James Baldwin

Recently I've been reading James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, which is pretty awesome. It's rare I find a book which makes me want to underline everything in it, but that's definitely what I'm feeling here. I like essays sometimes because it's kind of like listening in at the most witty person at a dinner party expound at length on things. However, in Baldwin's case, sometimes it's depressing how little has actually changed in America since the time he wrote the book.

"one cannot help but observing that some Negro leaders and politicians are far more concerned with their careers than with the welfare of Negroes, and their dramatic and publicized battles are battles with the wind. Again, this phenomenon cannot be changed without a change in the American scene. In a land where, it is said, any citizen can grow up and become president, Negroes can be pardoned for desiring to enter Congress."

Another passage that really struck me

"They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of three hundred years--an alienation too vast to be conquered in an evening's good-will, too heavy and too double-edged ever to be trapped in speech. This alienation causes the Negro to recognize that he is a hybrid. Not a physical hybrid merely: in every aspect of his living he betrays the memory of the auction block and the impact of the happy ending. In white Americans he finds reflected--repeated, as it were, in a higher key--his tensions, his terrors, his tenderness. Dimly and for the first time, there begins to fall into perspective the nature of the roles they have played in the lives and history of each other. Now he is bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; they have loved and hated and obsessed and feared each other and his blood is in their soil. Therefore he cannot deny them, nor can they ever be divorced."

It's probably one of the clearest articulations of what I've sometimes felt myself in relation to race relations and diaspora in America. Go figure, James Baldwin just said it first.

Some film thoughts

You know how 2046 was a kind of mediocre mashup of every theme Wong Kar Wai had played with in his entire film career? A sort of self referential exercise in narcissism?

I just got done watching Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution, which I, uh, found, on the internet. And although it's less self indulgent, simply because I don't think Kurosawa is as successful as Wong Kar Wai, so he gets less money, it's a similar sort of concept. Essentially it's a rehash of some of his old themes: the power of dreams, delivered no less by Jo Odagiri who starred in Bright Future, a meme of violence coming from some undisclosed source of discontent lodged in the past like in Cure, ghosts as figures of human loneliness, like in Pulse, an angry detective with tendencies towards police brutality played by Koji Yakusho, practically every movie Kurosawa has ever made. Interestingly, I felt that his dislike of women came out more strongly in this film. Women have always been disruptive or malevolent forces in his films before, but there's never been so much violence against women as there is in this film. It's pretty clear from this review that I have seen a lot of Kurosawa movies and I also didn't really like this one. I really wanted to, even when the film is less than successful, his films are generally pretty interesting and I'm glad I said this one.

That said, the ghosts were really silly. I'm a wimp and I wasn't even scared by them. Kurosawa can scare the shit out of you when he really wants too. A woman dressed in red being wheeled around on a dolly doesn't scare me at all.

I like seeing Kurosawa movies, because strangely when I'm feeling depressed, they make me less so. I'm not sure why watching Japanese horror movies that are really about the human condition make me less depressed. But I'll take what I can get.

The Are You A Racist quiz

So apparently there's this big to-do about the test of black men w/ guns vs. white men w/ guns and reaction time. There's apparently been some rending of garments about whether in fact the test takers are racist. I was kind of curious to see if I was racist or not. I guess I've watched TV as much as most people and grown up in urban/suburban areas, and heard enough stories that I should be fairly subconsciously racist, I thought. Imagine my surprise when I saw my results:

Black Armed:874.92ms
Black Unarmed:1020ms
White Armed:849.68ms
White Unarmed:1015.24ms


If I understand these figures correctly. I am slower to react to unarmed people of either race, although slightly quicker to recognize white people as not a threat. However I seem to be comparatively quicker to shoot white men with guns than black men with guns. Go figure. Someone help me interpret this data.

Happy MLK Day

I spent the morning washing cars for the Red Cross, because, uh, Martin Luther King was all about washing cars for the Red Cross. It was seriously an exercise in futility since as we were washing them off, the ice was refreezing on the cars. The inner monologue of the Loveless Cynic was basically "Fuck fuck fuck, fucking ice, cannot fucking feel my fucking hands, fuck!" Let it not be said that I do tiresome things with grace. Because I really don't.

