5/31

Nam Le- "Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice"

The narrator’s interaction with his own father it depicts of the tensions between immigrants and their westernized children. The choice of action highlights the distance that is heartfelt between Asians children and their parents. Rather than reflecting what other articles could I relate to it occurred to me that I am going through the same exact situation because I also struggle at home to resist this “Americanized” version of myself while also being the quiet and obedient Chinese daughter to my family. It is still very interesting how Asian parents have a harder time attempting to show their emotions to their children and it just comes off as a lack of emotions even when the father tried to care for his son by doing his dishes and asked if he wanted food. Many of the times these expressions come off as very misleading to children growing up in a community where they see other’s parents hugging and kissing their kids. Growing up I also learned to realize that I am understanding why my parents have always been so emotionless to me, they do care but just in a very different way than I expected.

Michelle Wang-Nam Le Blog

Nam Le: Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice

In “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” Le emphasizes that “I would write the ethnic story of my Vietnamese father. It was a good story” (8). This is a very powerful quote as Le wants to preserve his family narrative and wants to continue to reflect his father’s story. This relates to the struggles that many immigrant families have while finding a space to preserve their narratives while coming a long way in order to provide a better future for the family. In addition, this specifically relates to the Asian American communities as Asian American parents sacrifice in providing the best for their kids and future generation. I can connect this to my personal experience as my parents immigrated from China to the United States in order to seek a better future and the American dream. My parents had to always save up and made sure I was provided with the best. It was always difficult for my parents to share with me their narratives as they focused on providing the best for the family and were living under cultural assimilation. I am aware that I was raised under Asian cultures and traditions. and I learned that it was important for me to continue to preserve my family narrative and cultural values.

Question: How can we encourage and provide more spaces for immigrant families to share their narratives?

Nam Le- "Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice"

Through the narrator’s interactions with his own father, we are able to see the tensions between immigrants and their Westernized children.  I was reminded of the concept of code switching when the son hid evidence of his lifestyle—such as the bottles of alcohol, the cigarette burns on his table, and Linda—away from his father.  Unlike the article in which code switching was mentioned, I didn’t see this as an act of resistance; rather, this choice of action seemed to highlight the emotional distance that is commonly felt between Asian (and Asian American) children and their parents.  Though the father tried to show that he cared for his son by doing his dishes and asking him if he wanted food, sometimes the way the father cares can be misconstrued.  This is exemplified by the father making an ultimatum with the narrator’s mother in an attempt to get the narrator to come back home to him and when he beat the narrator for not following his study schedule.  I found it interesting that though “traditional” Asian parents seem to lack in emotion when it comes to their children, emotions still seem to be their biggest asset when it comes to getting their children to do what they want them to do.  If it’s not fear pushing a child to get good grades, then perhaps it is guilt or love driving a student to pursue a career they’re not entirely interesting in to make their parents’ sacrifice “worth it”.  Personally, I related some aspects of the narrator’s father with my own, in that both seemed to be short of temper earlier on in their lives before mellowing out in the later years.  I liked that the narrator asked his father for his story because it emphasizes the importance of understanding different generations through the lens of what they had to grow up with.  For example, I think I can understand my dad’s reluctance to part with his belongings even when they begin to clutter because I know that he didn’t have much growing up.  

Shopping and Roads

Karen Nguyen

ASA 4

Prof. Maira & Omar

30 May 2017

Fiske and Jordan Response

            In Fiske’s reading, it was interesting to read about how shopping both empowered and confined gender identities. On one side, the system of corporate capitalism restricts women to this role of the consumer that belongs in a private space. This role forms a gender identity of women and feminizes the action of shopping. As the demands of capitalism create a privatized arena for women to possess a role in the patriarchal material system, it communicates women’s roles as caretakers in the nuclear family. This private space mirrors the domestic space expected of women. On the contrary, shopping can be a mode of empowerment for women. Placed into this consumer role, women consumers are able to resist hegemony and challenge their subjection to private space. In Jordan's reading, the most interesting part for me included the theatrics of producing a resistance. The performance and artistic aspect of politics can be used as a tool for resisting Western values. Transforming public spaces to protest and resist is a community-based way for typical people to communicate their needs. 

