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Notebook 5- Final Reflection

Difference- Poem

Striving to be free

but always feeling restricted

Striving to have access

but always being limited

Striving to be accepted

but always hearing judgments

Striving to be diverse

but always seeing whiteness

Why must we live amongst such inconsistency?

What happened to life, love, happiness and liberty?

How do we fight power, exploitation, oppression and hatred?

So that we may implement resistance to become less divided?

We must embody the counternarrative

because freedom is imperative

We must love with all our being

to ensure intersectional healing

We must use praxis and relational analysis

to fight anti-blackness

We must use what we are, where we have been and what we have seen

to right all the wrongs and wipe the unclean

It is today that we can destroy all the assumptions

It is today that we can start asking questions

It is today that we can fight with resistance

It is today that we can act with love and acceptance

It is today that we can start making a difference

http://issuu.com/ethn2elyse/docs/merged__1_

Notebook4

Zine: Cindy Lu - https://foryourinsight.tumblr.com/

Summary: Cindy’s zine is about the massive amounts of political unrest and colonization caused by the spread of communism in Vietnam, originating in the 1960s. Many were forced to flee in search of a better life and were faced with life threatening situations, as there were many who risked their lives by leaving via boat. These boat journeys lasted for weeks and had scarce amounts of food, which meant many did not survive. The sacrifice and risk they were willing to take emphasizes that this was truly a result of an ultimatum for them. She appears to be bringing this story to the light in honor of her mother and mother’s family members, and also to draw parallels to those fleeing Libya, as a result of the repercussions of 9/11.

Quote: “… , slowly people started dying of hunger and what they did was whenever a person died they would hit a gong to signal someone was dead. After the gong, they threw that person into the sea. After a while, there were too many deaths that they just threw them into the sea without the gong. “ (Cindy Lu - Notebook3) This quote from Notebook #3 is especially moving when paired with the image, and could potentially be its own page in the zine. It conveys the difficulty and severity of the situation, and together they convey that fleeing the country was not an automatic guarantee of freedom, but was in some ways equally as painful as if they were to remain.

Anecdote: “My mother was around eighteen years old at that time when she decided to leave the country to find a safer place to live. With her aunt and two of her cousins, she tried different ways to get out of the country. One was to give gold to someone they knew that lived close to the shore to ensure that they would be able to go on the boat; however, with overloading of people, the boat was docked there for 30 days. Within those 30 days, people began to starve as the supply of food was decreasing by the day. The people then began to be malnourished and in the end died before they got to go to another country. After a while, she finally got on a boat to go to the refugee camp at Bidong Island in Malaysia.” I think this anecdote is crucial to your Zine as the personal connection gives added insight to a historical event and demonstrates the importance this topic to you. Also, I would add the connection made to Libyan refugees as this shows its relevance today and how the issue of “War and the Refugee” is in constant circulation.

Images: The image of the stick figures in the water surrounding the boat is simple, yet somehow very powerful as it conveys the experience of the refugee. I think it would be really cool to implement multiple images into your Zine that are similar in style to this one, to help carry the theme throughout the Zine. I also think you should include the picture of the national anthem of Southern Vietnam because I like what it represents as an object, in terms of solidarity and strength of an indigenous peoples.

Relational Analysis: “I wanted to relate this to what happened to this present day where there are people in Libya who are crossing the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe for a better life. It is said that the numbers rose over the year of 2016. A fact from one of the articles below states that the deaths in the Mediterranean pushed the global death numbers by about 7,000. These people came from Syria, Tunisia, Libya and the Palestinian Territories. This is the result of the Middle East crisis, which could be tailed back to the 9/11 Terrorist attack. With the U.S. and other nations in the Middle East people are dying and I mean civilians who just happened to live in their own home. The refugees who left Libya to go to Europe were people just like the south Vietnamese people who were trying to find a better life, a safe place, and a guarantee that they won’t end up a civilian that died because of a war that does not deal with them. These refugees looking for a better life were sent in boats that break down or sink before any rescue boats can go save them...” I think your analysis is strong, as it connects groups of people that share the identity of the refugee. To strengthen it even further, I would relate it to the frameworks of settler colonialism and the correlation between land and indigeneity, that Professor Yang talked about in lecture. The repercussions of settler colonialism play a huge role in what caused the Vietnamese to flee in the first place, and how settler colonialism in general can totally infiltrate and uproot indigenous peoples.

foryourinsight

“… , slowly people started dying of hunger and what they did was whenever a person died they would hit a gong to signal someone was dead. After the gong, they threw that person into the sea. After a while, there were too many deaths that they just threw them into the sea without the gong. “ (Cindy Lu - Notebook3)

'We thought that maybe our parents, who were immigrants, could be affected, and that maybe we would be separated from them. But we did not think they would put us in camps. We were citizens who were born here,' she said." --- "People destroyed or burned pictures of the emperor of Japan and other signs of their heritage. Children were told to speak only English. When they were forced to evacuate, they sold the store for pennies on the dollar...

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/japanese-american-internment-75-years-ago/

Notebook3

My object symbolizes the racial fear and tension that comes about during times of war and how certain groups are easily represented and stereotyped. I have realized my object represents a type of racial project in which Japanese Americans have suffered. Structurally, aside from Executive Order 9066 and the use of internment camps, anti-Japanese organizations formed to fight for the removal of Japanese Americans from society. Two of these organizations were called the Japanese Exclusion League and the Remember Pearl Harbor League. By way of the media and local Congressmen, they spread their beliefs and arguments to the public to gain members. In terms of representation, immediately after Pearl Harbor Japanese Americans were associated and identified as the enemy. They were not allowed in certain neighborhoods and large amounts of discrimination ensued.

