Hi everybody!

For the past year, my ASTU 100 lass has been looking at the idea of global citizenship through the lens of memory. This lens has given rise to may interesting talks/discussions in my class ranging from narratives of trauma to how memories are manifested in societies today. However from this course and even from my other courses in the CAP Global Citizens stream, we have only talked about global citizenship in the modern sense – where people moved from place to place frequently and meeting new people for example; this gave me the impression that this phenomenon is only a modern one, however I found out that this was not the case when I was in one of my elective courses, Asian Studies 100.

In Asian Studies, I learned about the two main superpowers of Southeastern Asia, India and China – from pre-history to about around the 1500s. However the unit that impacted me the most on ancient global citizenship would be the time when China expanded its reaches – not of territory, but of knowledge (approximately 2 C. BCE. – 800 CE.). In the early part of this time period, China had diplomatic ties with the Kushan Empire (covering most of present day Afghanistan and northern India), then trade (the “Silk Road”) became prominent. Through all the ties China made through its trade in silk, they learned of the existence and inner workings of Greece and Rome (such as how democracy worked) around 97 C.E. while the Greeks and the Romans wouldn’t learn about the existence of China until centuries later. It is through this “Silk Road” that Buddhism traveled from India into China and there is evidence of Chinese pilgrims going to India for authentic Buddhist texts in the 10th – 12th Century through the Himalayas then translating them from Sanskrit into Chinese.

Through its diplomatic ties and trade, China managed to garner a vast wealth of knowledge and information on the territories surrounding them and beyond by sending ambassadors to meet with rulers to religious pilgrims and the merchants. To them, this was their world and that by travelling so much they could be called global citizens of their era. Nowadays, we know that our world is much larger than that of the ancient Asians, but the ideas of global citizenship – going from place to place, acquiring/storing vast amounts of knowledge and interacting with new people are still the same. Despite it being centuries ago or present day, global citizenship has always existed.

Wow, that was the last blog post of the year. How did time go by so fast? I wish everyone good luck on their finals and all the best in the rest of their university careers!

-Fiona

Hi Everybody!

For the past week, my ASTU 100 class has been reading the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist written by Mohsin Hamid. The main character, a young man named Changez is a Pakistani who goes to Princeton then works in a valuing company called Underwood Samson. But despite this “idealistic American life” Changez lives at the beginning of the book, he becomes very “indecisive” so to say near the middle. After 9/11, Changez seems to face an identity crisis where he doesn’t know if he wholly belongs in his new country America, or if he truly belongs in his home country of Pakistan.

The interesting thing about this book is that the events in the book are portrayed as a kind of story telling where Changez is already in Pakistan and he meets an American whom he (Changez) invites to dinner. It is during this dinner that the events in the book are told. But during this dinner, the American and Changez are very suspicious of each other. The book leaves enough room for the reader to speculate why they are so suspicious of each other, such as the American is really an assassin sent to kill Changez, or Changez is really a terrorist. The book never gives a concrete answer, but throughout the novel, it seems to me that the American and Changez are playing a game of “cat and mouse” due to the overwhelming sense of suspicion and suspense that the book is seemingly impregnated with.

When I was reading this novel and saw/felt the heavy sense of suspense and suspicion I immediately thought of the anime Death Note. Death Note tells of a regular high schooler named Light Yagami where one day he finds a notebook that can kill anyone who’s name is written in it. He immediately wants to become the person who kills all the “bad guys” to make a better world, but his actions soon catch the eye of the world famous detective known only as L, and soon a deadly cat and mouse game ensues. Though in the book, there is no deadly occurrence unlike in Death Note but the suspense and suspicion between Changez and the American is eerily similar to the one found between Light and L. Like the reader possibly thinking Changez is a terrorist, the actions of Light can be seen as the same. Though Changez did not kill anyone, it is the fear of his appearance in the post-9/11 world that made people think of him as one, while Light’s actions of killing many criminals in the attempt to create a “perfect world” ended up scaring the entire population of Japan. It is this fear that has many of the fans of this anime/manga saying that Light is no “God” as he likes to portray himself but as a terrorist.

Tell me what you guys think!

-Fiona

Hey everybody!!

Following the theme of trauma seen through the event of 9/11 the past few weeks, my ASTU 100 class has been reading a book of poetry titled This Connection of Everyone with Lungs written by Juliana Spahr. It features two poems, one written before 9/11 and one written a year after.