Washing cars aside, I sometimes truly dislike Martin Luther King Day from the bottom of my shrivelled heart, because I have to listen to this pablum about how Martin Luther King was a wonderful person who loved everyone. And was an inspiration to all people and how we should love everybody.

This isn't really true. Martin Luther King was a rather conflicted troubled person who did some amazing things, with the help of other people. Some of how he comes across is due to the way his family has managed his image. And part of it is that liberals love us a black Jesus that we can put on a pedestal and not deal with as a real person. Especially when we don't have to talk about his radical and increasingly left wing tendencies. (I had a really good US history teacher in high school which is how I even am aware of as much as I am. Ms. Meyers, you were great.)

I don't think that his flaws or missteps detract from his accomplishments, rather they add to them. It's sort of more amazing that a flawed person could accomplish what he did than if he was some perfect saint, don't you think? Anyway, he asked some hard questions in his life, rather than just the color of skin rather content of character. We should remember that too.

Primary Thoughts

Yes yes, I know everyone is talking/writing about the primaries. Still. I always liked Richardson for it, since y'know, he's got experience. Which y'know might be kind of important. But then this is America, we value style over substance.

As for the whole Obama thing, well, I can't say that I'm not happy. I always wanted to like him, and I'm glad he's successful, but... Between him and Clinton, I honestly didn't really care. I don't think I'm registered as a Democrat so I can't even vote in the primary, but I'm not sure which one I like better. Clinton is more of a creature of the Beltway perhaps. But probably both of them would do fine as president, and by fine, I mean better than the current one. I guess I liked Obama more since he's from a bit less of a privileged background, and it's nice to see someone rise above that.

But honestly, I don't care. It's probably better to ignore anything that a candidate does or says as soon as they start even considering running for president. Looking at their record before hand will probably tell you a lot more about how they'll do once they're in office.

It will be better when this whole circus is over. Let's hope it's not Huckabee.

There's a part

in A Wild Sheep Chase where the narrator's girlfriend asks him to talk for five minutes. Apparently she gets every new person she meets to do this and then judges them completely opposite to how they portray themselves. I always found this do be a rather interesting idea. And most recently I've even put an amended rule of my own into practice, I now mostly judge people completely opposite to how they talk about themselves.

I mean just think about it: The roommate who always says they "go the extra mile for their roommates." The boss who says they are an open and straightforward person. The other boss who says they are always available before leaving for Hong Kong for a month. The coworker who says that they're a bitch. The high school classmate who insists that they are really just very normal and want normal things out of life.

What do you all think?

A thought

After the bus stop thing yesterday, I was talking to a friend about it, and she mentioned her own strategy of putting on an old hoodie and cap when she rode the bus, to avoid unwelcome attention. At a certain point, how different is this from putting on a veil?

Some thoughts on movies

Do you ever wonder what movies are telling us? Recently there have been a series of movies about the Middle East. Now, I haven't seen most of them, because I've been watching my blood pressure lately, and I have a feeling that watching a movie about current events coming out of Hollywood isn't going to help.

I'm almost curious to see some of them. I mean, it's hard not to read movies, or more accurately, the topics of films such as Kingdom of Heaven or 300 in light, of, oh, national policy. I mean from what I hear, Kingdom of Heaven had to have a token sympathetic Arab antagonist. I'm fairly sure, even without seeing the movie, that he probably ended nobly and tragically.

The handling of movies like these, reveals a lot about how we as a nation view and interpret history. A friend of mine once said that she disagreed with our Illustrious Alma Mater's decision to valorize the Romans and the Greeks as the "Foundations of Western Civilization" since she believed that the middle ages had an even greater influence on the society that we are today. Arguments can undoubtedly be made for both sides. But what interests me more here, is the reason why people prefer the Romans and the Greeks to other time periods such as the Middle Ages. What sort of image do we see? And why do we want to emulate it?