Internment camps as a racial project correlates to the relational analysis between other Asian groups (as discussed in lecture) and whiteness. Even though Japanese Americans were legal citizens, the American government failed to recognize their American identity because of their “nonwhite” appearance. Any cultural differences were automatically overlooked and failed to be considered American. Furthermore, they reasoned with issues of national security and disloyalty as a way to implement measures of racism and exclusion. Their action also provoked underlying racial and economic tensions, as many Japanese Americans were stripped of their farms, homes and belongings.

I also believe that this object directly connects to the “wake” in which Sharpe is referring to in her work, “In the Wake”. Japanese American incarceration was an example of the failure to recognize a group of people’s civil liberties, as well as complete ignorance of their cultural differences and identity. This is an issue that applies to, not just African Americans or Japanese Americans, but to many marginalized minority groups that have failed to fit into white culture. This exemplifies the “wake” as Dr. Sharpe defined in her book because it is a concept that has been repeated and constantly reappears throughout history. Even today we can see a strong sense of generalized fear revolving around the idea of allowing (or not allowing) groups such as immigrants and refugees into our country.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-traphagan/immigration-racism-and-th_b_9285930.html

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/after_internment.htm

“[Exec. Order 9066] represents the ignorance of the government and its quickness to label a non-white group as the “other” and the enemy. This “otherness” is conveyed by the governments’ failure to recognize the difference between Japanese and Japanese Americans, their legal citizenships, and most importantly their innocence from the beginning. What a contradiction it is for America to be a country of freedom, opportunity and right to trial, only to imprison its hundreds of thousands of its own citizens without due process.” -Elyse N (Notebook 2)

source: http://amhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/collection/image.asp?ID=411

Notebook #2

My object is my grandma’s yearbook from when she was in high school in the WorldWar II internment camps. In my last entry, I talked about how to me this object represents the racial profiling and fear that arises in times of war. As a nation, we have witnessed this concept circulate between various contexts, including World War II and the terrorist attack on September 11. Both were instances of racialization of a certain group of people, which promoted fear and heavy stereotype among Japanese Americans and Muslims.

The first national bind I would connect to this yearbook is that of “whiteness” and “citizenship”. Whiteness seems to be this sort of social construct that defines the perceptions, opportunities, stereotypes and power within and between groups. Executive Order 9066, which was the order saying all Japanese and Japanese Americans must be incarcerated, upholds this concept of whiteness in many ways. It conveys the ignorance of the government and its quickness to label a non-white group as the “other” and the enemy. This “otherness” is conveyed in the governments’ failure to recognize the difference between Japanese and Japanese Americans, their legal citizenships, and most importantly their innocence from the beginning. What a contradiction it is for America to be a country of freedom, opportunity and right to trial, only to imprison its hundreds of thousands of its own citizens without due process.

World War II for Japanese Americans can be analyzed in terms of race, but also in terms class. Many Japanese Americans were of working class and farmers. Because of the war and incarceration, a majority of these families lost their farms and property, thus suffering both socially and economically. My grandma told me after returning from war, if there had not been anyone neighbors or family friends to watch over their land, it was most likely sold and repossessed. Their land was more than just agricultural production, but it also represented a generation of immigrants that left their homeland and had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in hopes of paving the way for their family and future generations. The racial profiling and unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans was not only an issue of economic setback and social exclusion.

Japanese growers had established a large presence in the state’s produce and floral industries, dominating the markets in strawberries, celery, and peppers. Japanese Americans farmed more than 200,000 acres and accounted for 30 percent of California’s truck farmers.

http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/japanese-american-internment-camps/

Notebook #1

The object I chose to analyze for the first notebook assignment is my grandma’s yearbook from the internment camps of World War II. My family is of Japanese descent and so many of my family members were interned during the war, including my paternal Grandma. She was in high school when the war broke out and she finished her senior year, graduating as a prisoner of war. While I feel like this object can relate to many of the themes discussed in class, I think I would associate it most with “Immigration and Citizenship”. It wasn’t necessarily an issue of immigrants struggling to obtain citizenship, but instead it conveys a story of immigrants who made their lives here and rightfully gained citizenship, only in later generations to have their citizenship questioned in a time of fear and chaos.

It was a crazy feeling when I saw her yearbook for the first time because I felt a lot of different emotions at once. The first thing I thought was even though they were imprisoned in the most desolate of places and in the worst conditions, they still created a high school environment that resembled a “normal” high school. They had clubs, dances, sports and everything in between. I felt a lot of sadness but also a lot of pride and …humility? The Japanese American community as a whole showed a lot of strength and resilience during a time when they were betrayed by their country and this is what is mind boggling to me.

I would say this object, and what it symbolizes, circulates between various settings, the first being the time period in which it was made. This specific yearbook was created in 1944 in the internment camp located in Poston, Arizona, just near the end of the war. During this time there was a lot of racial fear, and fear in general among the American public, seeing all Japanese and Japanese American as the enemy. I would connect/circulate this among the event of September 11, 2001 when al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the twin towers. It was an almost parallel situation in that the United States was attacked and was quick to racialize the enemy to one race of people…in this case Muslims. Even having almost 60 years to reflect on the unbelievable atrocity of Japanese American Internment, we were quick to disregard history and look to lock up all people who “looked” Muslim or middle eastern. If I remember correctly, I learned once at a Day of Remembrance (day to honor those imprisoned in camp) that when 9/11 happened Japanese Americans were the first to defend the Muslims against those who believed they were a threat. To me, this object represents a time of war and irrational, racialized fear, and it has proven to take over both of the contexts mentioned.

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