Aspiring Writers/7 up USA/Togo/Hapa

I watched half of 21Up USA last night. I’m not sure how many kids they’ve interviewed, but I noticed that most of the kids who’ve been to university want to be writers. Interestingly, the ones who don’t have writing aspirations have the most interesting stories. They’re only 21 and think they know it all.

I was thinking about this when I was in my ESL class today. I have friends who really love the nuts and bolts of English grammar, explaining grammar and read grammar books, watching grammar video tapes in their spare time. I really don’t sure their enthusiasm. What I love about teaching (when I don’t have to deal with assholes) is the human interaction and learning about humanity.

Today as I was doing an exercise on neither…nor/either…or… we went off track and a student told me about the civil war in Togo. I felt so ignorant because I didn’t even know there had been a civil war there. Though she reassured me that not many people did because everything else overshadowed this war. One of my other students, a Vietnamese refugee who has been in Australia for 30 years, recounted her refugee experience and they compared notes on what the resettlement experience was like. They spoke of the meager rations they were given in refugee camp.

As they were talking, I thought to myself, “I wonder who is the refugee of tomorrow?” and..”God I’ve turned into one of these middle-class women who I used to find odd because they were so intrigued by things that were just part of my every day life.”

It made me realize we shouldn’t categorize each other by race/visual difference, but by how many generations removed from a peaceful, suburban Australian life we are. My husband and I are not the same race, but we are the same number of generations removed from the working-class migrant experience.

When I get some time weekend, I’ll finish watching 21 Up USA. It’s more interesting than the UK version because it’s more contemporary. The kid’s were born in 1985 – so I’m a decade older, but can still identify the “characters”. I’m intrigued by the Hapa kid. I’ve no idea what my son will look like when he’s older. I’m sure he won’t look like that Hapa kid, but it’s just interesting to see what older Hapa men look like.

 

Anna May Wong Must die!

This show looks fun. Pity it’s in London.

Anna May Wong Must Die! is Anna Chen’s one-woman show about Hollywood’s first Chinese movie star. This personal journey through the life and crimes of Anna May Wong grew from a half-hour programme about the actress, A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2009, written and presented by Anna.

“I discovered her at an early age when, growing up in the far East of London, I was the only Chinese kid in my school. I often wondered where everyone else was who looked like me.

“In the streets, men of a certain vintage would yell, ‘Oy, you! Anna May Wong!’ I thought, ‘Blimey! How do they know my name’s Anna?’ And then I saw her. She was in an old black and white film on the telly. The tall Chinese screen goddess in Shanghai Express, blowing the blonde Teutonic Marlene Dietrich off the screen and blasting her way into my respect

“Up until then, my only role models had been Madam Mao and Imelda Marcos. I didn’t know whether to start a revolution or steal a handbag. Now I could add stabbing villains to my options.”

Part comedy, part social critique, this funny, fascinating look at the movie icon dismantles Chinese stereotypes and reveals the human side of the dragon lady of dragon ladies.

Am 2/3 done with the MA but now feel like deleting 2/3 of the 2/3.

 

Hide and Seek

I can’t seem to make up my mind about what to do with this blog.
Fortunately, I’ve discovered the “Privacy” function in wordpress. Last time I couldn’t make up my mind about a blog or two, I deleted the blog(s)…which I now regret because one of them was my pregnancy journal.

I do however have plans to learn CSS – cascading style sheets, buy a domain and set up a website next year. It’s going to be the “hobby” in my motherhood+1career+2hobby formula. I was going to cook for the second hobby, but then remembered that I have two hungry mouths to feed and If I only cook for fun, I’m going to end up with a very skinny husband and son. Hey…is that a zeugma because I’m missing an adjective before “son”. That’s my new word: zeugma. [And yes...my husband can cook, but I don't like what he cooks 80% of the time, which is why I've claimed cooking duties and given him washing up duties. Also I'm a lot quicker in the kitchen.]