Journal (6/1)

Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice- Nam Le

It was really interesting to read the short story by Nam Le. The narrator tells stories of his past and his father’s past along with their relationship and differences. There were certain aspects and parts in the story that i could relate too. My parents are also immigrants from Korea. My dad came to america for college to study and get a better education. My mother soon followed him, leaving everything she had and her friends and and family behind. They both came to america with little knowledge of the culture. They had to learn to adapt to the new environment and culture and worked hard with the main goal of providing the best for their family. On page two the author notes how his father goes to the sink and immediately starts doing the dishes when he sees the month-old crusted mount of dishes. The father also asks if tNam is hungry and if he wants the father to make something. I can relate my mom and my grandma both act like this too. They always try to clean and always make sure i eat. Whether this is a cultural thing or not, it shows how parents prioritize and truly want the best for their kids no matter what circumstance. On page two, the narrator also notes how he quickly tries to hide and clean his messy apartment. He tries to hard parts of his life and apartment because he thinks its better off if his father did not know. The author almost sounds irritated. This reminds me how whenever my mom or my housemate’s mom tries to come to our apartment, we dread it because they always try to clean everything immediately. We always try to pre-clean before they come because it can get annoying as well when our moms immediately start tidying our place and does not rest. It was also interesting when the narrator had the conversation with Linda. She tells him that though Nam’s father abused him, he still romanticized stories of his father. The author responds by saying how we forgive any sacrifice by our parents. He notes that his father’s sacrifice was “complete and compelled him to everything that happened. To all that [he] was inadequate”. I think this way of think is really common among Asian Americans. Many of the parents sacrificed so much when immigrating to the US, and so children feel the pressure to always respect and obey parents.

Journal 15

Robert Zhu

A01

In Shopping for Pleasure, Fiske talks about consumerism and shopping being targeted towards females as a place for privacy and control. Although this idea sounds harmless, consumerism is not a public and open space, as it is controlled and managed by big corporations. This is an interesting point because for women, contemporary malls may be a sense of empowerment in a seemingly “open space”, but is in reality a construct of corporations. Fiske also talks about shopping being a conflict of gender roles for masculinity and femininity. During the past memorial day weekend, I went to go shopping as a part of a hangout with my female friends. Although I personally find shopping in big malls very tiring and mentally draining, I just tagged along to chat alongside my friends. Interestingly, when someone texted me asking what I was doing, I hesitated a bit before texting back “I’m shopping”. Part of me thought saying “shopping” was a feminine thing to do and I couldn’t think of a synonym on the spot.

Blog #16: Short Story by Nam Le

The short story by Nam Le about his father and his origins in Vietnam was one that really resonated with me. Having been raised with two parents who share a similar past, I can understand a lot of the morals and values that Nam experiences/shares with his father. My parents immigrated to the United States as a result of the fall of Saigon. They were forced to leave their native country due to a lot of war, violence, and political turmoil. Throughout Le's story, I catch glimpses of emotional expressions in his writing. In Asian cultures, people value honor and pride, which can be expressed as love and sacrifice. From my own experiences, the sacrifices that parents make are usually for the sake of love and protection for their children. Any child of immigrant parents can vouch for their parents.

This brings up another point as to how Le doesn't share the sense of familial duty to his parents. He and his father were estranged, having not talked to each other for a period of time. This is interested as I'm sure a lot of American-born children have a sense of duty and repayment to their parents. In many ways, Le expresses nonconventional traits of the Asian child. He pursues writing, that in which itself is crucial in preserving Asian American history, but isn't the traditional career path. Other more conventional jobs include becoming a doctor or a lawyer, which he could have been. He also lives in Iowa, which isn't known for its large community or population of Asians. More concentrated areas of living could be those in the East or West Coast. Le also has a girlfriend who is White. This is unlike the typical same-ethnic partner that is expected of him. In the ways that he does follow the stereotypical Vietnamese portrayal is that he consumes a lot of alcohol, this is something lesser known to the public.  

Shopping for Pleasure & The Art of Necessity

May 30

John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure.”

John Jordan, “The Art of Necessity: The Subversive Imagination of Anti-Riot Protest and Reclaim the Streets.”

 In Shopping for Pleasure, Fiske talks about how the mall and shopping is a form of cultural resistance for women, opposed to the masculinity of the non-domestic spaces in the U.S. The author talks about various slogans of female consumption, like “a women’s place is in the mall” and various other saying that treat shopping and the mall as a religious space for women. Fiske talks about how the mall is a place that caters to women and offers freedom from domestic constraints. I do agree that the power women have as consumers is liberating in that women control markets by being the primary consumers of households; however, the author doesn’t spend that much time talking about the source of income that the liberation and power to consume is coming from.

In The Art of Necessity, John Jordan talks about the anti-road protests of residents who would be displaced by a massive road project in London. The protests formed unconventional road protests that utilized art as the main source of power and political agenda. I think this article is one of the first in the class to display full acts of resistance, rather than everyday acts of resistance. Art has always been deeply tied to its own place in history and social movements, and I think it’s great that this was actually discussed because contemporary art is really given less attention and thought to have less meaning in popular culture then traditional politics.