In the first poem, the speaker essentially tells the reader that everything within this world is connected; that whatever pollution or gunk you put up into the air, it will affect someplace else. The speaker does this by continuously using the symbol of a person’s lungs to represent this connection. Like the first poem, the speaker continues weaving the theme of connections  in the second poem, but this time there is no mention of the symbol of lungs. Here the speaker uses the symbol of a person’s skin to relay that connection and whenever the word “skin” is said, it is always used in the context of being with or near another person, hence the connection to others.

One of the things that caught my attention about this book was not the book’s content itself, but the cover. The cover displays a flock of birds midflight and at first I didn’t think much about it, due to the author writing the book in Hawaii at the time and included some tropical scenery into the second poem. But after reading the entire book, I never felt that a book’s cover could provide such contrast to the content held within.

The two poems speak of the connections between people and things; especially the second poem where it speaks heavily on military equipment. The poem written after 9/11 speaks of the connection between the speaker and their lover while in their bed, but also while they are in their bed, they are connected to everything in the world such as deaths of other people, warzones and army weapons. The speaker and lover while in the bed think that they are isolated and having an intimate moment with each other but in fact, they are not isolated as the speaker frequently reminds the reader with reports of deaths for example. No matter how much the speaker wants to have a moment with their lover alone, they technically can’t. While in contrast to this, the cover of the book portrays a flock of birds in the middle of flying.  Birds have long since been the symbol for freedom and in this case I see them as a symbol of being free of all those connections that make us human, from the pollution that will eventually spread across the world and affect all people to the moments of supposed isolation with your lover so you can share an intimate moment to the conflict that is guaranteed to be found in the warzones.

Tell me what you guys think and I hope you all have a wonderful and restful Reading Break!!!

Fiona Tse

Hi everyone!

These past few weeks my ASTU 100 class has been reading the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This novel tells the story of Oskar, a nine year old boy still recovering from his father’s death from 9/11 a year later. He finds a key in his father’s closet and having this key, Oskar thinks that if he can find what the key opens, it will bring him closure from the trauma he experienced during September 11, 2001.

When I read this book, I was immediately reminded of my own experiences with 9/11. On the day 9/11 happened, one of my uncles was flying over from Hong Kong to Vancouver to visit my family and I. When the planes crashed into the Twin Towers, my uncle was still on his flight unaware to what was happening while my family was panicking, wondering if my uncle was on any of the downed planes. Being only three at the time, all I remember is my parents continuously on the phone frantically talking to my relatives over in Hong Kong, trying to figure out where my uncle was and thankfully he landed in YVR Airport that evening. Despite my uncle being safe, my parents would never tell me what happened that made them frantic like that whenever I asked them. It was only when they deemed me “mature enough” and “able to handle trauma” that they told me about 9/11 (I had no knowledge of this event prior to them telling me) when I was around 10 years old. Their reasoning not to tell me about 9/11 was to protect me and to keep having such a heavy knowledge burdening my young shoulders.

Now, as I think back, my parents’ need to protect me and not have me know such a traumatic and heavy event is reminiscent of Naomi’s mother in Obasan where she didn’t want Naomi and her brother Stephen to know that she was disfigured  by the atomic bomb. Her silence was protecting her children from the heavy knowledge just like my parents’ secret protected me until they thought I was old enough to handle the weight of the event. Which leads me to the question as to when is someone ready to handle such burdening knowledge? And who has to authority to judge someone ready to know such things as well?

These are just my thoughts and let me know what you guys think!

Fiona Tse

Hi everybody!

After coming back to school from a relaxing winter break, my ASTU 100 class got right back down to work and read the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” written by Jonathan Safran Foer. This novel tells the story of Oskar Schell, whose father died in 9/11. After his father’s death, Oskar finds a key and a scrap of paper with only the word ‘black’ on it in a vase in his father’s closet. Still reeling from the loss of his father, Oskar sets off on a journey to find the lock that will fit the key using the only clue that he has which is the word ‘black’. While most people would just try all the locks in their house and give up, Oskar stretches his search throughout New York City, asking people with the surname Black if they knew his father or anything about the key or lock.

This dedication Oskar shows in his search is prominent when he asks all the people with the last name Black(all of them strangers but he quickly befriends Mr. Black who lives just upstairs from him) in New York City for information; as if finding the lock that fits the key will bring him closure for his father’s passing. However in my opinion, the search itself is serving as a way of closure for Oskar. It is as if he feels as long as he is doing something, he will be able to find the answer and closure he is looking for.

