Obasan appeared, with a pink and white cloth cover and lengthy quote encompassing the front of the novel.

Out of everything that I saw, the most exciting archive was a potential story outline for Obasan. Reading through this document gave me insight into Kogawa’s thought process. It was while looking through this outline that it hit me: Kogawa had to go through the same process that students do when writing papers in order to create this novel. She probably had her doubts about what she was writing and whether or not it was going to turn out in the end. On the outline, she moved some events around and crossed potential ideas out, as you can see in the photos below. She wrote them in messy handwriting that is only legible if you look closely at it. Ultimately, this outline sums up her struggle to figure out how to organize her thoughts into one cohesive body and tell the story she wanted.

This idea that Kogawa is a regular person has changed my entire perspective of the novel, as I have much more appreciation for her attempt to make known the tragic events experienced by Japanese-Canadians during World War II. I respect the order in which the main character, Naomi Nakane, remembers her family’s history and personal tragedies because I have now witnessed the effort it took for the novel’s storyline to end up where it did. As as student, I can somewhat empathize with Kogawa’s struggle to create this novel and have a better idea of where she was coming from when she wrote it. In other words, the ideas regarding Obasan did not magically pop into her head when she was writing; the hard work that Kogawa put in to produce this novel is evident in her Fonds.

Readers, if you ever get a chance to experience this unique collection, I highly recommend it!

Until next time!

Works Cited

Kogawa, Joy. Catalogue. n.d. Box 12 File 3. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

Kogawa, Joy. Draft of Obasan. n.d. Box 11 File 4. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

Kogawa, Joy. Story outline of Obasan. n.d. Box 8 File 11. Joy Kogawa fonds. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

Hello Readers!

In my ASTU 100A class this week, we have begun to discuss the novel Obasan by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. It provides a fictional historic account of the treatment of Japanese-Canadians in Canada after the bombing of Pearl Harbour during World War II, specifically by following the story of the young Naomi Nakane’s family. When my literature professor mentioned earlier this year that we would be reading Obasan, I realized that I had read this novel about three years ago as part of my tenth grade English curriculum. Admittedly at the time, I had my doubts about the purpose of reading such a novel beyond the need to highlight the astounding treatment of the Japanese by the Canadian government. However, after our discussions in ASTU, I have an entirely new perspective on the value of this book as an account of memory, history, and trauma.

This new-found view regarding the link between these three areas of study reminded me of a scholarly article that I read while writing a literature review for ASTU a few weeks ago. It is entitled, History and Memory, by history scholar Geoffrey Cubitt. This book studies the connections between individual and collective (or group) memory and the significance of the ways in which memories are preserved, especially with regards to traumatic events that occurred amongst various nations in history.

Cubitt claims that memory can be used as a tool to analyze various situations and may help to narrow down its meaning (6). This could, he argues, allow us to comprehend the “traumatizing effects of total war and genocidal atrocities” in a more coherent way and is one of the important aspects of the study of memory (2). However, Cubitt does note that memory on its own is never “pure”; there are always other factors involved, including how we identify with ourselves, the generation we belong to, as well as how we choose to interact within society (6). In other words, we, as individuals and groups, must recognize the potential we posses to develop over time. This process extends to our memories.

This last point is especially prevalent in Obasan because we, as readers, are experiencing the story from the memories and perspectives of Joy Kogawa and the main narrator, Naomi Nakane. It appears as though Naomi tells the story of her family from different stages in her life. For example, the novel starts out with Naomi remembering the time she spent with her Uncle by the sea at the age of eighteen. By the next chapter, she is an adult in her present day, teaching at an elementary school. Not too soon after, she recounts her childhood experiences revolving around the turmoil of World War II and her family’s struggle during the forced evacuation from Vancouver.

Over time, both Naomi’s character and memories developed and changed due to the processing of newly discovered information and the longing to forget. Similarly, Kogawa’s memories may have changed over the years in this way as well. Cubitt’s book offers key insight into this process of remembering and attempts to explain how personal and group memory interconnect. In Obasan, the ways in which the narrator and author allow their memories to be altered affect the ways in which readers interpret these memories and how we will continue to remember them as life progresses. After reading Obasan and History and Memory, the questions that I am left with are these: when are our memories perceived to be the most accurate? Is it soon after we have experienced said event or can we only truly understand the meaning of the memory and trauma after years of analyses? The “right” answers to these questions are unknown and, therefore, are open to continuous debate.

Until next time readers!

Simplicity, Trauma, and the Act of Remembering – By: Taylor Khatkar

Hello readers!

As I mentioned in my previous class blog, we are continuing to discuss Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, in our ASTU 100A class this week. However, we have moved away from attempting to comprehend the basic story of the graphic narrative and have begun to analyze an academic article by English scholar Hillary Chute, called “The Texture of Retracing In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis”. It focusses on the importance of the genre of comics, more specifically, the graphic narrative, and the unique characteristics that make a graphic narrative such an effective framework through which to describe serious stories and topics, like the personal events that occur during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran and Iraq war as experienced by Satrapi. The way that Satrapi utilizes simplicity to illustrate trauma and violence, as argued by Chute, is extremely effective.