I mean, as my friend pointed out at the time, 300 is kind of silly, since it casts the Spartans as the "Americans" and the Persians as the "decadent Oriental empire of your choice" when commonly Spartans were autocratic and totalitarian. However, the directors of the film to force a different sort of characterization on them in the film, and of course this raises the question of why they chose to frame this historical conflict in the way that they do. Why do there always have to be "Americans" or American-substitutes in every movie? Also, why do all people from ancient Europe irrespective of region speak in a British accent?

Ok, this post really ended up pretty far away from what I originally started with. Sue me, I'm tired. I'll attempt to pick up this train of thought later, and hopefully come up with something more than just "philosophical" questions. If you've got some theories, I'd like to hear them.

I would marry Yu Dafu except he's dead and I'm really not into that kind of thing

I've been reading Yu Dafu in Chinese. I kind of moderately liked him when I read him in translation. I moderately liked a lot of people, but I really like him a lot in Chinese. It's kind of cool when that happens, kind of like falling in love with someone you've been in class with for a really long time, but never really noticed before.

However the main thing that struck me is that his main characters of the short stories I've read so far struggle with both ill health and feelings of inferiority in relation to the empire. It's pretty clear that the characters' weakness and impotence are directly related to his feelings of shame and inferiority. And I have to say, he handles these questions, so familiar to Asian Americans, of impotent Chinese masculinity, so much more gracefully than say, Frank Chin, who pretty much just beats you over the head with it until you get a concussion.

Interestingly, Yu Dafu leaves it pretty ambiguous about whether the character is actually discriminated against or not. Both characters are clearly described as mentally unstable, oversensitive and depressed. However read in terms of China's place in the world at the time, these feelings of inferiority, as well as his perceptions of the other characters' condescending attitudes towards him make a lot more sense.

Furthermore, China's earlier definition as the "sick man of Asia" makes Yu Dafu's characters even more suggestive, since it seems that perhaps he is attempting to represent his ideas about China, or even his feelings for China. And in "Sinking" Shenlun, the main character explicitly blames his condition on China, and its weaknesses.

The other interesting thing, is although Yu Dafu is clearly engaging the effects that empire has had on the Chinese psyche, this is not divided by the color line, as imperialism is generally thought of. Both characters are students and long time residents in Japan. In some ways, the characters' reactions to Japanese people are fairly standard. Jealousy of Japanese men, feelings of inferiority, an inability to speak, an unrealized desire for Japanese women, as well as an inability to act upon it. However generally, I think a lot of people think of this in relation to race. Asian men desiring white women, and envying white men. In the case of Yu Dafu, there really isn't a racial difference, possibly people didn't think of race in the same way as we do today. (He was born in 1896 and died in 1945.) But it is an interesting dynamic nonetheless. As I read more of his stuff, I'll probably have more to say about this.

Have you ever wondered

why we have so many shows about cops and doctors? I mean, a paranoid part of me wonders if there's some sort of purpose in showing the cops to be the good guys, and the criminal justice system to be infallible. I mean, CSI? Come on. Just when it's starting to be proven that a lot of innocent people are in fact in prison. We have a show talking about evidence collection as a means to obtain "the truth." Law and Order? Again, an ode to the criminal justice and prosecution process as an effective and ethical way to obtain justice.

As for the doctor shows, I don't watch enough of them to really say. Perhaps some of you do though? There's got to be something to them.

