eNcounTer acTiviTy fOur***

After reading some of the other blogs (by Cattie, Amanda, and Channdra) I have some things I can compare.  For one, problems communicating were brought up always, in some form.  Paco knew English already, but still had problems understanding the slang.  Dr. Olasz also had problems with the idiom, and had to learn things like what a high-five meant.  I don't think we think about this enough.  Besides the language, there is A LOT of other stuff immigrants must learn. Mafo had problems communicating with Amanda too.  Paco said that a lot of Hispanics seem invisible and get mistreated because of their race, and Dr. Olasz got treated like less for being Hungarian.  The culture was also a big thing that came up.  Paco, from Mexico City, was surprised to see senior citizens behind the wheel.  Luo, from Ouzhou, China, was surprised to see that pedestrians had the right away and that people were so friendly.

There was also a lot that was different between these people.  Paco knew English when he came to America because he had taught it in Mexico.  Mafo, who was African but spoke French, knew little about the language (English) and about things like driving.  Paco teaches Spanish in America and is trusted in that because it is his native language.  Dr. Olasz taught U.S. History, and students were skeptical because she was Hungarian.  Paco said the translations from Spanish to English lose there meaning sometimes, and Luo said it really depends of the company doing the translation, that sometimes translation from Chinese to English stays intact.

Everyone had something they wanted America to know about their culture.  Paco wanted people to realize their stereotypes about Hispanics.  Dr. Olasz wanted Americans to know that Hungarians are not Slavic.  Mafo wanted us to value everything we have, because not everyone in Africa is so fortunate.  Luo wants people to realize that there are the same things in China that we have in America.  It's not so different. If I had to sum up all of my findings, I would say that no matter what, there are going to be difficulties.  It doesn't matter how educated you are in the language.  You will still need to learn the culture.  And like Paco told me, you can't do that without going over and living it. 

Let the peoples' voice be heard! From this exercise I have learned that people from different cultures really long for us to understand their culture.  The problem is, people are so rapped up in their own lives we often don't stop to smell the roses.  Or listen to what people have to say.  Or more importantly, understand how they feel.  That stuff takes time, and unfortunately America is on a tight schedule.  That's why we need classes like one this to educate us about other cultures.


Until next time,

Keri Jo

KITE RUNNER part three

The end of this movie was a climax I did not expect.  I did not for a second think that Hassan and Amir could be brothers.  My stomach jumped like I was on a roller coaster when I heard this.  Props to the writers.  Good plot.

I thought it was sweet that Amir dedicated that book to Rahim.  It shows the softer side of Amir.  Amir often hides his emotions so you have to look closely to watch them come out. 

Hassan's letter to Amir almost made me cry.  Hassan was such a wonderful person.  It was truly sad to hear that he died, but I figured he would.  After all, he was not the protagonist.  Hassan had such thoughtful and loving wishes, and said Amir would always have an old faithful friend waiting for him.  Man did that touch my heart.  After reading this Amir must have known that he had to save his nephew.  Sometimes it takes something this sad and powerful to get a person to do the right thing.

The Taliban ruling Afghanistan is sick.  I feel for the people there, although I can't really empathize because we in America don't have to deal with that kind of stuff.  And they think God wants them to kill those that sin.  I almost cried again, for that woman, and all I could think of was, in the Gospels, how Jesus stops the Jews from stoning that woman, or rather He says, "“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Regardless of what people believe, I cannot imagine anyone thinking it is okay to take another life like this.  People literally make me sick.  This whole movie made me sick and shameful to even be a human being.

In other news...

*SIGH*

My heart broke for Amir during the last part of the movie.  I got back on his side, and rooted for him to win.  Sometimes authors do that.  They will have you dislike the protagonist, only to make you love him at the end.  It's truly an art.  So Amir finally follows in his father's foot steps and stands up for what is right and good.  I didn't think they would really escape from the Taliban, but they did.  The fight was expected, but I didn't expect Assif! Nor did I expect Hassan's son to use his old sling shot and blind him.  So gross, but totally awesome.  The ending didn't set well with me though, because it was like everything is alright now, happily ever after, when clearly that wasn't the case.  That kid was so messed up he will never be right in the head, but I guess he has Amir, an uncle to love him no matter what.  A more realistic ending I guess, instead of one like a fairy tale.  What a messed up movie.  Good, but messed up.


Until next time,

Keri Jo

Kite Runner: Part Two

After watching the second part of the movie, I have a lot of unanswered questions.  So, Ali and Hassan leave Amir and Baba's house, but where do they go?  Is it Hassan who has called Ali all of these years later, or did they never make it out of the Middle East?  Did they die in the war?  I really want to know what happened with Hassan, because I am really fond of his character.

