.From the assigned reading from the book “East Main Street” I noticed this link between the chapters assigned with the idea of how pre-conceived notions and ideas of different cultures and races are spread through the media which form different stereotypes and many times misconceptions about people from Asia or with Asian ancestry.

In the essay entitled ¨Model Minorities Can Cook: Fusion Cuisine in Asian America” by Anita Mannur I noticed how the two main examples of Asian Americans who have become famous from television shows on the FoodNetwork displaying fusion cuisine are what one could be considered perfect for representing the young Asian community. Both Ming Tsai and Padma Lakshmi can be seen as poster children of not only fusion cuisine but even more as the fusion of Asian- Americans into American culture. They are portrayed as these sexy young ethnically and culturally diverse Asian Americans who can meld between two worlds of the foreign and the upper white class in America where Asian fusion cuisine has become desirable. They are almost chameleon like and are portrayed as exotic and beautiful and this pre-conceived notion being displayed is unrealistic. I say this because it is apparent that the media almost handpicked these two individuals because of their good looks, ability to speak clear English, but still maintain and exude exoticness to the public. This pre-conceived notions of a new wave of up and coming Asian Americans can also be related to the pre-conceived notions of Hawaii as this tropical paradise with exotic plants animals and people, with only the beautiful elements of the island being displayed to the public. However we never see the slums in Honolulu or the drug problem (i.e. meth) that has stricken the islands. Furthermore from the essay “Allooksame” we see that often times our visual perceptions of different Asian groups is wrong. In the website it test one’s ability to identify if a person is Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or any other group within Asia. However many times people are unable to identify the differences between the groups. It shows how we have put people into categories and grouped them together without noticing the uniqueness that fits between the different Asian groups.  I personally feel that media, in particularly films, have made us unable to notice the differences between Asian groups. The film industry often will cast people of multiple Asian groups for a film based in Japan or China for example. It causes us to fit the Asian race into one big category without noticing the differences and uniqueness of the different groups within this large pre-conceived category in which we have developed.

Overall the use of media and the visions of different races and places aid in creating these pre-conceived notions of different Asian groups, and cause us to create assumptions which overall can be skewed and in all actuality false

Hey, so I lived in Hawai’i for  six months in 2012 and you know in a lot of ways, it was great. For the first time in my life, I was finally able to ride a bus, filled to the brim, with people who looked like me. I was able to walk down the street from my house and eat at a restaurant where everyone spoke Japanese and it was the closest food that I could get my hands on that reminded me of food straight from Japan. I was able to work somewhere where I spoke Japanese on the daily basis and it was seen as no big deal.

But you know what? I left. I moved away. I came back home to the Pacific Northwest.

When I first got home, everyone bombarded me with questions, the number one being “why would you leave a tropical paradise to come back to a place like Washington?”

I am tired of this question. I am so angry that there is the expectation that Hawai’i is this place for escape, but when people think of Hawai’i they mostly think about Honolulu or Waikiki and I didn’t live in those places, those places are not only expensive but that place specifically CATERS to tourists only. I lived in Mililani Town. Central Oahu. Right smack dab in the middle where I was far away from the glitz and glamour of a “tropical paradise”. I worked in Pearl Harbor and every morning, I had to wake up at 4 o’ clock in the morning to make my long trek to my bus stop and once at the bus stop, I would be surrounded by abandoned cats begging for food (I on occasion shared my musubi with them), when on the bus it was always at full capacity. I would get on the bus at 5:30 A.M. and my job started at 8 A.M. On days I was able to get a ride from someone, it was only a 20 minute drive. Please let this paint a picture in your mind that traffic is atrocious there. It’s exhausting. And  let that painting equal that the island is far, far too over populated.

Once, I went to the most beautiful beach I had ever seen. However, it was military access only. Locals were NOT allowed to enjoy this beautiful beach. Native Hawaiian Locals were BLOCKED OFF from their own beach. I went once and never wanted to go again. I felt disgusted by myself and friends for having the privilege to enjoy that beach.

I worked as a tour guide in Pearl Harbor. During the summer, I probably gave tours to over 80 people a day. Multiply that by having a staff of at least 10 tour guides and just picture the amount of money that my work place collected and yet every day when I left to go home, I witnessed litter ALL over the island. When I talked to my friends who were locals, they all said that it’s a miracle if someone who attends school in Hawai’i ends up finding themselves in college. My room mates friend was a middle school teacher and when we talked she constantly talked about how awful the school was with materials as well as how “retarded” her students were.