I’m feeling a bit vague and ditzy as I type. I have, according to the doctors, a “mild head injury”. On Sunday I went to my favourite cafe, only to find that it had been taken over by some ladette bogans. I mean power to women who want to claim bogan guy behaviour as their own, right down to the crotch scratching and love for Anthony Mundine, but the cafe is small and didn’t have enough soft furniture to dampen their ladette conversations. Also, one ladette started off a conversation…”I worked with an Asian once…”. I mean it could have been…”…and they have very nice hair,” but I’d already stereotyped them more than they had me. So I sat outside…
A gust of wind came in from no where and hey presto, the heavy pole of the outdoor umbrella hit me on the head. The nice waitress rushed up to us. My husband said, “no damaged done…” I smiled feebly because I was in a state of shock and stumbled across the road before feeling nauseous and tired. I didn’t pass out and it was just a dull surface ache – but you know, you hear about people in the media saying stuff like, “Oh…but she was feeling fine…and dropped dead within 24 hours.”

My beautiful boy gave me kisses on the head and a big hug.

So what’s my point – freak accidents happen. Thank goodness I was too lazy to get the high chair for my son and he was in my husband’s lap.

I’m blogging as I wait for the courtesy Toyota shuttle to pick me up. The car went in for service yesterday and there was so much wrong with it, it had to stay in overnight. I’m learning quite a bit about cars because my son is car crazy. I’ve learnt a lot about the VW – how it was the Nazi’s Model-T ford but production had to stop during the war, that the scirocco looks like the golf, and that the mini cooper is a descendent of the austin cooper, morris minor… My son’s favourite car is the Mini Cooper Coupe – I looked into getting one and didn’t realise that it’s a luxury car selling at $75,000.

I’m clucky but have always said I need to finish my draft before I think about having another child. The MA is plodding along. It’ll be good to get this finished because I think I’d like to at some stage continue and write a PhD around contemporary feminist issues – started thinking about it when my Friday morning class started talking about their lives. I have a really sassy Iraqi lady who is fiercely intelligent. She is a widow supporting two young children – her husband was blown up back home in Iraq- sadly it was when he went back into Iraq after escaping into Syria. She’s around my age and it’s just incredible to think all the time I had been navel gazing, blogging, watching my inane American teen dramas as a form of escapism, planning my next holiday, afraid of the quiet suburbs and the loss of my independent self..she was living in dusty, hot, Baghdad, lost her premature baby due to the fact she had only a Baghdad hospital for medical care, lost her husband, lived in a war zone…. She came out here by herself and is a woman warrior. She reminds me of my maternal grandmother. Ballsy. Yet still very conservative. She was explaining to me that she had to wear a veil and all women have to wear a veil because if they didn’t it would cause problems between the men who see them [objectify them] and the men’s wives. The thing is this woman shares similar attitudes as me towards world peace and the big issues, but yet when it comes to this, she falls back on the conservative attitude where men do not take responsibility for their actions. My grandmother, and to an extent my mother, shared these attitudes. The whole idea that you’re asking for it, if you reveal too much flesh. On the other hand, to believe that you are attractive to men means that you have a healthier self-esteem than say the woman who feels she has to expose more to make herself more sexually attractive.

I’m thinking, will I lose touch with the world if I stop working next semester?

 

Can’t do it all but that’s okay!

What happened to this post.

Well that’s all…can’t do it all, but it’s okay.

 