Even though his search turns up with not much closure for Oskar, he finally meets his grandfather (the “renter”) for the first time as he was absent ever since his father was born. Both he and his grandfather experienced terrible things (Oskar 9/11 and his grandfather the bombing of Dresden) they responded to these experiences very differently. Oskar goes out into the city on a search while his grandfather retreats into silence and loses his ability to speak due to the horrors.

Hi everyone!

For the past few classes, my ASTU 100 class has been reading another graphic narrative called “Safe Area Gorazde” by Joe Sacco. In this book Sacco details the safe town of Gorazde after the Bosnian War (1992-1995). After the war, Sacco, a journalist travels to Gorazde with many other journalists to document its citizens’ stories. However instead of being led around the town as if being in a tour at a zoo like the others, Sacco decides to stay with one of Gorazde’s inhabitants named Edin whom he soon befriends. In his many trips to Gorazde, Sacco unveils the different stories of the people of Gorazde as he befriends them; putting a human face to this conflict. These people are willing to share their stories with Sacco despite his position as an outsider to this event.

With Sacco being an outsider to the Bosnian War, I find that this is one of the major contrasts between this book and another book that we have read in my ASTU 100 class a couple of weeks ago. The other graphic narrative is called “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi. It details a young girl named Marji as she grows up in Iran during the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. However unlike Sacco taking up an outsider’s view in “Safe Area Gorazde”, Marji is an insider to the conflict. In “Persepolis”, the artwork is minimalistic, with the illustrations done simply and coloured with only black and white. This can be attributed with Marji’s (Satrapi’s portrayal of her younger self) seeing the conflict firsthand and the horror was too much and too complex to recapture as an image on the page as Satrapi drew the illustrations. However in Sacco’s case, he was an outsider to the conflict. His only way of knowing what happened in Gorazde during the war is through the interviews he had with its inhabitants. It is due to this that his illustrations are much more realistic and complex in contrast to Satrapi’s as he cannot really relate to the struggles of the inhabitants so he is able to draw their experiences in much more detail and complexity. Another contrast that can contribute to the different styles in portrayal can be of their ages when these incidents took place. Marji was a young girl when the Iran-Iraq War and the Islamic Revolution took place and her drawing style can be attributed to child-like simplicity while Sacco was a grown man when he made his way to Gorazde.

It is through these different styles that these two authors can portray their experiences with the readers, however I do wonder how do the readers grasp the different meanings and emotions behind the lines and shadings of the drawings? Are they able to understand the horrors Marji struggled through just by examining the simplistic lines? Or are they able to understand the true extent of the perils the people in Gorazde went through, through Sacco’s intricate drawings?

Marji finding her friend’s house having been destroyed and sees part of her body. The last frame shows Satrapi unable to draw her true emotions of the incident

Sacco’s realistic depiction of one of Gorazde’s inhabitant’s memory of a mass murder event.

Works Cited:

Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Gorazde. London: Fantagraphic Books, 2001. Print

Satrapi, Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Random House, 2003. Print

Images:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_D324-0AkP_w/SCR4WV3tGSI/AAAAAAAAAF4/p2OH9WVhxJ0/s400/Persepolis+page+142.jpg

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/JKHUYSMAN/sacco.jpg

Hi everyone!

For the past few weeks, my ASTU 100 class has been reading the graphic narrative Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi. It tells the life of Marji (Satrapi’s younger self), growing up in Iran during the time of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Told through the eyes of a child, this graphic narrative shows Marji’s personal struggles as it illustrates the political turmoil and violence within Iran during that time. While being in comic book style, the images within Persepolis are devoid of unnecessary details and are coloured with only black and white; unlike what you would expect for a comic book.

Despite Persepolis being filled to the brim with emotions (Marji’s anger towards the regime and anguish when her uncle Anoosh is executed) Satrapi chooses to omit colour, which conveys emotions from the book. Why does she do this? Is it because she feels that the emotions held within the book are impossible to convey with just words and colour?

With just black and white colouring the images and the simplistic art of the illustrations, Satrapi tells the story of her childhood through Marji’s perspective on her world that is wrought full of complex violence and turmoil. It is through the simple artwork that Satrapi juxtaposes Marji’s innocent and naïve outlook with the true horror and the normalcy of the violence that is surrounding her. This shows up when two of her family’s friends were released from prison and are telling Marji’s parents about what happened to another prisoner. They tell that he was tortured more than they were and ultimately, “was cut into pieces” (52). When Marji hears of this, she immediately imagines the body cleanly cut and hollow, while in truth a cut up body looks nothing that.

