After much problems with rendering and uploading, here is a link to my final project. Feel free to share with friends and classmates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8841wYVeZ40&feature=youtu.be
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Cats of Mirikatani (Grand Master Artist)
"Jimmy" is a Japanese-American that is an artist that expresses his feelings and emotions through his artwork. He is known for drawing his Japanese cats, but several times throughout the movie it shows him drawing his experiences at the interment camps. He uses this as an expression of the lingering affects it has had on him. After spending 3 and 1/2 years in the interment camps just because he was Japanese, his life was in a spiral from there. He lost his family, he lost his identity, he didn't even have a social security number.
Jimmy rebelled against assimilating because once he did, he would forget about his culture and what America did to his homeland. He was never correctly reimbursed for the years of being wrongfully detained. The appalling part to me is that I was unaware of all of this. In high school there was a paragraph or two describing the interment of Japanese Americans on the west coast, but they never elaborated on how they were treated, the lifestyles they were forced to live, or what happened to them afterwards. I feel foolish for not asking the question myself, and even more foolish that I had to learn it from a movie. This is part of America's history and people don't even know it happened. All of these are reasons why Jimmy is so spiteful to the American government.
There were lots of underlying messages that stood out to me throughout the movie. There was a part when I believe the news was on and someone said, "everything ashes". This was an interpretation of the dropping of the atomic bombs and the terrorist attacks on 9/11. This assumption is reassured when Jimmy replied with, "same old story". He experienced 9/11 already, he's seen history repeat itself in front of his eyes.
The closing to the movie was when Jimmy and his tenant both visited Camp Tule, where he was kept during his interment. This moment reminded me of "Smoke Signals" because in the beginning of the movie the fire is destructive. But in the end, when the trailer is lit on fire it is a cleansing feeling. Just like it Cats of Mirikitani, Jimmy needed to visit Camp Tule to get closure, to finally be able to let go of the past.
Fictive Fragments of Father & Son
"To assimilate means to lose parts of your old identity to become something else"
I both agree and disagree to this statement. This is the most relatable reading to me because of the racism that the characters and experience and the struggles that the Asian immigrant parents experienced.
Both of my parents came to America to experience the "dream" of living an economically stable life while raising a family that had a better life than their own. This dream seemed almost out of reach for two immigrants that were alone in a foreign world. My parents remind me of the constant struggles they experienced, like experiencing different cultures and religions, different foods, and different lifestyles -different- everything. I hear stories all the time of the racism they have encountered, from being called dog-eater for passing someone while driving to getting "chinaman or gook" yelled at them. Throughout all these hardships my father seemed to accept some realities that just weren't his. At the time it was a genre of music that he didn't seem to enjoy but the rest of the world did, so he went and bought all the tapes for them and listened until he learned to like it. He was forcing himself to be American. This overcompensation is a small example, but could've happened to him several times throughout his journey here. And through this overcompensation comes the loss of your original culture, his Filipino culture.
The only true link to my parents identity was their language. They could only speak to each other and they could only understand each other. When my siblings and I were born, they never attempted to teach us. They made this hard decision because they knew that the world wasn't so ready for bilingual kids, especially when the other language is tagalog. They feared that in school we would be either made fun of or get in trouble with the teacher for not understanding not to speak tagalog to them. I'm upset with this fact that my parents had to let go of their link to their culture because America was not ready for it. I'm upset with the fact that my parents had to give up so much for the price of opportunity.
"To assimilate means to lose parts of your old identity to become something else"
I both agree and disagree to this statement. This is the most relatable reading to me because of the racism that the characters and experience and the struggles that the Asian immigrant parents experienced.
Both of my parents came to America to experience the "dream" of living an economically stable life while raising a family that had a better life than their own. This dream seemed almost out of reach for two immigrants that were alone in a foreign world. My parents remind me of the constant struggles they experienced, like experiencing different cultures and religions, different foods, and different lifestyles -different- everything. I hear stories all the time of the racism they have encountered, from being called dog-eater for passing someone while driving to getting "chinaman or gook" yelled at them. Throughout all these hardships my father seemed to accept some realities that just weren't his. At the time it was a genre of music that he didn't seem to enjoy but the rest of the world did, so he went and bought all the tapes for them and listened until he learned to like it. He was forcing himself to be American. This overcompensation is a small example, but could've happened to him several times throughout his journey here. And through this overcompensation comes the loss of your original culture, his Filipino culture.
