week 8: when ashley made dinner

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[Agenda from March 20, our eighth meeting.]

Dinner at Anna’s Apt (4:30pm, 3/20)

Ashley's Japanese curry is placed on the stove and garnished with green onions. There are visible bits of potatoes, tofu, carrots, and onions chopped up. The curry is simmering.
Ashley’s curry!
*we’re trying something new this week, combining kiki time (dinner → Ashley’s Japanese curry) + show & tell! (children’s lit)

Have prepared:

  1. Hungry tummy.
  2. Prepare graphic novel(s)/ children’s lit. ← 

~ curating a canon of the {best} children’s APIA lit can be possible final project !!  (current emc collection is looking very sad) ~

Suggested children’s lit are:

  • Messy Roots by Laura Gao ← Edwin bought us three copies, please pass it around
  • The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui  ← available in print and e-book at Swarthmore Public Library
  • The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nyugen ← available at Swarthmore Public Library (ebook + print), or Elisa’s physical copy from Bryn Mawr
  • American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang ← available in emc in children’s lit shelf
  • A Different Pond by Bao Phi ← available in the emc in ed18 shelf
  • Smoky Night by Eve Bunting ← Anna will pass around copy during dinner
  • Asian Americans Who Inspire Us by Analiza Quiroz Wolf
  • [cheesy ya novel]
  • Pls add others

What will happen when we meet?

Discussion questions/ topics

  • What does Asian American studies look like in the classroom? On the campus? In our communities?
  • What are some recurring themes you noticed in the materials we prepped for today?
    • Focus on specific narratives 
    • Who are we being represented by? What towards?
  •  How does exploring children’s literature/TV shows/movies (ie. how Disney “coincidentally” turns a lot of POC characters into animals) help inform our understanding of APIA education today?
    • Disney is in their “ethnic era” ← to some degree necessary, but studios like Disney aren’t going to prioirtize storytelling over financial prospects
    • Watching these movies makes us feel very nervous! (How will we be represented now…)
    • Also why are so many of the same stories constantly being retold? ← we don’t want to see the same thing over and over again
  • Why is it important to be informed about the kinds of resources that are available and accessible to general audiences? 
  • One of our members (I think Serena) said “Ethnic studies can be taught, but it depends on HOW it’s taught!” What does this mean to you?
    • From lisa lowe reading (canonization)
    • How do we understand?
    • What is the right way to teach it?
    • How does messy roots/ magic fish do for genre of comic books/ memoir?
    • Rather than trying to break stereotypes (relateability) → aspirational
    • Not that everyone can understand the experience, but everyone can feel something from it 
    • Magic Fish tries to tell one story
      • Simple + indirect
      • “I set out to tell a very small story”
screenshot reads, "Author's note: I set out to tell a very small story. One of the odd challenges of writing a story about characters living with any social margins is the gravity of the marginalization itself. It is such a dense thing, seeming to insist that all the pieces of the story should orbit around it. Immigrant stories are like this. As compassionate readers, we sometimes intellectualize difficult human experiences to keep them at arm's length. There is an appropriate vernacular, a set of vocabulary words in a syllabus, and a common language established for the sake of facilitating dialogue. At our worst, we find the stories of immigration reduced to character tropes employed, for example, by the news for a disaffected viewer. The stories start and end with the arc of an exodus, and we forget that things continue to happen ever after, and that ever after does not happen for everyone all at once. At our best, we want to take a bird's eye view of the situation in an effort to be as comprehensive as possible. In this way, immigrants seem to take on the flatness of fairytale of fairy tale archetypes, as interchangeable pieces in recurring stories of upheaval and diaspora. In both cases, we prefer to look in from the outside. All the quiet yearnings, the ambient heartaches, and the thousand other little indignities of feeling lost in your own tongue are overlooked in our best-intentioned efforts to be broad and comprehensive. And so I set out to tell a very small story about a boy and his mother figuring out how to express love without the benefit of an appropriate vernacular, a set of vocabulary words in a syllabus, or a common language to facilitate their dialogue. I wanted to explore how stories can serve both as an escape and as an anchor for us in our real lives, and maybe, for at least one story, decenter the gravity of marginalization to tell a story about one of the little pieces that orbit around it."
from The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

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