Water in The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The theme of water reoccurs throughout The Gangster We Are All Looking For, along with the theme of bodies. In the passage that tells what happened to the narrator’s brother, the themes of water and bodies intertwine. The narrator’s brother died in the South China Sea and one of her uncle’s had pulled the body out of the water. This passage links together bodies and water in that her brother’s body was found in a body of water. In some ways, the use of water in the novel is a bit ironic because the family likes to be near bodies of water, such as the pool mentioned in the second chapter, yet the audience learns that the main character’s brother died in water. In some ways it could seem ironic that the family likes to be connected to the thing that has killed one of their family members. The fact that the brother died in water, allows for the family to be connected through water, even though water causes both comfort and trauma for many of the family members. Water is what separates the family, but at the same time it ties the family together. Water is what separates the family in that the ocean separates the family in America and the family in Vietnam, and water killed the brother and ties into how the family becomes broken. Water and bodies also intertwine with the brother’s body because after retrieving the body from the ocean, the brother’s body had water inside of it. “They said that my brother – they called him “the boy” – was full of “bad water”” (Page 130). This quote goes along with how water can be comfort or trauma, or in this case water is either “bad” or “good”. The theme of water in this novel is complex, yet it ties everything together. 

My Word from Call Me Ishmael Tonight

My Word (Page 40- 41)

The poem, “My Word,” in Ali’s Call Me Ishmael Tonight, gives poetic contradictions and contrast. The first line of the first couplet says “I am lying even now – I give you my word” which in itself is conflicting due to the contradiction of lying and saying “I give you my word” is usually something said when telling the truth. In the sixth couplet, the poem says “Hard to say who’s winning” which implies someone indeed is winning at that point in time, but the next sentence of the line states “Nobody is winning.” These contradictions could be trying to explain the complexity of words and of language, in that language can easily be contradictory.

The poem also contains assonance and parallel repetition. Each couplet ends with the words “my words,” and also has internal rhymes such as “two” and “rue,” and various others. In the fifth stanza, blue is personified when the speaker says “betrothed to blue, with her refracted light.” The word “betrothed” personifies blue and makes it seem like human and as betrothed person. Another phrase in the poem that contrasts is “Beloved Enemy” because the two words paired together have very opposite connotations. Like other poems in the book, this poem has the person speak in the third person, as if talking to Shahid. The last stanza says “Yours too, Shahid, will be a radical departure. / You’ll go out of yourself and then into my word.” This last stanza could be talking about Shahid’s death and how even though he will die and go out of this world, he will still be alive in his own words in his poetry. 

Tropic of Orange

In Tropic of Orange, magical realism is used in a unique way to create a bizarre, yet somewhat believable turn of events. Unlike other novels that use magical realism, Tropic of Orange does not have a dreamlike aspect of magical realism, but more realistic yet bizarre magic occurring throughout the latter half of the novel. An example of this realism is shown in the wrestling championship between El Gran Mojado and SUPERNAFTA, because of all the bizarre things happening in the stadium. SUPERNAFTA has his flaming head, while El Grand Mojado appearing out of nowhere, yet in a way the whole scene seems somewhat believable because it has this aspect that makes it bizarre yet real and almost makes it seem like a circus. Magical realism takes its toll a bit further and becomes a bit less realistic as “Mojado sprouted giant wings that fluttered like white parachutes from his very back” (Page 262). The magical realism in this chapter is not just used to create a magical yet realistic event, but rather to represent the struggle of between the north and the south, represented by the two characters that are affected by magical realism. This also goes along with the imaginary line from the tropic of orange being something tangible and movable, because the moving of the line is like the moving of the border. All the supernatural events are tied to the real events going on near the border, such as NAFTA because people are being displaced in reality, and even with all the supernatural events people are being displaced. 

Identity in Rolling the R’s

While reading Rolling the R’s, I felt identity played a major role throughout most of the novel. One chapter that stood out in terms of identity was “The Two Filipinos.” This chapter goes over how the children identify themselves by ethnicity. There’s the conflict of identity in that Nelson wants to be seen as American rather than Filipino, but everyone else in the class clearly considers him Filipino, and this correlates with how there is personal and social identity. This scene shows the conflict between personal identity and social identity in that someone can view themselves one way, but other people can view that person differently. In contrast to Nelson, there is Edgar who doesn’t seem to care about how other people view him, because he accepts the names people call him, and considers them part of who he is. Edgar even says, “I a mestizo born in the US of A, but my fair skin no stop me from the fact that I one Filipino” indicating that he isn’t even full Filipino, but identifies himself as Filipino (Page 69). In a way, Nelson wants to identify himself as part of the model minority and disregard all the negative stereotypes of being Filipino, whereas Edgar accepts his identity as Filipino even with all the negative stereotypes. “You’re so full of yourself, Nelson. Just cuz your father one lawyer and your mom one nurse” (Page 68). From this quote, we see how model minority takes part in Nelson’s identity because he has parents who would likely be considered to be part of the model minority. Edgar even goes to the point of calling Nelson, “Mr. Haole Wanna-be” and indirectly says how Nelson wants to be assimilated by wanting to be like haole (Page 70). In this chapter, we see how model minority affects identity, in this case, Nelson’s identity. 

