Reflection defined as an act of viewing

Even the word reflection has implications of unreliability just based on looking back onto the past. If I've learned anything from this quarter it's that the act of viewing and the position of the viewer can be considered unreliable and asymmetrical. Sometimes I wonder if my view point is in fact symmetrical because I was never taught to think critically of history in high school. I can only consider myself to be a bystander and I question if this is an act of innocence. Are we innocent when we do not talk about the atrocities committed against people of color and other countries by the county we live in? Is it even factual to call America "our country". Learning about colonized and post-colonial spaces has really impacted my way of thinking about the world. Specifically, of course, I find a meaningful connection to the lectures about the bombings and politics of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With half of my family coming from Japan, I find some sort of weird connection to the concept of looking and viewing in regards to the mushroom cloud and the atomic sublime. In a way my grandfather was a viewer, but he was also someone who experienced the bomb and how he defined it was some sort of earthquake. The psychology and history behind the word unreliable has just become an increasing fascination.

This class like the other two I've taken with Christine have taught me how to be objective of the world and that there is so much history that still has repercussions on this present time. Because of these these classes with Christine, I have met amazing individuals who are like a little family since we've followed Christine's courses through the quarters. I have truly learned so much from all of you and of course Christine and Kara. Thank you both for supporting us students and dedicating your time and energy to providing an education for your students. I don't think words can do justice to how The Nuclear Pacific, Race, Labor and Migration, & Unreliable Narration in Colonial and Post Colonial Literature have impacted my life as a student here at UCSC. ANYWAYS enough of my gushing, I wish you good luck on your finals and on your future endeavors!

Course Reflection

This class was actually quite terrifying in the very beginning of the quarter. I had no idea what to expect and the only reason I chose the class was because it fit with my schedule and it was at a decent time. I enjoy literature, but aside from that, I did not have a very strong feeling coming into this class. I was surrounded by upperclassmen and despite the fact that I have been told numerous times to not worry about this, I could not find my voice within the class. Considering the fact that I am not even a literature major, I felt like my analysis was basic and irrelevant to the class as a whole. It was incredibly difficult to speak and even when asked to read it was still somewhat frightening. Nevertheless, this class began to grow on me and I truly did enjoy the class. My eyes were opened to the critical analysis of the works and the gross ethical values that colonialism contains. In high school and prior years of education, colonialism is described in such a way that romanticizes the concept or barely scratches the surface of what imperialism does to the imperialized and this class has made me realize what sort of atrocities had been committed.
What stood out to me the most was militourism. I never noticed the violence that must have occurred in order to acquire such property and the disgusting feeling of ignorance and entitlement that the tourists have toward the place. When traveling to places such as the Philippines I noticed the large financial disparities between tourist locations and the typical neighborhood of Manila, however I failed to put any thought into this; now that I have been involved in a class which discussed this aspect, I can actually acknowledge what has gone into creating this false representation of what the Philippines.

Course Reflection: The Truth in Fiction

This course gave me a new way of approaching fiction. Controversial topics translated better in the fictitious realm than they do in traditionally more reliable sources, such as news. Fiction can tell the truth in an invented story, and is not dictated by time as news is. It has the freedom to dwell on past moments and expand on untold stories.

Benito Cereno and Heart of Darkness taught us that the narrator's descriptions often say more about the narrator than they do about what is being described. These novellas showed us the world through the imperial's eye, a problematic perspective grounded in historical truth.

A Small Place, Quiemada!, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist engaged the reader/viewer in the narrative with the use of the second person, pointing out our evolvement and responsibility in conflicts around us. We are a guilty audience.

A Pale View of Hills revealed the unreliability of memory while simultaneously highlighting the devastating effects of trauma. Footnotes in Gaza explored memory on the collective front, demonstrating that even something as unreliable as memory still holds a revealing truth.

The Quiet American showed us the faults in journalism and the myth of neutrality. Influence from dominant world powers trickles in everywhere, and in doing nothing, we are assuming a side in conflict.

When combining all of these lessons I learned that I am a guilty reader through my decision to not be involved. Memory can, in many ways be more truthful than news or journalism, and narration always says something about the narrator.