Me siding with Hassan's character over all others is interesting, because literature is made so that the reader/viewer sides with the protagonist.  Almost always, at least.  But all I want to know is more about Hassan's life.  I think this is because of the big differences between Amir and Hassan's character.  Amir is a spoiled little brat.  He grew up with money and servants, and seems to look down upon them.  He has had a rough life without a mother, but his father has such great character that it should have rubbed off on him.  Instead, as a child at least, Amir appears to be a bad apple.  Hassan on the other hand, has learned much from his life of servitude.  He humbles himself, he will not fight back.  He has honor.  He cares about others more than himself.  He is filled with love for his fellowman and is wise beyond his years.  Hassan values life.  At least this is how I see it.  Amir, as a child, had a lot to learn.

When we saw parts of the war, and Baba standing up for that woman while they were in the wagon, I was amazed.  His character is so strong; I envy it.  That is what I would want in a dad.  He was someone with strong values; a real man, who stood up for a woman.  We don't see that as often as we used to.

In California, I was sad to see Baba working in a convenience store.  I never think about that when it comes to immigration.  Baba was somebody.  He was rich and successful and loved in his country.  Then, in America, he is a nobody.  When I was interviewing Paco for the encounter activity, he told me about this but even then I didn't really get it.  I guess I had to see it, through Baba's life.  That really sucks.  But he is proud of his only son who graduated from college and even though he doesn't want to be a doctor, his dad still loves him.  Amir is really lucky to have a dad like that.  Anyone would be.

There was a part when Baba brings up Hassan, says Hassan would be happy for you, or something like that.  You can see the shame, and maybe a hint of anger, across Amir's face when his dad mentions Hassan.  The general and his daughter come into the movie, and everyone could tell they'd end up together.  It was strange to me, however, that they decided to marry after only talking a few times.  They didn't even know each other!  How could they know they would get along?  Maybe this is a culture thing, a Middle Eastern tradition or something, but whatever it is I don't understand it.  Seems crazy to me.

I got really sad when Baba got sick, because I love his character.  Funny I like Hassan and Baba both more than the protagonist.  I did think it was funny that Baba didn't want a Russian doctor and freaked out on him.  Then he ended up with a Middle Eastern doctor.  Go figure.  But it was really sad because you know that Baba is going to die and you keep hoping it won't happen.  I did enjoy, however, the culture that played through in the funeral, as well as with the wedding.  I have some questions about that too.  I want to know more about this culture, the dances, the songs and what they mean, and about the little things like the mirror used at the wedding.  Hopefully these things can be answered in class tomorrow.



Until next time,

Keri Jo

Kite Runner One

This movie started out being more intense than I thought it would.  Amir flashes back to his childhood, and I'm sure felt a deep pain about how he acted back then.  Amir heard his father talking about how a real man stands up for himself, and decided to use this to teach Hassan a lesson.  Who is Amir to teach anything?  He is just a child.  Amir calls Hassan the coward, because that is what he has learned from his father.  But Amir is the real coward.  He has no love in his heart.  He feels angry and guilty and sad all the time about his mother, and you can tell he is deeply disturbed when you hear about the stories he writes.  He writes about a man who would kill his own wife to get rich.  This man loves his wife so much that he weeps while killing her, but every tear turns to a pearl making him rich.  What kind of child writes stuff like this?  Seriously, this boy's father should have got him help.

Hassan caught my interest from the start, when he, not even knowing Amir, told him if you ask me to eat dirt then I will.  I was like wow, what is up with this boy.  This boy is full of love.  He will not harm others, and keeps his honor this way.  Hassan is wise beyond his years.  I hated watching the scene where he gets raped.  People make me sick.  I cannot comprehend the way people act sometimes; I want to throw up.  I have mixed feelings about how Amir reacted, because he could not have fought off all those boys.  He would have gotten assaulted too.  But that's when you have to decide: how much do your friends mean to you?  Will you run, or stay to go down with them?  It would be a hard decision in this case, because fear is powerful.

The scene when Amir tries to get Hassan to fight back is also sickening.  I thought for a second he might, but then he smashes the fruit in his own face.  This was shocking to me, and it hurt my heart.  How can a boy this young be like this?  It is so hard for me to understand, because at 23 years old I'm not even sure if I could act this way.  It was sad, but inspiring.  I wonder how the rest of this movie will go, and how Amir will take his paralyzing memories of his own moral failure.