Some more thoughts on imperialism

Some more thoughts from Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism

The first thing to be done now is more or less to jettison simple causality in thinking through the relationship between Europe and the non-European world, and lessening the hold on our thought of the equally simple temporal sequence. We must not admit any notion, for instance, that proposes to show that Wordsworth, Austen, or Coleridge, because they wrote before 1857, actually caused the establishment of formal British governmental rule over India after 1857. We should try to discern instead a counterpoint is not temporal or spatial. How to writers in the period before the great age of explicit, programmatic colonial expansion-- the "scramble for Africa," say-- situate and see themselves and their work in the larger world? We shall find them using striking but careful strategies, many of them derived from expected resources--positive ideas of home, of a nation and its language, of proper order, good behavior, moral values.
But positive ideas of this sort do more than validate "our" world. They also tend to devalue other worlds and, perhaps more significantly from a retrospective point of view, they do not prevent or inhibit or give resistance to horrendously unattractive imperialist practices. No, cultural forms like the novel or the opera do not cause people to go out and imperialize-- [Hee hee-lovelesscynic] Carlyle did not drive Rhodes directly, and he certainly cannot be "blamed" for the problems in today's southern Africa-- but it is genuinely troublingto see how little Britain's great humanistic ideas, institutions, and monuments, which we still celebrate as having the power ahistorically to command our approval, how little they stand in the way of the accelerating imperial process. We are entitled to ask how this body of humanistic ideas co-existed so comfortably with imperialism, and why--until the resistance to imperialism in the imperial domain, among Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, developed-- there was little significant opposition or deterrence to empire at home. Perhaps the custom of distinguishing "our" home and order from "theirs" grew into a harsh political rule for accumulating more of "them" to rule, study, and subordinate. In the great, human ideas and values promulgated by mainstream European culture, we have precisely that "mould of ideas or conditioned reflexes" of which Kiernan speaks, into which the whole business of empire later flowed.
...Not only is this a Crusoe setting things in order: it is also an early Protestant eliminating all traces of frivolous behavior. There is nothing in Mansfield Park that would contradict us, however, were we to assume that Sir Thomas does exactly the same things--on a larger scale-- in his Antigua "plantations." Whatever was wrong there-- and the internal evidence garnered by Warren Roberts suggests that economic depression. slavery, and competition with France were at issue-- Sir Thomas was able to fix, thereby maintaining his control over his colonial domain. More clearly than anywhere else in her fiction, Austen here synchronizes domestic with international authority, making it plain that the values associated with such higher things as ordination, law, and propriety must be grounded firmly in actual rule over and possession of territory. She sees clearly that to hold and rule Mansfield Park is to hold and rule an imperial estate in close, not to say inevitable association with it. What assures the domestic tranquility and attractive harmony of one is the productivity and regulated discipline of the other.

There are days when I really wonder if academia is all that it's cracked up to be. But then there are days like when I read Edward Said, or someone else really good, and you see the good in literary theory and analysis. Because there are thousands of narratives, it seems to me, at those times, that are unmapped and untold, and if you have the wits to map them, you can help tell the secret history of the world, which has been covered up for whatever sinister reason or other.

The book is primarily based on rereading some of the classic works of European literature, with an eye to their relationship to imperialism. Even though Said was writing in 1993, comp lit still neglects the imperialist connections of classic works, or they did at my extremely academically conservative alma mater. And furthermore, he renders the immortal, universal truths of these works somewhat suspect, since as he rightly points out, they did little, for all their talk of human freedom and rights, to criticize the growth of imperialism. Makes me wonder, since we rely on these same great works today, why we're surprised how feeble our resistance to current imperialism is.

Why

are Americans such suckers for the rags-to-riches story? It occurred to me when my mother was watching CSPAN today. (Yes, yes, there is someone out there who watches CSPAN all the time, and that person is my mother.) But politicians will always try to emphasize their underprivileged childhood and their rise to personal success if they have it, and if they don't they will attempt to manipulate their life story in order to appear this way.

It's not necessary Bush I and Bush II have found it fairly hard to do so, although Bush II has at least cultivated an uncultivated image.

But certainly Bill Clinton for example, certainly capitalized on his working class childhood to gain sympathy, and Barak Obama is currently doing so. Whether they are successful due to this stratagem is debatable I suppose, but you can't deny that everyone feels the need to tap into this archetype.

Why do we like this story so much? Perhaps this story is supposed to demonstrate the person in question's inherent personal worth. All research to the contrary, perhaps Americans still buy into the idea that success=personal virtue. And what better way to demonstrate personal accomplishment than to come from nothing and end up on top of the world? This thinking strikes me as being particularly American. Of course every culture has stories of exemplary people who start out poor and become successful. However, to me, the American story places a great deal of emphasis on money, the lack of it at the beginning of the story and the abundance of it at the end is what guarantees success.

Thoughts on Imperialism

This part of Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism caught my attention. I'm going to quote it even though I haven't finished reading the whole thing yet.