Reflections on A Pale View Of Hills Lecture and Unreliable Narration

When reflecting on this quarter, I immediately find myself thinking specifically on the lectures surrounding A Pale View of Hills. For me, this was when I really started to consider how difficult it is to adopt the view of the colonized when we live in the colonizing country. I often reflect on Christine's lecture on the competing view of the bombings. That the mushroom cloud, such dominant symbol of nuclear warfare in our culture has no little or no significance to the Japanese is both fascinating and incredibly troubling. Their word for the bomb, Pikadon captures the immediacy and the indescribable nature of the bomb from their perspective. It's something that has made me consider more deeply the types of filters my understandings of such events have gone through.

As someone who's hoping to be accepted to the creative writing concentration, I also took the opportunity to try and study how unreliable narrators can function within a text. Obviously, our analysis of these texts were focused on reading them strictly in a colonial and post-colonial context, as such the mechanics of the prose were not always our biggest concern. But I still found myself considering carefully how information can be relayed to the reader through misinformation, how characters can be established by their voice, and texts can be crafted to be read against, to be analyzed and questioned for a full understanding of their meaning. It's an aspect of literature that I've become really interested in, and something I hope to incorporate in my own work in the future.

-Thomas Damgaard

Course Reflections, Already?

It really doesn't feel like eleven weeks have gone by since this class first started. I've never payed too much attention to the narrator in stories before, or at least I've never realized how important their point of view is in relation to telling the truth of the story, and I've never really been taught anything about this subject, so this class really opened up something completely new in my mind. Of course I've read Heart of Darkness before, but not in the way that you have taught this class and now I can see the clever way in which Conrad has played with narration and now the story is even more interesting to me.
As this class progressed, many more new ideas were introduced to me, like the importance of the imperialist gaze and the colonized gaze that resonates in almost all of the works, and most importantly for me in Queimada! I really liked the use of the second person point of view and how it either bends the truth or allows reliability to the narrators cause, like in The Quiet american or A Small Place. I really liked this course because it showed me different ways to tell the truth as we saw in our later, more political readings that showed just how corrupt higher powers tend to be. What I can take with me from this class is a new sense and style of reading that allows me to look deeper in how the story is being told rather that what the narrator is telling, and without this realization, I would be missing out on a huge concept in literature and I really can't be doing that. I hope my memory doesn't fade so quickly next quarter or else I might start losing the sense of what is true in my life.

Final Thoughts and the powers that be towards creating narratives.

It is with some regret that I hadn't taken Christine Hong's previous classes during my time as a Lit student since I am going to graduate next quarter, but I felt that the Unreliable Narration class was the most enriching and thoughtful class that I've taken in a while and affirmed my choice for the World Literature and Culture curriculum.

I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to get through all the reading and hit all the lecture points on those reading, and I thought that the strongest we've gotten through was when we've done A Pale View of Hills which lasted all the way through Sacco's Footnotes from Gaza and Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Those three were the most thoughtful reading since we as a class were all able to understand the divide between trauma inflicted upon others by colonial powers such as the United States and the Western world, and how that trauma is realized through who gets to be victimized (such as between Japan/United States vs. the rest of the Pacific Rim/Asia), and who gets to cast the colonial gaze back at others (such as Hamid and Sacco). I was actually impressed at how nuanced the lectures are in highlighting the histories of Palestine and Japan during the times in which they undergo neo-colonial periods of history committed by Israel and the United States, and especially so since we are able to touch upon narrative histories that usually get buried under jingoistic Western World propaganda when it serves their interests.

Footnotes from Gaza has been a realized experience for me as well, since I am affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine, and that I had participated in the student demonstration during 96 hours. And boy was that an experience of cognitive dissonance and overt racism spoken by either Pro-Israel folks or "anti-terrorism" people.

However, it was in A Pale View of Hills that I relate most strongly to the class because the lecture touched on issues that I have on how Japan is perceived in the United States and by others that gets perpetuated by people who seem to think there is a line between the acceptable Asian countries (such as Korea and Japan) and the not, and that it contributes to US interests of maintaining a presence within those countries in order to monitor the rest of Asia. As well as challenging narratives in which we ask ourselves who gets culpability during WWII and how there is a dichotomy between who gets to be victimized and who gets to be the savior.