X men – the last stand

I watched X men – 3 on telly last night. What a terrible film. The premise is interesting enough but the narrative was so bad, and so were the female characters.
- The Archangel: they should have just gotten rid of this plot since they didn’t have enough time to develop the father/son relationship.
- Female characters.
I hated the Jean Grey/Phoenix character and in fact all the female characters. They’re all weak and submit themselves to dominant stereotypes of what it means to be a desireable woman.
JG/P – Is the most powerful creature in the world but doesn’t manage to control her power and ends up killing “the man she loves” etc… At first I thought, ‘okay I don’t want to read her as typical of the archetypal villainess who is too [sexually]powerful etc..fear of female sexuality ” because at the moment I’m trying to avoid theoretical jargon. But how could I not read it this way when everytime she goes “psycho” she turns red, the oceans rise, men stand up -rise to the occassion and then get incinerated when she unleashes her full power. She’s a cliche. Also why didn’t Wolverine just inject her with the “cure” instead of sinking his knives into her? All 10 of his digits.
Okay and even if I am getting all undergrad cultural studies student-esque about this – the poor actress didn’t get to talk much. Though she did get to do her famous scissor thing with her legs.
Rogue – Pathetic. Another female who is so powerful she can’t touch her man without killing him. So she gets the cure. For herself – she says…and after she loses her powers, the boyfriend comes back to her. Otherwise he spends most of his time with Juno.
Juno – plays a pre-pubescent character – kitty. So she doesn’t count. She wants her parents more than she was a man.
Storm – the only woman to keep her super powers and remain relatively happy. And she takes over from Xavier. But notice in the film she doesn’t get to fight the really powerful mutants. Her main nemesis is another woman of colour. “no no…enjoy the film,” I said to myself…”Don’t read the film, just enjoy it for the narrative” – but I couldn’t. The characters were so crap. Also Storm is asexual and has absolutely no love interest. I was hoping she would develop something with Wolverine – but that would involve miscegenation and that’s pretty rare in mainstream blockbusters. Though Kevin and
Whitney did alright in the 90s in The Bodyguard.

And even if I didn’t hate the female characters so much, the narrative was clunky.

 

Sci-fi

Am beginning to read sci-fi short stories. I loved sci-fi/fantasy as a kid but haven’t read much sci-fi as an adult…though I have to admit dystopian fiction is one of my favourite genres. I’m hoping that once I have exorcised these demons, issues, questions of racial identity etc…in this MA paper, I can move on to work on my dystopian world.
I love speculative fiction – what if…. Maybe it is to do with feeling rootless, homeless and having an arbitrary identity…maybe writing about aliens is an offshoot of alienation or maybe I just like aliens.

Work is okay. I just made it worse than it actually is, though despite having an okay day – I really don’t want to do this next year. I’m not coping with the workload of home stuff, family, study, writing and a part-time job that requires a fair amount of preparation and patience.
“Think of the money,” a friend told me, but it’s really not enough money. I feel a bit slack sometimes because my parents never had the choice of saying, “nah….don’t feel like working anymore.” They just stuck their heads down and did whatever work that came their way with the goal of raising two children. They didn’t really consider things like, “quality time with child” as that was not a luxury they could afford. I had my grandma around.

Today some student kept asking me where I was from. I just explained I was Australian-Chinese. She kept asking, so I said I was an Overseas Chinese. That shut her up for a while because there’s an understanding that Overseas Chinese are a collective breed of Chinese who have never been on the mainland. Some people hate this so called imposed identity, but I just find it convenient to use this label as it stops people from asking further questions. Except this woman who was relentless. So I gave her the birth town of my great-great-grand father, since that was the last time all my ancestors were on the mainland, a point of origin – and she looked at me and said, “ahhh I knew when I walked into the classroom that you were Hokien.”
Good thing I’ve spent time getting to know my roots etc… I find that I am more comfortable around Chinese people from the big Guangdong cities. Maybe it’s because I’m more familiar with the language and culture, even though most of my people are Hokien. Yeah gotto find a job where I don’t have to keep inventing the story of my origins.
I just tell different stories according to how I feel on a particular day.
Last term I was feeling far too westernized, so I went native for a while… This term, I’m into speculative fiction…maybe I’ll tell them I’m from a parallel universe.

 

The balance

Okay this is what I’ve learnt about juggling in 2009.
I began this year – deluded…thinking that I could be a full-time mother, part-time student, writer and still make some inroads in my teaching career – I don’t teach writing or “how to be a mother”.
What I’ve found is this
- I can’t do it all well. I think I can handle motherhood + one other thing.
- It’s difficult segmenting the brain and switching on and off.