Marji’s imagination of what a cut up body looks like

The man cut up into pieces “cannot be adequately illustrated by words-or by pictures-from the perspective of either children or adults” (Chute 102) and it is here we see the juxtaposition between Marji’s innocent views and the horrors that are happening around her.

Works cited:

Satrapi, Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Random House, 2003. Print

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36.1&2 (Spring/Summer 2008): 92-110. Web. JSTOR. 7July 2015.

Image:

https://satrapism.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/kic0000013.jpg

Hello readers,

For the past week in my ASTU 100 class, we have been reading a graphic narrative titled Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. This graphic narrative reveals the life of Marji, a young girl growing up in Iran amid the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. When first being introduced to this book, I was surprised that I would be reading a comic book in university, however the surprise instantly turned into excitement due to my love of manga; which is the Japanese version of comic books.

When I read about the Revolution and the War in Persepolis, I instantly connected it to a manga that  has a parallel plot line titled Hakuouki Shisengumi Kitan. In this historical manga, a revolution and war is also happening. In Japan during the mid-1800s, the Shisengumi (the main protagonist group) sides with the old government wishing to preserve the old ways while the Imperialists wish for change in the government and ultimately these two sides go to war. Having connected these two texts, I again connected these texts to an essay that I have read in my ASTU class as well. Farhat Shahzad, an educational scholar cites Wertsch, an anthropologist, who states that “remembering and learning involve[s] a process of mediation between two main forces”, which the ‘human agent’ and ‘technologies of memory’ help the human agent learn and remember things which they have not experienced. In my case, I have not experienced the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Meiji Revolution. However by reading Persepolis and Hakuouki Shisengumi Kitan, the memories of these events have been passed onto me and I have learned about these events from them.

Like manga, by portraying the story in a comic book style, Satrapi has made it easy for the reader to easily digest the information coming from the speech bubbles all the while looking at the stark, simple black and white images which show the story through the eyes Marji.

Works cited:

Article:

Shahzad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning.”Canadian Journal of Education 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 28 Sept. 2015.

For the first few weeks of this term, my ASTU 100 class read Farhat Shahzad’s article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” which is about how people learn and remember from different people in their different social interactions which she calls ‘Interpretive Communities’. These ‘Interpretive Communities’ can be our friends, family, teachers or other people we have a connection to. When reading this essay, Shahzad touched on the topic of how people learn and remember differently when with a person or people they hold to an authoritative stance such as your parents. This made me realize that I have experienced this when my parents told me what happened at Tiananmen Square 26 years ago and also as recently as last year with the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong.

26 years ago, thousands of protesters (mostly University students from Beijing) congregated at Tiananmen Square peacefully demanding democratic reform from the communist government. For several weeks, the protesters  showed the government their intention by going on hunger strikes and quiet protests, all the while unarmed. However the government imposed martial law and on June 4, 1989 the Chinese military fired their weapons on the students amassed there. The true death toll has never been released from China although the numbers range from the hundreds to the thousands. When my parents told me this, I was shocked that something like this had happened. My parents were living in Hong Kong at the time of the massacre and due to their second hand experience of this event through live television broadcasts and phone calls from friends in other parts of China, I immediately believed them and also due to their authoritative position I hold them to, it influenced my thinking of this event as a true horror.

Last August, “the Chinese legislature’s standing committee ruled that it would not allow open nominations in Hong Kong’s 2017 election for chief executive”. The legislature stated that they would choose the candidates and between those chosen candidates, the Hong Kong residents would have to choose their chief executive. However, the residents of Hong Kong wished for a fully democratic election. Due to this, students protested by boycotting their classes and storming the main government body buildings in Hong Kong. It was during this time that the Hong Kong police responded with unexpected force on the unarmed students. When I first heard about this incident from my parents, I was again shocked at what was happening and I immediately drew similarities between this revolution and what happened at Tiananmen Square, however the Umbrella Revolution held a much larger impact for me as some of my cousins participated in the protests. This emotional connection to my ‘interpretative community’ (my cousins) who were participating in the protests altered my view of the protests in comparison to other people who know about this incident only through news broadcasts or articles. Through my cousins’ view, they wished for a true democratic election instead of an already chosen one. They felt betrayed as they saw the legislature refusing to respect part of the agreement in regards to the election with Britain (Hong Kong used to be a British colony). I felt their desire for this election when I conversed with them over the phone and I am emotionally attached to this incident due to this.

Works cited:

Shazad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning.” Canadian Journal of Education 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 1 Sept. 2014.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/4/newsid_2496000/2496277.stm

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong-protests-5-things-to-know-about-the-umbrella-revolution-1.2781208

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