In terms of what I got from the themes of unreliable narration, it challenges what we know to be factual and what is considered fictional. I think what it does is that it makes us consider the power dynamics involved in who gets to tell their story and for which audience it is for, because it is something we take for granted when we consider what is the "real" story and what is constructed to affirm a particular reality.

The Reluctant Graduate: My Final Reflection

For my final blog post, I will take you through my journey with Christine during the last four quarters I have been her student. This is very bittersweet and quite long blog post.

What first caught my eye as I scrolled through the course list of winter 2013 was a class about race. I have only started gaining a social consciousness as I was elected a role in my organization to coordinate a freedom of expression aspect. A lot of my works that I presented had to do with my identity as a Filipino-American. I figured this was going to be an interesting class. The first course I took with Christine was Race in Literature: LA Circa 1992.

My first impressions of this class was that…well, a lot of individuals needed a reality check. There was a prevalent use of the word “illegal” and I outright felt uncomfortable at times especially being a person of color. However, Christine was so compelling that every class I felt like I had to speak up and give my perspective. The topics were very hard hitting. Even though I am not from L.A., a lot of the history has affected my family and my own identity. My favorite part of this course was the L.A. riots and how music became a form of expression with songs like Fuck Tha Police and Fight the Power as theme songs. With the new N.W.A. movie coming out, I’ll be sure to contact Christine to discuss the means of media and how they’ll portray what went down. Things like systematic and institutionalized racism along with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s critical definition of race are the biggest takeaways for me.

   

While the L.A. course was quite large, the Nuclear Pacific was very intimate, something that I really appreciate in a class as we get to hear a lot of perspective. This was an amazing class. Many of the texts were good reads. I especially loved Barefoot Gen (I read the manga and watched the anime), Gojira, and the classic: Pale View of Hills. It is important to know how being a nuclear power puts you in a class where you get to dictate what goes on in this world. I got a lot out of the discussions and I developed a strong bond with a lot of people in this class. 

The third class (my undisputed favorite) was the Race, Labor, and Migration class. A lot, and I mean a lot, of Filipino and Filipino-American culture we use in the Filipino Student Association is tied to the United Farm Workers movement of the 60’s. We end every event with a unity clap to signify in solidarity with our Chicano and Chicana family that we accomplished something at the end of day. My new all-time favorite book was the proletarian novel America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. I felt that my prior knowledge helped me shine in particularly with this topic. I’m very passionate about his work and I use it a lot when I give presentations about labor and Filipino culture. Many of the broader topics either taught me or reinforced the notions of estranged labor and private accumulation. Race and gender are very much intertwined with labor and the idea of social death will forever be stuck in my mind.

And now, the fourth class, Unreliable Narration. For myself, I never sought to analyze texts with this in mind. Heart of Darkness was taught out of the canon and not through questioning the history and substance of the text. Reading Pale View the 2^nd time around was even crazier. And the Reluctant Fundamentalist, my current favorite, was a mindfuck in terms of the actual naming of the characters. One term, the other, was utilized in such a way in combination with the tourist that I will always question the very nature of vacationing to other countries as a product of neocolonialism and a cementing of neoliberalism as a foundation for today’s society. I especially loved Danielle's presentation as it ties in to how the Philippines is trying to commodify the post-typhoon disaster. This post fails to show that many victims still need help and that the government is not trying their best in the rebuilding process. This class has shown me that the history and literature lessons are only a small scope to the hidden atrocities that we don’t get to read or listen to in high school. The land grab of Africa to the questionable narrator; always be careful to take things at face value and do the research about what really goes on behind what the text shows you.

To Kara,
Thank you for always putting up with my crap in section. I know I was late to literally 90% of section but thank you for never calling me out on it. You facilitated the class really well and made that 8AM worthwhile.

To my squad: Veronica, Sabrina, Jess, Meagan, and Steven
Yall have been amazing to me. I know my antics can be quite stupid sometimes. I know I’m very loud. But yall are always hilarious to talk to. Whether it is about the course topic or anything else that happens in life, just know that these last few quarters would have been incomplete without you.