For example today. I’ve spent the morning doing the playgroup thing. Had a pleasant day. If I were a full-time mother, I’d probably spend the afternoon lazing around watching a bit of TV as Kid slept and then after he wakes go to the library or the shops. Have a look around. Amuse ourselves until dinner time. Dinner etc..
Or if I did one other thing e.g. study, I could do what I do and use the sleep time to get into my readings, polish up this thing I’m working on for my supervisor and take him over to mum and dad’s for the afternoon so I can get this one thing done – which needs to get done.
Instead, I’m thinking “arghhh what do I do????” I’ve managed to tell my parents I’m not coping and I need them to look after him this afternoon because I have to finish this piece of writing – but the thing is I also have to plan for tomorrow’s class and I’m really resenting it.
I think ideally, if one is a mother who wants to do something else, or a few things else, they should do two things that are related to each other in some way. Writing a post grad thesis and low level ESL teaching both involve language but very different types of language.
Also because I’ve chosen to work on something that is living and breathing in the ESL classroom, that’s kind of difficult as well. So I don’t have that sort of detachment…eg. Musing about Lyotard’s theory on the death of metanarrative and how experience/language have replaced grand narratives… I think yeah, but has Lyotard been in an ESL classroom full of non-English speaking migrants from diverse backgrounds, including a majority who have not had more than 3 years of education.
Are all views and narratives valid? No. Because how the fuck can I take some woman who thinks it’s okay to get a group of students together and beat their teacher to death in their country’s views seriously? My view is right, and hers is wrong. I’m so over cultural relativism. Some people take these abstractions to the extremes…okay and I know that this isn’t an example that comes up in my readings because these theorists are clever enough to not have to take on low level ESL teaching jobs.

And when there is no white centre from which one can work around, people still resort to colonialist narratives – and I have to perform some weirdo butch/whitey role where I play the role of colonialist, privilege monolingualism – just so I can get some control of the classroom. I mean this comes naturally to some of my colleagues from my ethnic background, but I’m a sleep deprived mother /student who just can’t be bothered performing any other roles.

I’m tetchy and I’m getting really sick of a lot of what I’m reading.

Terry Eagleton’s “After Theory” is providing some relief.

I have 8 weeks to go.

Follow up to the nasty incident with asshole students is that my workplace now has a “Cultural Awarness” taskforce. But it sounds like a load of bullshit and token because of the resistance to “values” education. What these people don’t realise is that it’s all ideological. The choice to stick to the “rational/objective teaching of language as a science” – yeah like that’s really helped people achieve native speaker fluency and the choice not to teach it is also ideological.

You see, if I wasn’t studying – I wouldn’t be switched onto these things. I probably could just go and deliver the program, take the pay and go home.

God…just 8 weeks to go….

I think I need to get away from work because I am confronted with the very issues I can’t be bothered dealing with at the moment – or the issues that I always deal with, and am happy to within the comforts of my home, in academia or in discussion with friends.

 

Holiday Reading…

I’ve been reading YA and chick-lit fiction these holidays. Pure escapism. And watching old episodes of the OC. Or “the O and C” as my son would say. As a result I’m quite relaxed and the trauma of having to teach low level migrants who are in cultural shock etc… is behind me. Or so I thought, until I started dreaming about them. I must have locked them away somewhere in the subconscious because they leak out at around 3-4am in the morning. They’re not bad dreams. In all the dreams I am quite calm and feel okay about things, but I’ve been waking up in a bad mood because it’s like I’ve had to go back to that place two weeks before I actually have to set foot there.
I read Sophie Kinsella’s book about the lawyer who thinks she’s lost 50 million pounds for her firm and ends up being a housekeeper for a nouveau riche couple. It’s typical rom-com and it’s the same formula – does the single girl choose hot shot career or life. I really don’t like chick-lit because it always seems to be either-or. I enjoy chick-lit mainly because I like the glamorous big city world depicted and the comedy. Also when I’m feeling rather unsure of myself, I like the reassurance that there are people out there on the verge of nervous breakdowns and worry about the same inane things that I do. I also started reading Marian Keyes Sushi for Beginners. I’m not sure about the “exotic Asian” girlfriend character – Mai. I wish she didn’t include her because it’s taking away from my enjoyment of the book as just a bit of fun fluff. I know Keyes has included her in there as an anti-stereotype because the character (half Irish/Chinese or Vietnamese – she mentions she’s Chinese in one part and Vietnamese in the other – typing/editing error?) draws attention to the “ping pong” ball stereotypes and she plays on her exoticism to keep her boyfriend. Really she’s a down to earth, confident, sassy Irish gal who sells mobile phones – though she tells everyone she’s an exotic dancer. I know what the author is trying to do, but I’m not sure it quite works. Also sometimes the narrator speaks from Mai’s p.o.v which doesn’t quite work for me either because at all other times the narrator only tells the story from the perspective of the three main characters. Maybe it is impossible to mention a character’s ethnicity without drawing attention to it and all the other stereotypes. Maybe in order to just “be” and not engage in conversations about identity/race, these characters have to be white.
I know there’s a growing genre called “ethnic chick-lit” and this is taken more seriously because the characters talk about issues of race/identity. I’ve had a glimpse through one of these books and I don’t find it any more serious and in fact find the talk about race/identity a bit 101. Having said this, I wrote a story recently that treated my readers like retards where I spelt out everything explicitly. “It’s like you don’t trust your readers,” was one comment and the fact is I don’t.
Damnit – my baby is up and needs the loo.