The only true link to my parents identity was their language. They could only speak to each other and they could only understand each other. When my siblings and I were born, they never attempted to teach us. They made this hard decision because they knew that the world wasn't so ready for bilingual kids, especially when the other language is tagalog. They feared that in school we would be either made fun of or get in trouble with the teacher for not understanding not to speak tagalog to them. I'm upset with this fact that my parents had to let go of their link to their culture because America was not ready for it. I'm upset with the fact that my parents had to give up so much for the price of opportunity.
"To assimilate means to lose parts of your old identity to become something else"
In a generation or two, who knows how much of the Filipino culture will be apparent in my family's bloodline.
The Third and Final Continent
This story tells the tale of an Indian man that left his country for schooling in London. After he is finished he gets a job in America and tells his stories of his assimilation into the country. This story differs from the rest that we've read because his assimilation doesn't seem so difficult. He gets an apartment, doesn't struggle with the language, he even gets a high paying job that provides stability for himself and his wife. The only thing that bothered this man was the culture-shocks that he experienced.
I found it funny when he mentioned the "loudness" outside when the noise became unbearable for him. My mother, who also is an immigrant, came to America and the only thing she told me that bothered her was the noise too!
The Landlord, Mrs. Croft, and her daughter Helen were two pivotal characters in the main characters transition from India and London. Mrs Croft especially, I saw her as unknowingly becoming his mentor that was teaching him the in's and out's of living in America. Mrs. Croft was his training, she reminded him to lock the doors, how to speak properly, and pushed him to realize the importance of the American flag being on the moon. After all this training, he was ready to accept his wife into his life and they moved out of the apartment. When they were on their own, he became his wife's teacher and helped her assimilate into America too
Although I couldn't understand why the man seemed so careless about his wife. The first time she was mentioned he said that he got married in passing and there was little to no detail about her. Even when she moved in with him, he barely empathized with her struggles to assimilate into his new world; he described her as a seasonal change. The single time he showed compassion for her was when she was experiencing the culture shocks herself because he understood what she was going through.
I found it funny when he mentioned the "loudness" outside when the noise became unbearable for him. My mother, who also is an immigrant, came to America and the only thing she told me that bothered her was the noise too!
The Landlord, Mrs. Croft, and her daughter Helen were two pivotal characters in the main characters transition from India and London. Mrs Croft especially, I saw her as unknowingly becoming his mentor that was teaching him the in's and out's of living in America. Mrs. Croft was his training, she reminded him to lock the doors, how to speak properly, and pushed him to realize the importance of the American flag being on the moon. After all this training, he was ready to accept his wife into his life and they moved out of the apartment. When they were on their own, he became his wife's teacher and helped her assimilate into America too
Although I couldn't understand why the man seemed so careless about his wife. The first time she was mentioned he said that he got married in passing and there was little to no detail about her. Even when she moved in with him, he barely empathized with her struggles to assimilate into his new world; he described her as a seasonal change. The single time he showed compassion for her was when she was experiencing the culture shocks herself because he understood what she was going through.
Monday, May 19, 2014
I Would Remember
Carlos Bulosan was an immigrant from the Philippines that left his homeland due to the economic instability. He experienced hardships like starvation, no stability from jobs, and experiencing death several times throughout his life. Bulosan represents the struggles that immigrants from the Philippines experienced, and although it wasn't modern day, a lot of his struggles are still experienced by Filipinos today.
As a first-generation American, I am constantly reminded by immediate family, family-friends, and friends about the plight of Filipino Americans. Filipinos today leave the homeland for the same reason that Carlos Bulosan did, for the American Dream, which is basically economic stability. Other reasons people leave the Philippines is because of land loss, better opportunities, and corruption within the government. Although people today do not have to experience the tragic assimilation that Bulosan experienced, after experiencing working on plantations and almost dying of starvation their migration to the country isn't smooth.
