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