I couldn’t stand working in the tourist industry in some ways. I couldn’t stand that we had so much revenue and it all just went back into the companies so that these people from the mainland could visit this fabricated idea of what Hawai’i is really like.

I’m not saying that the state of Hawai’i is terrible, what I am saying is is that the assimilation that’s happening in Hawai’i through the tourist industry is destructive and sad. Haole Army bro’s telling me that Pidgin is terrible and to never learn it. The rich history of Hawai’i that is being shared with tourists is only seen as this spectacle, like going to the zoo and watching the animals and ‘ooh-ing and aah-ing”.

I was alone in this place that to me was being taken over by an outsider culture and the harsh reality that I am also an outsider was much too much to handle alone.

By the time you read this letter
I’ll be far away from here
I’ve left to find my fortune
outside of the weir
the world is not this island
to dig and die for gold
and how can I stay here
with Australia full of gold

Father won’t forgive me
so mother don’t you cry
for one day I’ll return
with my head held high
for now keep that book
its words pulled my bowstring
and when I read them
for me changed everything

Words on a page can weigh a ton
when the past is not undone

I stowed away on a ship
that sailed the western sea
city to the outback
was all I’d read it’d be
the war broke out in ’41
I joined like every other son
and came back from Rabaul
with my life and an empty gun

When I came back to Canada
there were voices in my head
they spoke not with words
but with the faces of the dead
the strongest river current
can change its flow by force
but words brought me to the war
and changed my path and course

Now as an old man
I think of all the things I’ve done
’cause I’ve lived my whole life
like a bullet from a gun
I look back at myself
and when I was 21
and when I’d read that book
of foreign lands and all or none
I wonder if my heirs
will think of what I’ve done
and if the sins of the father
will visit the son
~The Town Pants; Words on a Page

This is the song that played in my head and the theme that resonated in me with each of todays essays; which themselves revolved around music. Ch1 talked about the symbolism in goa trance, raves, and techno music, and the identities people found in these sub-genres. Ch2 focused more on  politics and culture within Vietnamese. For many the music transcended politics, while others embraced the governments view of “social-evils.” The connection I made was how influential words on a page– or in song– can be, and how lives are changed.

No matter how hard governments try to suppress the ideas found in books, poetry, or song, their efforts ultimately fail. In the 1980s the US government sanctioned  PMRC (parents music resource center) attempted to censor artists– and by extension ideas. It was an American version of Vietnams “anti-social evils campaign.” Ch5 involved the role of hip-hop and rap in areas subjected to colonization and imperialism in Guam. Again, it made me wonder if America’s heirs will think of what Its done and if the sins of the father will visit the son. I also wonder what impact the words of the Blue Scholars, Black Eyed Peas and Cibo Matto will have on their listeners. How far will they travel outside the weir. What will the weight of their words have on this generation?

 

On page on 301, where it says, “To put it another way, hip hop and electronica use various technologies to deconstruct and reconstruct sound fragments in much the same way that marginal subjects create identities for themselves in a society that refuses to acknowledge them as wholly human.” I thought about this when listening to blue scholars and the black eyed peas with some of their songs. HI-808 was a good one to me because they combined hip hop with a jazz feeling so in a fact taking to different genres and put them together and also being in that Asian American melting pot of culture that some may not be used to seeing on TV or a music video. To see that this group which just of recent was introduced to me, they are really good. Combining the two surprised me a lot. I never knew this about Asian American in general and I guess goes with the saying, “Don’t judge a book by the color of the cover.” I really appreciate the music videos that were shown today and that I learned more about music, but more about Asian American which I know a lot about music, but not about this kind of music. I know more about music out of my own genre that can last for awhile, even MC Jin, I didn’t know that he was a rapper let alone to rap in his own language and that was impressive and made it flow just as it would in English. Shout out to all the other Asian American rappers/artists of hip hop that I don’t know about, but will find out about.

  Asian fusion cooking as a tool of gentrification and assimilation is an interesting theory I had not considered before the assigned reading for this week. …

I have seen The Joy Luck Club several times, and I’ve read the book as well.  My first reaction to this film is that it is very dramatic and can be taken as cliche in some respects.  However, I really feel that the messages in this film can be applied to almost anyone’s life.  It is about mother and daughter relationships, but it is also about many other relationships.  One of the challenges that I saw was the culture gap between the mothers and daughters.  The mother’s all came from China originally, but their daughters were born in America.  The daughters were struggling with being American, but also holding onto their Chinese culture, and the mother’s were afraid that their daughters were losing the true meaning of what it meant to be Chinese.  It wasn’t about the food or clothing, it was about the truths and dreams that they brought from China, and tried to give to their daughters.  It was a beautiful movie, and I think anyone who looks closely enough at the messages being portrayed can learn something from this film.

