Aerosmith and Gunsmith

NRA: Is rather fond of guns.

Perhaps opposites attract. Sarah Vowell and her Dad, in her "Shooting Dad", are as different as chalk and cheese and two peas in a pod. It all begins and ends with a bang!, with a gun/cannon shot. She loses interest in guns when she has her first interaction with one at the age of six, and subsequently, interest in her father and his hobbies. While her father loves working with guns and most weapons of destruction, she turns to music and the arts. Furthermore, their house is likened to a war zone, with only a few areas in the house that are not dominated, and her twin glumly says that she is the "loneliest twin in history". The differences are endless and almost insuperable. 

Vowell has a sudden revelation (as her father is lobbing cannonballs in a public mountain and she is madly waving around a microphone) where she realizes that she is just as quirky as her father is; the two have messy work-spaces and enjoy fiddling with various gadgets. Although Vowell still does not like guns, she concedes by admiring the awesome power of the cannon, and the effect it had on her. Both are artists of different kinds, aerosmith and gunsmith, and her father's gesamtkunstwerk is a symphony in which her whole family will eventually play a part in.

Debussy: Writes Clair de Lune.

Although the two have their differences, their relationship is not strained. She may not be as close as her twin is to her father, Vowell and her father have light, playful exchanges as they banter and joke around with each other, which is their manner of expressing love.  (Just as some married couples will argue and tease each other but not  really mean it seriously.) Ultimately, she sees past her differences and decides that she has much more in common with her father than she had thought. 

Cookin' with My Momma, Maybe?

"Bro, Dad, you can lean on me."
"That's my son."

In "Arm Wrestling with My Father", Manning conveys that there is more than one way to communicate with your parents. His father doesn't go to his orchestra concerts, but is more than willing to go to his lacrosse games and help him; arm wrestling becomes a favorite pastime, a symbol of their unspoken love. Their confrontation and role reversal occurs when Manning defeats his father in an arm wrestling match, but Manning doesn't want to overturn his father's strength and carry his father, who has gotten weaker and older. Manning's relationship with his father is very physical, and his father only softens at the very end when he realizes that his son has grown up and that he must lean on him. He understands that his father didn't need to tell him that he loves him. It is implied and strengthened through years of physical contact. 

Some parents are very expressive, while other parents are not so much. My parents, especially my Mom, fall in with the latter. [Now to pick on my Mom, who I like to pick on a lot just for fun, hehe.] While we like to chat with each other over funny news or bad gossip about celebrities' surgery gone wrong, I don't really recall her ever expressing her love for me verbally. She also never comes to my concerts or events in general (okay, I admit that maybe she comes during the last few minutes to wait for me to finish, but she also forgot to pick me up once and left me in the freezing cold), and takes a more passive stance in my life. But I can tell she loves me because she reads me news articles on how to improve my life, she comforts me in my perpetual failure, and she is confident that I will do well. I've realized now that a person can throw 'I love you' around and not really mean it, so maybe my Mom was wise to show it in other ways; I've also taken a long time to realize that the only reason why my Mom tolerates house chores is so that I have more time to study and become greater than her (maybe). Like Manning, I still want my Mom to take care of me and tell me that everything will be fine, and maybe I'm not ready to grow up yet. I haven't had the role reversal that Manning has, and probably will in some far-off-day-that-I'm-not-looking-forward-to, but I admire my Mom's steely strength and I've been able to understand and appreciate her a lot better. :)

The Active Chase to Fish Cheeks Reading

In "The Chase", Annie Dillard shows us the importance of putting everything you've got into anything you try to accomplish. Through her elaborate chase, she reveals that she, Mikey, and even the adult enjoy the run. At the very end, the adult has an almost pleased, elated aura about him, and commences with his "You stupid kids..." speech as a formality. She compares this chase to the race of life, and how we must put conviction and true heart into it. Her ultimate purpose is to show that although the ending is enjoyable, the true adventure lies in the chase, in the run, in the fact that you put in 100%. At the end of every track meet, we may or may not win trophies, but the journey to that point in itself is incredible, with the friendships made and  life lessons learned.