To Christine, 
I’m actually going to write you a letter so be on the lookout for that. :)

With that being said, I leave you all with a quote from the Reluctant Fundamentalist.
“If you have ever, sir, been through a breakup of a romantic relationship that involved great love, you will perhaps understand what I experienced. There is in such situations usually a moment of passion during which the unthinkable is said; this is followed by a sense of euphoria at finally being liberated; the world seems fresh as if seen for the first time then comes the inevitable period of doubt, the desperate and doomed backpedaling of regret; and only later, once emotions have receded, is one able to view with equanimity the journey through which one has passed.”

Thank you all for reading. It has been a pleasure sharing my views and input with yall. Good luck with finals everyone!

-Tem Velasquez Ysmael

Course Reflections: "I don't want comics journalism, I want actual facts"

This was a very exciting and engaging class, and I think that my favorite aspect of the class was our ability to grapple with different perspectives and narratives. Literary analysis has always fascinated me because it presents itself as a mystery waiting to be decoded, and there is always room for new and exciting interpretations. By engaging in the works we read in class, I was able to gain a stronger understanding of a variety of perspectives, and I was able to find ways to critique other perspectives as well. My favorite piece I read this quarter was The Reluctant Fundamentalist because the skills that I have gained throughout the quarter helped me to appreciate it even more. Throughout the book I had to ask myself, "what is unreliable about this novel?" and I was able to avoid some cluelessness (even though there were a few curve ball moments in the novel).

I think that one of the under appreciated aspects of Literature is the "truth value of fiction" that we learned about this quarter, because I am often confronted with people claiming "I don't want the story, I want facts." For example, I was debating with a student on Facebook regrading a recent protest on campus critiquing Israeli checkpoints. The students involved in the protest created a human wall surrounding the entrances of McHenry and asked students to present identification to enter the building, which represented the policing of Palestinians in Israel. While I don't feel like debate on Facebook is the best avenue for social change, I pointed out that the protestors have a right to challenge the system of apartheid in Israel by raising awareness and that we are implicated in the violence of Israel through our tuition money that is invested in companies that profit off of the occupation. In order to avoid further conversation, I offered Joe Sacco's Footnotes In Gaza as a piece of supplementary reading. A pro-Israeli student told me, "I don't want comics journalism, I want actual facts. I have been to Israel before and I know what it's like." The irony in his statement comes from unreliable narration because Sacco admits his story may be unreliable and Sacco questions the power of dominant narratives while the student doesn't question his own unreliability when he is deeply implicated with the conflict. I believe that all students and people in general could benefit from the teachings of this class, and I hope that students in the future will have the same opportunity as we did to question unreliable narration.

Course Reflection

In the beginning of this course when we discussed the basics of unreliable narration and the differences between the author and the narrator, I was interested by the concept that unreliable narration is like seeing the smoke, but not paying attention to the fire — the narrator is complicit in setting the fire; he or she is like the criminal writing the police report. These analogies were what made me start thinking more critically about how unreliable narration can change the affect of a work.

My friend saw me readings A Pale View of Hills and repeatedly would tell me, “I can’t wait for you to get to the surprise,” and basically breathed down my neck while I was reading the novel. With that in mind, and the novel being in context of a class titled “Unreliable Narration,” I was so skeptical while reading. I kept thinking there was some huge twist to Etsuko’s character that I was missing. I was suspicious of her character, and as the book continued I only got more suspicious. I saw the smoke, and I knew Etusko was the fire, but where was the fire? Etsuko was the classic example of the criminal writing the police report. It wasn’t until the narration style switch and the “we” that I understood the source of the smoke — then all the subsequent events finally were so clear. A Pale View of Hills was the first novel I read so critically at every step of the way — but now I like reading like that. Now I realize that in almost every novel there is the potential for a sort of unreliable narration that changes the course of the work.