This point struck me so deeply, that it brought me back to my childhood, in the form of a novel that I read in grade seven called The Breadwinner, by Deborah Ellis. This story is told from the perspective of Parvana, a young girl growing up in Taliban-controlled Kabul, Afghanistan. When her father, a history teacher, is arrested for being educated in a foreign country, Parvana is forced to cut off her hair and pretend to be a boy, selling goods, as well as reading and writing letters for the illiterate people of her country, at a crowded marketplace in order to support her family. Parvana sees the world through the eyes of an eleven year old girl, fearing acts of violence as a child should and losing her more or less “innocent” attitude towards traumatic events over her time acting as boy.

Although the language in this novel is slightly more sophisticated than that of the average eleven year old, the effect of Parvana’s words are similar to the effect of Satrapi’s dialogue in Persepolis: both use simplistic wording and phrasing to get the author’s perspective across. However, the way in which I remember the traumatic and violent events in these two works differs. On one hand, Ellis’ novel only utilizing words to describe experiences, and Parvana’s feelings toward them, gave my imagination full authority to create images of the story and access as much detail as I could comprehend. On the contrary, Satrapi’s use of pictures gave me a starting point as to how I should interpret her explanations. Nonetheless, the simplicity of her images made my mind hungry for more depth and details, causing my imagination to see past Satrapi’s childhood innocence while reading this graphic narrative. When I think back on these two pieces, I remember the pictures created by my imagination with regards to The Breadwinner, but this is not the case with Persepolis. Instead of seeing my own interpretations of Satrapi’s work, I remember the simple images that she drew.

This point is illustrated by Chute when she claims that “certain modes of representation depict historical trauma more effectively, and more horrifically, than does realism”. In Satrapi’s case, the use of cartoon images, with varying detail, was far more effective than just the language itself. Some images are, as Chute describes, “excess of our frames of reference”. In class, I mentioned that sometimes, events are so horrible, that we cannot imagine them to exist in a realistic and accurate manner; we “cannot go there”. I found that, just like one of the entirely black frames in Persepolis, showing how Marji could not comprehend the death of her friend, my imagination blackened during parts of The Breadwinner, as my twelve-year-old mind was unwilling to picture certain atrocities that were described. This goes to show the effectiveness of both the simplicity of writing and images, especially through the use of a graphic narrative, as well as the unintentional impact these vessels have on the act of remembering.

These points, as well as the discussions we had in class, have led me to consider three questions regarding memory: 1) to what degree does the act of remembering trauma affect our interpretations of the past and all issues relating to it?, 2) will we ever be able to fill in the images that we have blocked out in black?, and 3) is the act of blocking an image out the same as forgetting? Although these are questions to be answered at another time, I leave you with some insight that Satrapi provides at the end of her introduction to Persepolis, “one can forgive, but one should never forget”.

Until next time readers!

In my ASTU 100A class, we are discussing an academic article called “The Role of Interpreting Communities in Remembering and Learning” by Farhat Shahzad. It focusses on how communities contribute to the process of remembering and learning, specifically targeting the importance of teachers’ awareness of their abilities to shape their students’ understandings and perceptions of various international communities. I was shocked when I realized that according to this article, my views on everything, from complex historical events to everyday interactions, are somewhat predetermined, having already been shaped by something, such as a textbook, or someone, such as my professor.

As I processed this new information, two questions came up: 1) is it possible to learn or remember something without attaching bias to it? and 2) what is the point of learning and remembering without allowing your own perceptions and ideas to persist and interpret meaning?

These questions reminded me of a TED talk that I watched a few years ago called “The Danger of a Single Story”, by a Nigerian novelist named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She defines a “single story” as a one-sided view of something, such as a person or place. As an example, she spoke about her experiences reading American and British children’s books at the age of four. The authors described young caucasian boys and girls with blonde hair and blue eyes drinking ginger beer. Since these were the first and only books that Adichie had seen, she assumed that all pieces of literature involved people who looked like the children described above and that she should not be able to relate to the characters. Later on, she claimed that “the discovery of African writers saved me from having a single story of what books are”. Once she read novels about the people in her own country, she realized that her perception of literature, past and present, was ignorant, having only been viewed through the eyes of American and British authors.

This point reinforces the idea that communities shape the way in which things are presented, as Shahzad discusses in her article. The community that shaped Adichie’s understanding of literature took place in the form of British and American writers. According to Adichie, “like the political and economic worlds, stories are defined by the principle of power. How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, and how many stories are told are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person”. This is where members of society who are in positions of authority, such as teachers, have to be aware of their influence on others, such as students. Peoples’ actions and the way they approach certain topics has a persisting affect on those surrounding them and can change the ways in which those being influenced view themselves and their experiences.

Coming back to my questions, the answer I have come up with, which is supported by the work of both Shahzad and Adichie, is that everything has bias, whether people intend for it to or not; it is inevitable. This inevitability shows society that the importance regarding the way in which people remember the past and learn about the present and future is exposing oneself to different viewpoints. Instead of struggling to find sources of information that are unbiased, society must accept the fact that these do not exist. Adichie mentions that the “single story” promotes the creation of stereotypes and emphasizes the differences between people opposed to the ways in which they relate to one another. Therefore, the way to avoid becoming single-minded is by treating each piece of information with caution and recognizing the fact that there is more than one side to it. In other words, open your mind to new perspectives and allow your views of the past and discoveries of the future to expand. This change in mindset can result in only one thing: endless possibilities.

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