...many people in the West came to feel that enough was enough. After Vietnam and Iran--and note here that these labels are usually employed equally to evoke American domestic traumas (the student insurrections of the 1960s, the public anguish about the hostages in the `970s) as much as international conflict and the "loss"of Vietnam and Iran to radical nationalisms--after Vietnam and Iran, lines had to be defended. Western democracy had taken a beating, and even if the physical damage had been done abroad, there was a sense, as Jimmy Carter once rather oddly put it, of "mutual destruction." This feeling in turn led to Westerners rethinking the whole process of decolonization. Was it not true, ran their new evaluation, that "we" had given "them" progress and modernization? Hadn't we provided them with order and a kind of stability that they haven't been able to provide for themselves? Wasn't it an atrocious misplaced trust to believe in their capacity for independence?...
The thing to be noticed about this kind of contemporary discourse, which assumes the primacy and even the complete centrality of the West, is how totalizing is its form, how all-enveloping its attitudes and gestures, how much it shuts out even as it includes, compresses, and consolidates. We suddenly find ourselves transported backwards in time to the late nineteenth century.
This imperial attitude is, I believe beautifully captured in the complicated and rich narrative form of Conrad's great novella Heart of Darkness, written between 1898 and 1899...
Conrad would probably never have used Marlow to present anything other than an imperialist world-view, given what was available for either Conrad or Marlow to see of the non-European at the time. Independence was for whites and Europeans; the lesser or subject peoples were to be ruled; science, learning, history emanated from the West. True, Conrad scrupulously recorded the differences between the disgraces of Belgian and British colonial attitudes, but he could only imagine the world carved up into one or another Western sphere of dominion.

The sort of thinking that Said was describing when he wrote the book (published in 1993) seems to be quite common in American thinking. I'm frequently surprised by how many Americans seem to unquestioningly believe in the American "destiny" and regard it as perfectly natural that America is the most powerful nation in the world and is some how superior to other nations. In my opinion, this is far from a certain thing, and historically has not always been true. Furthermore, this view also strikes me as dangerous, we started invading, and dare I say it, colonizing other countries with the firm belief that the people we conquered would rejoice and welcome us with open arms. Why did we think this? Because America is the bringer of freedom and possessor of a great destiny. Even when reality is staring us in the face, we seem incapable, as Said describes, of conceiving of a world order where the US is not on top, or imagining that our cause may not be just or even justified.

There are days

when I think this world and all the relationships in it are just illusory, and I would be far better served to just let them go.

The FOB part 2

So I've talked about FOBs a little bit before. And the aversion Asian Americans have for them. However, I think recently, they've become a bit more acceptable. My friend has a sister who had a crush on some guy who was a FOB, and so her sister (who's second gen/third gen, it's kind of complicated) wanted to become more FOB-like in order to pursue him.

Having lived in Asia for a couple of years, I have definitely found myself becoming more FOB-like. I listen to Mandarin pop and I like it, which usually invokes some kind of distain, well, from some of my white friends anyway. I will probably hang my clothes out on a line to dry if housing codes will let me. Those housing codes strike me as somewhat classist, but hey.

Like I said before, the FOB can be the dark mirror of assimilation. The FOB can become the specter of nonconformity, and also the impossibility of assimilation. No matter how assimilated you are, it is impossible to thoroughly blend in. However, I think for many Asian Americans the FOB can come to represent Asia. Although many Asian American kids these days, particularly the wealthy ones, are able to go back to Asia, to go back "home" many of us have never been. I had never been to Asia before I moved to Taiwan, so for us the FOB can come to represent that kind of society. And I think these days, as there are more and more Asian Americans and more and more cultural exchange back and forth, FOBism, or Asian culture, is starting to become ok. Something kids are interested in.

I think for some of us, the FOB tends to also represent authenticity. Many of us, when we're growing up, particularly those of us who do not speak our "mother tongue" pick up pretty quickly that we are not the "real deal." Our FOB cousins, friends, or classmates, are pretty clearly "the real deal." And so I think there's kind of fascination, besides the revulsion or discomfort that comes with interacting with FOBs.