I also think the difference in narrator and author is an interesting distinction. I still grapple with how much the author affects the narrator, and how separate the two are sometimes. If you read more about Ishiguro’s history, his novel becomes extremely relevant to himself. Same for when we discussed Conrad’s Heart of Darkness — there are ostensibly ties and experiences from the author that play directly into their novels, and often their narrators. While I understand the two actors are not the same, I still find author’s lived experiences very interesting and influential to their works. This class made me think critically and in a new way about narration's importance and influence.

-Alexa

Course Reflection

This class has definitely been one of my favorites at UCSC: although my concentration is on modern literature, rarely have I had the opportunity to discuss history and political ideology in the classroom. I think that often, the literature produced during times of conflict produce important narratives that reflect on the political climate of the time, and these kinds of stories are especially important when they come from a perspective not often revealed. I've taken classes on authorship and audience, I've been trained to seek the intention of the narrator, but never has it been officially taught with crucial understanding of imperialist violence and with a focus on the plight of the colonized.

One of the units that struck me the most was that of A Pale View of Hills. Growing up, one of the only images of WWII shown to me in school was that of the mushroom cloud. I had always known that the US bombed Japan, but as a child, I only knew that to look like a giant, almost beautiful and dream-like tower of smoke. Of course, since then I've learned more about the situation, but for the most part, wherever you go to learn about US history, you will be told the same couple of stories time and time again. And these are rarely stories about people affected negatively by the actions of the United States. The eeriness of A Pale View of Hills really serves to highlight destruction and trauma that war causes. It seems so basic, but it wasn't until letting these stories sink in and actually seeing images of Japanese women affected by the war (as wells people from other parts of the world, included in other units) did it really click for me that America grows up without taking responsibility for the past. It's kind of amazing to me that this material has been reserved for the university setting, in a more left-bent classroom, on a "progressive" campus, in the generally ~liberal~ state of California, etc. It's frightening.

This class has really been one of my favorites during my time at UCSC. Although I've enjoyed all the the lit department has offered me, the history discussed this quarter made me think twice. It's too late now, but post-graduation and outside of school I plan on developing my politics more, thinking critically about every news story, etc. Thank you Christine and Kara!

I had never taken a course with Christine prior to this class.  I’m graduating this year and wishing I had had more of an opportunity to experience her teaching style.  The concept of unreliable narration was an interesting lens to use to confront the issues we approached in this class, and was incredibly engaging.  I have never felt so trusted to come to my own conclusions in a literature course. 

I loved the piece of the course centered on A Pale View of Hills.  The difference of perspective between how America understood the bombings, and what the people present experienced.  How neither of these views recognizes the true ‘how’ and ‘why’ of what occurred.  I wrote my paper on Ishiguro’s novel, but it wasn’t until a couple days later in lecture that I felt like I understood at least an element of the problem in the novel, that I was attempting to address in my paper.  The whole time the narrator is grappling with guilt, through an unreliable and constructed memory.  The reader realizes there is some element of trauma affecting the narrator’s ability to recall the past accurately.  She completely warps her past and yet cannot escape the guilt she feels for her daughter’s suicide.  In the paper I was able to connect Keiko with the concept of the future in Yoneyama’s article and the fixation of female characters with the motherhood concepts from the same article.  But I realized later that I didn’t really address the amount of guilt the narrator was dealing with, and when reviewing the importance of perspective in terms of the bombs in lecture I realized the connection I could have made.  Considering the way the experience of a nuclear bomb would appear from the ground level, it feels as we said like a natural disaster, something beyond humanity caused it.  When you are experiencing the event, I doubt it is easy to care or understand why this is happening, or because of who.  There is something about this that I think applies to the complicity that the narrator feels in Keiko’s death, because she cannot find anyone else who is at fault in her constructed memory, as hard as she tries.  This is a concept I wish I had more fully conceived as I was writing my paper. 

A smaller point that I will carry with me is the fact that unreliable does not mean false.  As we discussed Joe Sacco’s work and even again, A Pale View of Hills, you realize maybe there is nothing reliable that is put into the world as history.  And it is especially hard to find a witness or source that experienced the whole event reliably.  However, events and footnotes leave an impact, shown in Ishiguro’s work, on the human psyche, and these effects don’t stop with the people who experienced them, but ripple out through generations.  Maybe this is another concept I haven’t fully developed, but it seems significant to note that what humans do to each other is not something that can always be understood clinically, or factually.  Maybe it is okay to remember experience-by-experience, human-to-human.  It’s easy to forget people exist in these different perspectives and international engagements.