 

A month passes…

I had an interesting conversation the other day about concepts of time, abstract time, internet time, time and writing, how writing takes time.
I managed to get the day off today for some guilt free “me” time. I find that the only time I can have guilt free “me” time is when hubby is looking after the baby.
Since the last time I blogged, I made some changes to my schedule, wardrobe and am in the process of making changes in my kitchen. I spend most of my days at home in that space, so I may as well have a nice space. I have fantasies of having a white modern kitchen with stone bench tops and a kitchen bench workspace.

[sorry stole this from someone elses wordpress file]
It may take some time to make this a reality as tradesmen in this area are so busy and I’m not up for a DIY job. A dishwasher is also part of this fantasy. I spend way too many hours in a week washing dishes.

I dropped a day of work and will drop that final day of work next semester. I’m finding it really difficult switching from mommy-me, to work-me, to uni-me, to wifey-me, to play group-me, dutiful daughter-me etc…..sure I could just be me, but I’m afraid there is not a one-size fits all me at this point. Which is why I really need to streamline my daily activities.

I’m blogging from the library where I just picked up a pamphlet on mental health. It’s mental health week…According to this pamphlet in order to stay balanced once must:
Relax, talk, get involved, see friends, keep active, learn new skills, eat well and organize your time.
I do not do the last one well. I probably will have to make the most of the ical on this mac. I also need to find some more relaxation time and see friends. Thank god for facebook or else I’d have lost touch with a lot of people. I think I’m doing okay in the other areas though I have to admit I have been feeling a bit unbalanced lately because I’ve not been eating well.
Thankfully, I’ve discovered the PItango range at Coles. Pre-packaged organic meals. I wish there was a local range because I’m a bit xenophobic when it comes to imported foods. Still, I guess NZ is just across the ditch.

Found this interesting blog article by Justine Larbalestier on white privilege in publishing. It’s something that’s at the back of my mind as I plod along with my writing. I feel a bit discouraged by what she said about agents only taken on one writer of colour (token writer). There’s the argument that the more the merrier because then you have context for your writing. i.e. the fact that there are now PoC writing and getting published means that I don’t have to go back to the basics when writing about PoC – i.e. spelling everything out in black and white. I didn’t go out of my way to write about being Asian. In fact I hate the descriptor “Asian” because it lumps me into a category with people I have very little in common with. For me, it’s more of a physical descriptor – i.e. the way hubby would be described as “white”. After MJ died, I thought about how crap his music was in the later years as he tried to beat “thriller” and achieve higher record sales. I really liked “Off the Wall” and remembered what MJ being so sad that he only won the one Grammy because it was not a mainstream (white) album. So I just started writing something that was a bit closer to home. Now I’m thinking, I haven’t really written something that falls into the “third world home” – sad/bad/oppressed “first world home” – good/freedom narrative. In fact, it’s more of a “shit happens” type of narrative. Anyway, I’m rambling here – after reading Justine’s post I don’t feel very confident at all about finding a home for any of the stories except in “multicultural” specials. This article on the marketing of AA fiction was interesting.
So I’m moving onto my next project, a longer project I started a year back. A YA novel – which is how I ended up reading blogs by YA authors – and now that question creeps in again. Do I whitewash it? Can a PoC write about a PoC without getting into discussions on cultural identity?