I find the fact that people are becoming not necessarily Asian or American, but transnational somewhat exciting. I think I've noted in previous rants, (I'd link, but the browser I'm on won't let me) that there are a lot of Asian Americans who go back to Asia to become singers and actors, rather than trying to cut it in the States, because they know that they can't cut it. So there's also the movement of Asian Americans returning "home" back to Asia. I find this all quite interesting.

Tourism

It's kind of interesting to see all the touristy trinkets and cheap souvenirs, because it kind of shows you how a country markets itself to other people, as well as how other people who come to the country want to see it. So naturally in China, there are tons of cheap jade bracelets, and silks of various colors, you get the idea.

But the other thing that caught my attention is what seems to be a smaller market in a kind of Communist chic. Mao watches, green canvas bags with the red Communist star on it as well as Mao's head, hats with the red star on them etc. I suspect that the Communist paraphernalia is for the backpacking crowd, for I have seen many an unkempt white dude with a backpack sporting one of those canvas bags. Which is kind of interesting. It's pretty natural that there's a certain type of backpacker would eschew the sort of more obviously touristy souvenirs, what I find amusing is that the market has adapted to sell this type of customer their own, distinct but no less cheap or ubiquitous type of souvenir.

The FOB

That Sepia Mutiny keeps making me think. They posted an article on what appears to be a conflict between Canadian-born desis and foreign-born desis, in which the word FOB has come into play. Which reminded me of some of my own experience with FOBs and the general perception about FOBs. So South Asians say FOB and East Asians say FOB, chalk up one point for the Indians are Asian guy.

In general, I feel like FOB, as a word, has quite a negative meaning. The most interesting thing about the word, for me at least, is the way it's used. Unlike other slurs, it's primarily an in-group word, rather than an out-group word. So although it is a form of discrimination, it's one that occurs within a community rather that between communities. I also suspect that FOB is chiefly an Asian American word, I've never heard it used outside of the Asian American (East or South) communities. I guess probably in part due to the name (fresh off the boat implies that you had to take a boat to get here).

I think in the past, the part of the FOB was pretty clear. Recent immigrants, funny clothes, accents, bad haircuts, "Third World" behavior etc. It's picking out their overly "ethnic" appearances, and comparing them unfavorably with American-born Asians. Why do we do this? On a certain level, I think because their presence makes us uncomfortable. Making the distinction of FOB vs. American born is attempting to draw a distinction where in the eyes of white people there is none. Telling ourselves " Well I'm not like that."

Furthermore, I feel, at least on my part, there's a certain amount of fascination. What would I have been like if I hadn't been born in America? Could that be me? When we reject FOBs, we make them our Other, our monster. Both a possibility of what we could have been and also what we most certainly are not. And at this point, it's really not about them anymore, it's about us.

On a personal level, I guess I never had the same dislike or aversion to FOBs that some of my peers did. In middle school, most of my friends were recent immigrants, and I actually wished I could be more like them. This is probably because the school was pretty much divided between white kids and immigrant Asian kids who were there because the middle school was the only one that had an ESL program. So it would have been easier to have a "place" if I had been a FOB.

At the same time, I used to get kind of frustrated with them because they didn't want to or weren't able to fight back, and honestly it was pretty much the latter, when people teased them about their names, or teachers would shout loudly and slowly at them. I probably took it harder than they did. I guess maybe I just wanted to see them stand up and fight back.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this honestly, but maybe much as Asian Americans frequently are the other to white America, the FOB, and really just the specter of the FOB, rather than any actual recent immigrant, is our other.

Depressed Asians

Probably as a result of both API history month and V Tech, we have news stories reporting on an old statistic. That Asian American women 15-24 are the most likely of any ethnicity in that age group to commit suicide. I say this is an old statistic, I've written about it before. However, it is startling statistic nonetheless. I'm at the very very outside of this age group. So maybe this means it hits a little closer to home for me.

The author of the article Angry Asian Man links to seems to want to put the blame to Asian culture. I thought the prof that they quoted was actually a bit better, in that she admitted that they don't really know for sure. Could be Asian culture, could be the pressure of the model minority stereotype, could be genetic, they don't really know.