Still thinking on these.  Amazing course.

Unreliable Narration and Being a "Good" Reader

A View of Why I Need to Relax 

or Why Etsuko as a Narrator Has Lead Me to Question My Ability to Be a Good Reader

The aspect of the course that has stuck with me since one of our first lectures was the inability for us (as readers) to know if the unreliability of the narrators in the assigned novels was a product of careful intention of the character. For example in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the unreliability of the narration was most clearly a result of the way in which the narrative was framed. The qualities of a death sanctioned narrative that then undergoes a series of retellings from which the reader gets the interpretations of every layer of perspective from the speakers, in and of themselves create a sense of unreliability based on circumstance in which the story has been translated to the readers. In other texts however, the unreliability seems to be performed out of a more direct intention of the narrator. Etsuko exemplifies this type of unclear involvement in her position as narrator in A Pale View of Hills. The narration itself leaves clues to the state in which she is retelling her story. Was she driven mad (implications of the scene about her violin episode) and therefore should not be considered reliable? Does her daughter’s suicide and the resulting guilt color her narrative into being a constructed interpretation of her own failures as a mother in comparison to a “worse” mother she remembers from thirty years ago? Are Etsuko and Sachiko the same person and is Etsuko’s decision to tell Niki this story of her past through the potentially fictionalized Sachiko a way for her to negate the alienating effects of revealing her shameful past to her daughter (who seems to idolize her)? And finally what is the influence of the emergence of Hibakusha narratives on Etsuko’s narrative and Ishiguro’s authorial choices? It’s impossible to simply say that a narrator is unreliable and move on, the conditions in which a narrative is deemed unreliable and the implications of intent that the reader can assign to the narrator factor into any interpretation or critical analysis of the piece. What is most frustrating, especially in the case of Etsuko’s narration, is that there are so many possible ways of analyzing the reasoning behind her unreliability that there is no real way of settling my curiosity as a reader. Perhaps Etsuko is some combination of all these possible reasons behind her unreliability? Regardless of the fact that I could yammer on for much longer about my concerns and confusions about this text, I think maybe I need to accept the ambiguous nature of the ways in which interpretations can be drawn from this novel and just appreciate that I have developed the tools to think critically about the narration in these types of texts.

Course Reflections

I immensely enjoyed all the historically and cultural background we learned about in this course, especially regarding the US's foreign policies and military campaigns. It is always extremely eye-opening to realize the extent to which politicians and the government will go to cover up their true intentions. And worse yet is how easily people buy into propaganda and don't ever question the government's true motives behind their relations with other countries. Interventions marketed as "for democracy" actually have much darker motives revolving around power and money.

In terms of the novels we read, my favorite moments were when we discussed A Pale View of Hills in class. I love reading novels where I experience a "gotcha" type of moment — that was the case with A Pale View. My first time reading the novel, I hadn't considered the possibility that Etsuko and Sachiko could be the same person, and that even the "third woman" who Mariko sees drowning the baby could also be Etsuko. It quite honestly blew my mind a little when we discussed the passage where Etsuko talks to Mariko about going to America and uses "we." The second time I reread the novel after that keeping that theory in mind, it gave the entire novel a completely different meaning, as more aspects became clear as to why Keiko (or Mariko) committed suicide. That combined with the historical knowledge related to hibakusha victims and the bombings of Japan gave the story even greater meaning, as it explains the reasons for which Etsuko became unstable (which catalyzed the rest of her horrible actions against her daughter). Overall, this made me want to read novels much more carefully to try and figure out any "gotcha" moments for myself and research the history of the context the novel is set in.

My Course Experience

 One thing that has continually struck me throughout this quarter is the way in which America has a particularly unreliable narrative concerning colonization. I believe that this is largely due to the level of inconscience that the American ideology possesses regarding the memory of its own creation and history. In its desire to possess and colonize other parts of the globe, it is as though the nation has forgotten the Revolutionary War to escape the colonial power of Britain to become a nation (and this only accomplished with the aid of the French). 