On another hand, we read about Amy Tan, an American-Chinese, and her experiences during Christmas in "Fish Cheeks". As an angst-y teenage girl set on pleasing her American crush, Robert, the whole of the narrative is written from the American perspective. She describes her favorite foods as being disgusting and unappealing because she doesn't think that Robert would enjoy them. This is understandable (though not in that way); I would feel a little sick if I were to bring "Red cooked pigs-feet" to school and eat them with relish in front of my horrified table-mates. She all but faints when her father burps and encourages the minister to do so too. In the end, Amy's mother comforts her with a miniskirt, and after Amy has grown up and become wiser in the ways of the world, she understands her mother's true intent. I think that as an Asian-American girl, these cultural differences become more defined in the teens. You want to please others and identify with the "group", so when your parents do Asian things, you feel embarrassed and lash out at your parents and blame everything: your culture and the fact that your parents don't have perfect English. As you age, you begin to realize that it doesn't matter what others think, it's what makes you happy. {I feel ashamed for being so mean to my parents now and I have apologized to them numerous times for being such a dishonorable daughter.} You mellow out, become less self-conscious, and identify with both the American and Chinese aspects of yourself with no bad feelings, and in fact, it's even exciting to learn a little more about both sides. {It was only last year that I finally mustered up the courage to ask an Anglo-Saxon American what they really eat everyday, other than the hamburgers, pizza, pasta, and steak I think they eat.} You think "I do what I want. They can take me or they can leave me, but I won't change or feel bad for who I am." 

--Maybe one of these days I will bring pigs-feet to school and stand in the middle of the cafeteria screaming into the microphone, "I like eating pigs-feet Chinese style and there is nothing you can do about it! Call me strange, call it disgusting, but I will still eat pigs-feet!"--

I would end on a short anecdote regarding the Chinese experience, especially on Chinese New Year's Day (Happy Year of the Snake, by the way! And the picture to the left is actually two people in a lion costume.) Maybe I could recount a tale of sitting down to a table laden with noodles, dumplings, rice cakes, oranges, squirrel fishes and more. But, I ate American last night because my parents didn't feel like cooking, so unfortunately, nothing here.

I can only hope that my Mom and Dad make up for this by making some serious eats tonight. 

...And we're back!

It took me about two hours just to wait for the internet to post this and it is driving me nuts and I've been clicking the publish button at least 9000 times and that is why I am writing in run-ons and if this does finally publish I will be so glad...
We start off Semester Two through critical reading, and contrary to what I thought, the close readings really do take about 1-2 hours.

“Champion of the World” by Maya Angelou revolves around Joe Louis, the Black Bomber, and his faraway fight. She relives the tension and the agony revolving around that single radio, so in a sense, the story was not so much focused on the fight itself, but rather the emotion that it evoked. As African Americans, it is difficult for them to reach a position of power; because they are constantly reminded of their history, they cannot move past and start anew. When Joe Louis emerges on the international scene, an immense feeling of pride overtakes them as they realize that against all odds, an African American man, son of an African American woman, has emerged the victor. It’s as if he represents their whole race and his movements in the arena dictate their rises and falls. Some people in our class discussion wondered if these people were placing too much importance on Joe’s actions, and I’m inclined to say that perhaps these people in Angelou’s story didn’t have much to place hope upon. The whole event seemed like one of the biggest events in their lives, with overindulgence and splurging, so this suggests that Joe is who they look up to, and who they see to hold the power in a white man’s society. When you’re a member of a minority, there’s a feeling of overwhelming pride when one of your kind stands up to fight for the rest. At those moments, you act as support and encouragement, much like these African Americans in the Store, and you can hope that his actions make a difference.

Maya Angelou’s recollection of Joe Louis’ fight draws striking parallels to another true story I watched. Fearless was about a man, Huo Yuan Jia, who fought his way up to fame through his amazing martial arts skills. I’m not quite sure how much of it was real, but his story went like this: After attempting to drown himself—his only child and mother are killed by a vengeful man—he is saved by a group of farmers. At the same time, China grows weak from attempts by Western countries to colonize it, and Chinese people are relegated to a minority status. Yuan Jia returns to make a statement for the Chinese people, and to demonstrate that China is not “the weak man of Asia”; he defeats numerous opponents and draws attention from both sides to his victories. The Chinese people rise up to support this single man and cheer him on from the stands. Tragically, during his last battle, he falls ill after he is poisoned by the westernized Japanese, yet he is declared the victor nonetheless. As he lies dying, his disciples ask if they should seek revenge, he answers that revenge is not the answer and that they should all try to make a difference in life. ~Fin.~ This movie proved that someone can stand up and make an indelible impact upon those they touch.

And yet, winning the battle does not necessarily mean winning the war. Although Yuan Jia’s victory and death made him a martyr and instilled a sense of national pride, it was much later that China was able to muster up force to drive out foreign influences. Similarly, the African Americans in Angelou’s story can’t even walk home without fear of being lynched.