Until next time,

Keri Jo

Encounter Activity Three

For my Encounter Activity, I sat down and talked with Northwest Spanish Instructor Francisco "Paco" Martinez  I'm guessing that through this activity, our class will find that while every story of immigration is unique, there are some difficulties that almost everyone faces.  So Paco was born in Mexico City, and has been living in the U.S. for 10 years.  In Mexico, he had taught English as a foreign language and did some freelance translating, so when he moved to Missouri in 2001 he already knew the language pretty well.  However, as any of us who have studied a foreign language would know, school doesn't teach you slang.  He had to learn all of the slang and anything that wasn't in the dictionary, so that was one difficulty he faced.  He talked about how the thick Midwest accent made it difficult for him to understand people sometimes.

There were also some cultural differences he noticed that were shocking.  For one, he had never been to a place with so many white people before.  Ten years ago, there was a lot less diversity on campus.  He was also used to the big city, and in coming to Maryville he realized how little there was to do in small towns.  In big cities you can go to the mall, concerts, fine restaurants, plays, you name it.  So that was something that took some getting used to.  Another thing he noticed that seemed out of the ordinary was that there were so many old people driving.  This confused me, so I had to ask what do old people do in Mexico City?  They don't go anywhere?  He said no, they don't drive, because the traffic is so crazy down there they would just get pushed off the road.  I don't even like driving in Des Moines! So I definitely wouldn't make it down there. 



Sor Juana Inez



Then we talked about Latin American literature, and he shared with me some of the writers.  Sor (Sister) Juana Inez was a feminist poet who became a nun, and wrote poetry that gave a voice to women back in the 1700s.  I'm not a feminist, but this still sounds like poetry I would really enjoy.  Then he talked about Mexico's independence, and pre-independence stories like "Los Banditos Del Rio Frio."  He also told me about scary stories like "El Fistol (the necktie pin) Del Diablo."  This story was about people that, because of greed and sin, would somehow end up with the fistol, and this also sounds like a story I would enjoy.

When it comes to stories that go from Spanish to English, the idea and theme sometimes get lost in translation.  One Latin American movie, made by Julio Cortarzar, was "La Tia Julia y El Escribidor."  He said when Woody Allen remade it, calling it "Radio Days," everything was changed.  Another one Paco and I discussed was "Love in the Times of Cholera."  This was a Colombian love story made by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  When it got remade in America, in English, it lost its originality and was no longer authentic.  We also talked about poetry, and how American and Latin American poetry differs.  In America, it is all about the rhythm, and when it's done in Spanish, the rhyme is more important.  When poetry gets translated it can really lose it's meaning, making it hard to do.

Then I asked Paco what he would like America to know about Hispanic culture.  He said there are some general misconceptions when it comes to Hispanics, because some Americans call all Hispanics Mexican.  I agree, that we assume way too much, and you know what happens when you assume...  We also talked about stereotypes, and how a lot of people think Hispanics are all laborers or cleaners, and that those trades should just be second nature to them.  He said truthfully, Hispanic immigrants are shy, and sometimes uneducated, but very hard working.  People think that all Mexicans want to come to America and this is another thing we misinterpret.  Usually, only one or two from the whole family come over to work and make money to send it back to their families. 

We talked about the American dream, and how it has lost its meaning.  He said in America, if you work hard you get to be someone, but he said it doesn't seem to work that way with Hispanics.  They stay invisible no matter how hard they work.  This really made me sad. We also talked about the differences in communication between Americans and Mexicans.  He said we talk about everything but nothing.  We talk about politics and our problems everything is just an agenda, when with Mexicans they talk just to talk.  They listen to each other and help each other, their friendships are like a "real Facebook," not fake.  I told him how I had noticed throughout my life that the Hispanics I had been around were almost always more open and affectionate that the average American.  With Americans we are always defending our space and want people to stay out of our bubble, and with Mexicans, or possibly Hispanics in general, they just share it.  The main point I took away from all this is that we all judge, we all assume, and we are getting it wrong, so Paco told me that in order to understand another culture, you must experience it.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Returning To "Cunanan's Wake"

I gained some knowledge about the history of the Philippines from class discussion.  I didn't know much at all about them, about them being ruled by Spain and then America.  Shows how much I care about history.  I thought that the language aspect was interesting.  I didn't know they taught English in their schools.  I thought that they spoke some kind of Asian language.  You learn something new everyday.

I am still disturbed by the violence and ignorance in this story.  They are animals!  I could not imagine living like that.  They have a strong sense of ethnic loyalty, however, that I am not used to.  I have observed this loyalty, with other races, but I have often wondered if the whites are the only ones without it.  Sometimes I feel like because we are not a minority in America, we lose a sense of fellowship.  Perhaps if I went to China or Mexico, I would see the same sense of community among white tourists that I see with minorities in America.