It is a norm for people that go to college in the Philippines to try and come to America because it is the best bet for their success. People there are both underpaid and overworked which serves as a greater motivation to emigrate. This causes something known as "bran-drain" within the country which means that all the educated people are leaving and using their job skills and training in another place.
But in the end, opportunity is the underlying reason for people leaving. There is some unrealistic belief in immigrants vision of what America is. America is the land of opportunity, but that opportunity is directly determined by access to resources.
Bulosan's experiences don't only adhere to the Filipino immigrant experience but the experiences of many other cultures. The people used within the story that he encounters are never identified through race, culture, or sexuality. He uses this non-identification to show that these experienced are struggles of immigrants from all over the world and like the stories I told about Filipino immigrants, similar struggles are also shared.
Smoke Signals
This movie depicts the life of modern day Native Americans living in reservations. Their lifestyle wasn't what I expected at all. It would seem as if the Indians were still trapped on this reservation with no luck of getting out and assimilating into the world. The way people stared at them whenever they were out of the reservation were looks of confusion and judgement. They experienced racism on the bus but the bus scene also included more than that. A point that I found intriguing was when Thomas and Victor were speaking to the Olympic gymnast, it was as if that was their chance to assimilate into America. Thomas was showing a different side to the Indian stereotype but Victor was living up to it by being blunt, stoic, and mean.
Another thing I found interesting about the movie was their easy-going joking about being an Indian. It's as if they were laughing at the imminent doom of being a Native American, drinking alcohol and addiction was a common theme throughout the movie. Other things that were joked about was the modern use of oral tradition and surprisingly the joke about "vaccinations" which everyone knows has a morbid backstory to it.
This movie truly made me question what I am celebrating on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to Native Americans is, The Day of Mourning, am I too celebrating the "white peoples Independence Day"? How many things am I blindly celebrating or blindly believing in without questioning them or the past. Without understanding both sides of the situations. This same thought was provoked when we watched the Cats of Mirkitani movie because people were celebrating the end of WWII, but the Japanese-Americans were mourning the deaths and destruction of their homeland. Smoke Signals helped me realize that I need to understand two sides of a celebration in the end.
Information on Indian Reservations
Through research I found that there are still about 300 hundred Indian reservations active today. There are over 500 recognized Indian tribes so many live without reservations and some tribes have more than one reservation. The laws within reservations are changed and many of them allow casinos within their area which attracts tourists. This can cause a big problem for Indian reservations because casinos deal with gambling and gambling deals with addiction and alcohol problems. This change of laws can be one of the few reasons for the problems that Indians living on reservations are experiencing.
Listed here is a website I used to research Indian Reservations
http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/documents/ResMAP.HTM
Another thing I found interesting about the movie was their easy-going joking about being an Indian. It's as if they were laughing at the imminent doom of being a Native American, drinking alcohol and addiction was a common theme throughout the movie. Other things that were joked about was the modern use of oral tradition and surprisingly the joke about "vaccinations" which everyone knows has a morbid backstory to it.
This movie truly made me question what I am celebrating on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to Native Americans is, The Day of Mourning, am I too celebrating the "white peoples Independence Day"? How many things am I blindly celebrating or blindly believing in without questioning them or the past. Without understanding both sides of the situations. This same thought was provoked when we watched the Cats of Mirkitani movie because people were celebrating the end of WWII, but the Japanese-Americans were mourning the deaths and destruction of their homeland. Smoke Signals helped me realize that I need to understand two sides of a celebration in the end.
Information on Indian Reservations
Through research I found that there are still about 300 hundred Indian reservations active today. There are over 500 recognized Indian tribes so many live without reservations and some tribes have more than one reservation. The laws within reservations are changed and many of them allow casinos within their area which attracts tourists. This can cause a big problem for Indian reservations because casinos deal with gambling and gambling deals with addiction and alcohol problems. This change of laws can be one of the few reasons for the problems that Indians living on reservations are experiencing.
Listed here is a website I used to research Indian Reservations
http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/documents/ResMAP.HTM
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