If I can recall one moment from the entire class that truly resonated with me, and spoke to the unreliability of the American narrative, it was the day that Christine was elucidating the hypocrisy inherent in popular thought surrounding World War II. Most Americans, both then and now, consider U.S. involvement in WWII to be ‘fighting the good fight’ against the ‘evil enemy’ the Nazis. However, the reality of the situation was that U.S. embassies across Europe were denying exit visas to Jewish refugees. This is just one example of unreliability in the context of a national popular narrative, but it was such a sobering, maddening, and intense moment of realization for me. 

Although that particular piece of history stuck out to me, moments of realization occurred rather frequently for me throughout the course of our class. Each novel, text, or film contained unreliability in its narration that required much more critical thought and evaluation on behalf of the reader. This level of engagement with the texts was the source of many ‘ah-ha’ moments and insights into the complex relationship the our country has with the rest of the world. It is truly a wonder that it took as long as it did for the term ‘blowback’ to be coined…

Final Reflections

I was surprised that I connected, as much as I have, with works centered around historical systems of representation. I typically shy away from texts of this nature. This course’s selection of works impressed me in that many furnished personalized, relatable portrayals of individuals affected by imperialism. I became drawn into the characters’ narratives and thus interpolated, too, in the historical backdrops without which they would be nonexistent.

The works that stood out to me most were Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View Of Hills and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 

I was completely fascinated by the unstable psychological state of Ishiguro’s protagonist. Through her remembrances, blurred by pain, I could feel a bit of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings' residual damage. The unconventional format of Hamid’s novel, reminiscent of a diary, hooked me. Due to his employment of the second-person address, I was not only implicated in the narrator’s anti-American stance, but felt I was the direct receptacle of his absorbing, private account. 

This course pushed me to think and question critically. I really enjoy being challenged in this way. This course did an excellent job of illuminating the inherent imbalance of colonialism, and the frustration that accompanies disproportionate representation. We approached the structural inequalities that have colored the life experiences of so many from often over-looked perspectives. I think it is absolutely necessary for young people to be taught of the world's injustices, past and present. I am grateful for the opportunity to round table about cross-culturally relevant themes with instructors and other curious peers.  

Final Reflections

     This quarter has gone by so fast and I cannot believe how many texts we were able to get through! One of the most interesting aspects of this class for me was dealing and looking at unreliable narration through different genres from the spy to graphic novel through time. I found it interesting how each novel/book we read were reflections or memories for the main characters which is what made the works unreliable. From Marlow to Changez, each character was unreliable in their own ways and posed major questions for us to unravel in both lecture and section. I love reading novels and short stories with twists at the end so I really enjoyed re-reading "A Pale View of Hills" by Ishiguro because, even though I had read it before, it was almost more of a mind blow the second time around. (I also loved "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" as well!) Since taking this class I find "unreliable narratives" everywhere now from the newspapers to songs I hear on the radio. One thing that got me thinking was defiantly how much our government censors the media for us and what little legitimate information we are receiving concerning military operations and occupations in the U.S and worldwide.
     At the beginning of the quarter when we discussed tourism, I was driving in my car one day and just so happened to have my iPod on shuffle when Sean Kingston's song "Take You There" came on and it dawned on me that he was singing about the two differing types of tourism that are sought out for many people trying to escape their banal day-to-day lives. (Kingston is singing about Jamaica ironically too which made me also think of Kincaid's "Small Place") I will be more critical of all of the information, from pop culture, "credible" as well as"objective" news reports and not take what is being reported at face value but instead read a bit deeper into what is being reported but more importantly pay closer attention to what is being left out. I really liked this class and once again Christine opened my eyes to various U.S atrocities that I had no idea were even happening and for that I am thankful for this new knowledge. Now I feel a little bit less naive and plan on being a close reader of ever text I run into from here on out and always ask myself, "What about this text is unreliable?"

I thought that it would be fun to include Sean Kingston's song for you all to enjoy and analyze!
Good luck to everyone finishing up final papers and studying for final exams!! I will see you all for the last time on Thursday!!

Best,
Meagan Davis