The characters of this story have that loyalty to their own, and although it is mislead and used in an extreme situation, I am envious of how it would feel to be like that.  I wonder if it is the same with other groups as it is with race.  For example, how musicians around musicians feel connected, or Christians among Christians.  I wouldn't know, because like I said, I haven't experienced that as a white person. 

In class, we also discussed the notes written by the editor and the doctor.  I thought that was very interesting, how she was in a mental hospital.  Maybe that is where I got the idea of that being the reality of the characterization in "People Are Strange."  If I did, it was done subconsciously, because I'm just realizing it. Neat.  I hope we can read more stories like these.  I like short stories, just fiction, better than the other genres.  I like escaping for a short time into someone else's mind.  It's neat.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

"People Are Strange, When You're A Stranger, Faces Look Ugly, When You're Alone"

Oooh, I love this song!  What a strange story... It was suppose to be a memoir I think, but not all of it is true, so it there a such thing as a creative memoir?  Gamalinda, through this piece, has wrote something unlike anything I have ever encountered in all my years of reading literature.  I don't even know where to start because It was so weird.  But an awesome kind of weird.  I would read stuff like this everyday for the rest of my life, because maybe I am strange too. 

So the narrator of this story (I'm going to call it a story because it is not non-fiction) can change color at will like a chameleon.  I'm sure we can all account a time when we tried to imitate an accent or something like that, but he is saying he can actually change color like a chameleon, that it is a physical change, not just acting.  I do enjoy acting these things out sometimes.  Only in good fun, not to make fun or hurt others, but simply for amusement.  I am particularly fond of the Australian accent, which I sometimes belt out in the car while singing (alone of course!), and my niece and I try to do funny accents and record them on my cell phone and play them back and laugh and laugh. 

But this guy seems more like a schizophrenic than a jester.  I'm no psychologist, but the multiple personalities point towards dissociative identity disorder, but if the characters are only in his head, they may just be delusions, and that along with the paranoia would be paranoid schizophrenia.  Why did I take so much psychology???? I'm a writer! Anyways, the knowledge comes in useful sometimes.

So through this piece the narrator prophesies his own death.  He knows it is going to happen before it happens, or so it seems.  I can't even really wrap my mind around it, but I know it will make a great topic for a response paper.  I hope we talk about this a lot in class (stories like this makes me wish we had a longer class period!) because I am so interested in this piece that I want all the answers.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Cunanan's Wake

I found this story to be very interesting.  The characterization was done really well, and the language, which I'm not even sure if Filipino is a language or if they speak some other Asian language, really helped make the story come to life.  I love when ethnic writers use foreign language in their works.  Even if I don't know what it means, it adds to the piece and makes it authentic.

These characters were arguing over it is right to follow your own, as in your own race, even when they do something so wrong.  Most agreed that they should honor the murder's death, but Junior wouldn't have it.  And I agree with him.  I am an American, but I also know that there are bad people everywhere.  Every race, color, country, city, has bad people and good people.  I would not stick up for an American that murdered someone JUST because he was an American.  No wonder other cities thought this one was full of ignorant people. I was also very shocked by all of the violence.  They cant even relax and enjoy a beer without someone pulling out a gun and trying to shoot someone.  Crazy!  If people did that in a bar in America they wouldn't just be yelled at, they would be arrested.  Everyone has a different POV, but that is no reason to shoot someone.

I was surprised to see that a woman ran the town.  Kapitana.  Like captain, right?  She was the mayor, I think, and she was definitely queen b.  When Junior was mocking her gay son at the end, she tried to shoot him! I don't know how people can live like this.  So barbaric!  And they hate Americans.  But then again, who doesn't?  We just try to take over the world right?  I am against war and violence, which our country takes big part in, but that doesn't always represent the individual.  The single mom with two kids working at Hy-Vee.  The surgeon in the OR that saves your son's life after a car crash.  The missionaries that go over seas to help people.  America isn't all bad, but some people like to think so. 

I didn't know that we went over there and started war though.  I knew about Vietnam and Hiroshima, but I didn't know anything about the Philippines.  Sometimes I wish our country would just mind their own business so we could stay out of the spot light.  Most of the reading for today was difficult to understand, but this story, Cunanan's Wake, was the one I understood the best.  For the other things we read today, I will have to get help from class discussion to understand it, because not only did I not understand what I was reading, but I didn't even know WHAT I was reading.  It was set up very strangely in comparison to what I am used to, so I hope things will be clarified in class.

Until next time,

Keri Jo