There are times when I feel like being the invisible minority is not so bad, given the demonization of other ethnic groups. At least they don't say bad things about us, right? But it's times like these when I feel how much invisibility really hurts us. How many young Asian American women know themselves to be at risk? How many of our well intentioned white mental health practitioners know that Asian American women are at risk?

I don't know that I buy that the the self-imposition of the model minority stereotype is what causes young women to want to kill themselves. Could be those family expectations, but I'm inclined to think that those are a different animal entirely. The model minority stereotype is most pernicious, I think, not among Asian Americans, but among other people. That the quiet Asian kid is quiet, not because there's something wrong, but because that's just the way Asians are.

Choosing

I once had an intense argument with a friend of mine about the politics of choosing. My friend was of the opinion that one should fight equally for every cause, against racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ablism, lookism etc. And I maintained that, while one can be an ally on every cause, eventually you have to choose what you want to work for. And I still feel this way. And in the end I chose racism, because at least for me, it's important to be able to work to within a movement where I don't have to listen to upper class white straight women tell me what to do (feminism), or rich gay men tell me what to do (gay rights).

Plus there are things like ablism, which are not a part of my personal experience, and attempting to get involved to the point of hijacking the issue seems both dangerous and patronizing. In these situations, I think it's better and more helpful to be an ally

I read this post by Black Amazon and I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Relieved that someone else felt the same way I did about feminism, and also kind of disappointed, since I'd be hoping maybe just the self identified feminists that I had met were like that and "real" feminism was better.

Anyway, Magniloquence is righteous and everything. And said most of what I think, only better and clearer. But I have to say, I've listened to white straight girls complain about the burdens of being beautiful and thin, I've heard rich gay men say that we must all try to make ourselves inconspicuous and maybe the government will give us some civil unions (or possibly some candy.)

And then I think about Vincent Chin and somehow those things don't seem that important to me. So while I try to be an ally for other people's causes, because there are other struggles than mine that are important, and worth fighting for, I still do believe that you have to choose, in the end, where you're going to be.

You can call them pet issues if you want, but who is going to fight for us if we don't fight for ourselves. And if you won't fight for me, why should I fight for you?

方言

So this week I quit going to class in order to continue packing (hooray!) and filing taxes (hooray!) and other exciting things. However, when I was still going to class, my teacher gave me a poem which was written using Chinese characters but specifically meant to be read in Taiwanese (Minnanhua). So some words don't actually follow their original meaning, but are used to convey their phonetic meaning which a speaker of Taiwanese would understand.

Since a lot of words were still connected to their original meaning I could 大概 understand the meaning of the poem. This led to a discussion of sorts about dialects or local languages.

To me, I guess, Taiwanese seems a lot like Hawaiian pidgin. Actually, that's always been the one language I wish I knew. Well, ok, that and Chinese. But anyway, both had been suppressed before, and both are now rather inextricably connected to an emergent sense of local identity. While at the same time, they are incredibly personal. Even Taiwanese people who don't necessarily support the recent government decisions to emphasize teaching Taiwanese in schools have a fondness, and pride for the language itself.

However, since it is a language, or dialect, confined to a specific region, a poem written in that language is limited in its audience. Fewer people have the ability to truly understand what the poet is talking about. But perhaps this makes the identification that much stronger.

Like I said, I don't speak pidgin, but I do, well partially, understand it. Because my cousin speaks it. My mom's family is kamaiina of sorts. But our family are still katonks from the mainland. We did end up living with my grandparents for a month once, and even in a month my sister and I were already picking some stuff up. Part of it was because we were kids, and kids just pick things like that up quicker, and part of it was because a lot of pidgin is based off of the pidgin Japanese that my family uses. Zots from zoris. etc. And then some of it was just made up, my uncle for example is bolohead.

Anyway, like poems in Taiwanese, there has been fiction written in pidgin. Although I don't always enjoy all of it, and something often tells me that I'm missing something, since I don't speak pidgin for real. However, I would say that sometimes local languages are able to convey something that is truly unable to be expressed by the bigger ones. It's really hard to explain, but there it is.