I read Rey Chow recently. Ethics after Idealism. In her essay “The Facist Longing in Our Midst” she writes about “The Story of O” – not the French BDSM slave, but the token third world looking but middle class academic who fudges her way through an academic career by appealing to fetishists. I sometimes get so sick of looking at identity politics, cultural studies, race etc…but I can’t seem to avoid it. Chow’s work is the closest I’ve come to finding answers for my own questions. The problem with a lot of the previous theorists is that they write in a very different context to the one I’m interrogating. Let’s face it, I could have been O had I not given up on my Honours project.

At the same time, because of my complex background, aristocratic ancestors marrying povo ones, educated ones mingling with uneducated ones, slaves, landlords and the fact they were all sojourners, I can identify with both O and the third world she pretends to be part of.

I love Spring.
I really want to go outside and cycle around the coast but hubby is not in the mood.
Seems too nice a day to be locked up with my own thoughts and books.

Am feeling slightly neurotic but supervisor 2 said it comes with the territory. Welcome to the club.

 

More thoughts…

I’m calmer now. Have had a chat to a few friends about this from different cultural backgrounds – though all Australians.

I think another factor in this is the fact I am not just Asian – but a Chinese-Asian.

I’m not that connected with my Chinese heritage and I don’t know much about the history of Chinese throughout the world. But it seems to be that people think there are too many of us and feel really threatened. I overheard a student say that there were too many Chinese people. I mean how the fuck am I supposed to react?
Especially when they’re adults.

It’s weird because up until I took this job, I had stopped thinking in terms of race. After I had my son, I realised that it wasn’t that important – until this friggin’ job where my identity is questioned every time I step into the classroom. Sure I have a couple of cool classes – but I’m wondering whether it’s good for my sanity to teach new migrants. I have a friend who does this job and he pretends he’s not Chinese. He’s more of an Anglo-phile than I am because he’s more Chinese than I am.
I’m so Westernized that I’m have a longing to be more Eastern.
Also, most people who teach ESL and are ethnic are Anglo-philes. I just fell into it.

I am very proud of my cultural heritage and the fact I worked very hard to learn how to speak/read/write Chinese. Why the fuck should I hide this when our PM is a Chinese speaker?

Yeah sure in the countries where some of the students are from, they see Chinese people as the wealthy oppressors taking over their countries. I remember a friend talking about how the Chinese are the Jews of South East Asia. Great.
So now I have to take on that burden as well.

Then on the other hand, you throw in people who come from countries where the only Asian female they’ve seen is in porn films.
Great.

I know someone who loves this job because they get to break stereotypes and they’re full of energy, buzzing that they get to help change perceptions.

I’m also sick of self-hating Chinese people.

It’s a job where you have to deal with questions of race and identity.

At the end of the day – if I stay in this job, I’m going to end up prejudiced against certain groups of people.

How odd to think that I’ve felt most like myself in Australia when I was living in a country town.

I’ve switched classes and I like them enough to spend my weekend preparing for them.

I have colleagues who can retire but love the job so much that they will stay on until they can’t. Me? It’s a job. If I won the lottery, I would go and volunteer for a community organization as my “need to get out into the world” activity.

Thank god these days there are books, websites, bulletin boards about such issues. At least my reactions are validated.

Ignorance is so infuriating.

The reason I’m not a racist is because it was drilled into me at school that racism is not acceptable in Australia. So even though it took place, I knew that they were in the wrong.
Then something happened – then it was okay to be intolerant.

It’s the feeling of being under siege in your own home. It’s very unsettling.