In relation to Slaying The Dragon, I think that even though this film was full of Chinese culture and influence, I don’t feel that it was necessarily stereotypical because it was supposed to be very Chinese.  If that makes sense.  The women weren’t over-sexualized; they were portrayed as women who were Chinese, not Chinese people who were women.

 

 

Crisis

-a dramatic emotional or circumstantial upheaval in a person’s life.

 

One of the things that I enjoyed most was the interaction between mother and daughter. It was interesting to me that it showed a mother bringing dishonor to her family, which started the crisis. In Orientals its talked about what was considered to be the three ideals of the Asian family: a secure environment for kids, the Asian family pushes those children to work harder, and it fosters savings (pg. 185).

Its interesting to see the difference between what the perceived family is and the family structure that is presented in Saving Face. While these aspects are present in the movie as well, there are more dynamics than just these three. There’s a question of familial stability for the unborn baby simply because of the fact that it was conceived of out of wedlock, as well as the mother’s age.

Also, probably because of the age of the two, there was a more give and take relationship between mother and daughter. It felt like a more authentic relationship between a grown woman and her parent. There was also the ‘crisis’ of coming out to her mother and her mother not accepting it. After there was acceptance, her mother stating how excited she was that her daughter had finally gotten married and Vivian’s father stating that he was proud his daughter had married a doctor. Stereotypes twisted by the fact that it was a pair of women who got married rather than a man and a woman.

Chapter 4

• Cuisine vs food/ vanity vs sustenance
• Is fusion cuisine a type of cultural appropriation?
• What is cultural appropriation? And where is the line drawn?
• Anyone remember tex/mex?

Chapter 9

• Pidgin vs English
• Language Fear Barriers
• Lilo and Stitch: “If you lived here, you’d understand.”
• Through the Media Looking Glass

Chapter 13

• Hypercapitalism?
• alllooksame.com
• perspective: statement vs question

I watched this movie in my 10th grade U.S. History class before, so this is the second time I have watched it. I understand it a little more then I did the first time because I now have more knowledge on Asian-American History.

“They hoped to be lucky, that hope was their only joy.”

Connection: Anybody notice that the song that the little girl sang at the talent show was the same song was the same song that was in the movie “Slaying the Dragon”? Also they brought up the movie “The world of Suzie Wong” which was also talked about in the movie “Slaying the Dragon.”

All of the men in the movie were douche bags! They were all jerks to their wives and didn’t treat them right !

For East Main Street…I choose chapters 6,10, and 14 to bring up some discussion topics, questions ect.

Chapter 6-  pg.118 What’s your opinion on those provocative phrases…please explain? Are they eye catching/why? Are they appropriate or inappropriate…both/why? Do you think that those kind of phrases and/or titles are necessary to be “eye catching”/why?

- pg.129 Dave talks about Asians being recruited as “cheap labor” and being “unassimilable”…What are some examples you can give that support  and deny that?

- pg. 130 What’s your opinion on on how Dave talks about how “queerness” is acquired?

Side note…I googled the definition of “queer” and the definition makes me sick!

Chapter 10- pg. 206 Dave talks about Japanese American Women having to compete with white standards…UGH I just don’t even like that whole topic of “white or caucasian” beauty. Who even said what was what and did people go with that?

-Opinions and thoughts on what Dave talks about assimilation and beauty [207]…They are either too Japanese or not enough. So they create pageants to build confidence and self esteem, however it’s seen as the Japanese distancing themselves further from “American or white culture” so they are not assimilating..and if they were, white society still saw them as an other.

-pg. 211 Why do you think there was such an “outcry” from the Japanese Community even though the pageants were considered “outdated and sexist”/why?

Chapter 14- pg. 273 have you ever had that feeling that Dave describes knowing the race of the actor in the movie? How you have “outed” or “spotted” that persons racial background? If so, why?

-pg. 274 Why do you think Keanu Reeves is an iconic figure? Why do you think people talk about his sexuality and his racial background? Is it controversial or just interesting? Thoughts and explanations.

-pg.276 Race by Association…I found that topic really interesting because people do that everyday! People try to automatically assume they know what somebodies racial background is by just simply “the way they look”..That’s really irritating. What are your opinions and thoughts on people asking others what their racial background is? Acceptable or not/why?