M. Butterfly Blog Post

M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly takes an interesting take on gender, especially in terms of femininity. Song plays on the fact that men create femininity and uses it to attract Gallimard. Since Song is really a man, he knows what men consider to be feminine and can therefore acts the way he thinks the perfect woman would be. This is shown when he says “Because only a man knows how a woman should act” (Page63). Song understands the stereotypes of gender when it comes to Asian women and acts as a super feminine Asian woman in order to fulfill her job as a spy and to keep the fantasy in Gallimard’s mind alive. Asian women are either stereotyped to be super feminine, innocent, and delicate, or they are portrayed as being almost masculine and hyper sexual. It is also interesting how gender is used for other characters, such as Renee who is a woman, yet to Gallimard she is not as feminine as Song. Both Renee and Song are sexual characters, yet Gallimard’s fantasy lies with his soft-spoken, mysterious Butterfly, due to Song acting as a super feminine woman and using the stereotypes that he plays on to achieve this effect. The idea that only a men know how a woman should act, or femininity is controlled by men, is again echoed when Gallimard says, “I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man” (Page 90). Gender then takes another interesting turn at the end as Gallimard, a Frenchman, plays the role of an Asian woman, but more importantly, the role as Butterfly, as Song once did, and kills himself.  Instead of the Asian woman (Butterfly) obsessing over the white man until her own death as in Madama Butterfly, Gallimard is obsessed with the fantasy of Song being the perfect feminine woman to the point where he takes the place of the Asian woman and commits seppuku. In this ending, Gallimard puts himself in a feminine way, but also reverses the roles that he once thought were in place, like those of Madama Butterfly. 

Blog Post on Bone

When reading the last chapter of Bone, I found it interesting how the novel continues to go farther back into Leila’s memory, rather than just going back to the present time. This particular chapter mainly focuses on Leila, rather than on Ona’s death. After rereading this particular chapter, I realized that this is one of the only chapters that does not explicitly talk about Ona’s death, but rather it delves into the family history, and infers some of the events that happened to the family at the end. In a way, it seems fitting that this chapter goes farther into Leila’s memory because throughout the novel Leila seems to be trying to forget about Ona’s death and the past, but instead of just remembering Ona’s death near the end of the novel, she goes back and remembers more of her own past such as when Mah told Leila she was going to marry Leon, and when Leon comes back from his voyage after meeting Leila’s real father. It is in this final chapter that Leila becomes more comfortable with the fact that she is remembering things.

In this final chapter we also learn more about Leila’s relationship with Leon and of Leila’s real father. From the beginning we know that Leon is not Leila’s real father, but we only really know few details about Leila’s real father such as his name, but in this chapter we find out that her real father had sent letters during her childhood. When Leon is first introduced to Leila, he doesn’t ask her to call him “father,” but rather just “Leon,” and even though Leon is kind of like a father figure for Leila she never seems to really call Leon her father. At one point, Leila talks about when Leon came back from his voyages and says, “I think I even expected him to come back as my father” (Page 190). In a way it seems like Leila wanted Leon to be her real father, but as we see in the beginning of Bone, she does treat Leon as her father in a way, since she wanted to tell Leon about her marriage to Mason first, even before Mah.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Bone, because it wasn’t like many novels I have read before, and the format of the novel was confusing at first but really ties into the ending and how we learn more about Leila’s memories as the plot progressed.

All I Asking for is My Body

Throughout most of All I Asking for is My Body, Kiyoshi and Toshio are fighting for some kind of freedom such as freedom from the plantation, freedom from their family debt, and they want the freedom to have their own body. Although Toshio seems rebellious and his mother often says that he is not the filial son, he actually shows quite a bit of filial piety in that he gave up a chance at freedom to stay with his family. For Toshio and Kiyoshi, boxing was a temporary way of freedom and could have potentially been a way out of their family debt if they became pro boxers, however, due to the circumstances neither one was able to continue with boxing during the war and instead they focused on their jobs on the plantation to try paying off the debt. Kiyoshi and Toshio’s parents seem to believe that hard work and labor will eventually help pay off the debt. Filial piety and the debt were a huge part of why Toshio and Kiyoshi could not be free and had to start working at young ages. In the end, Kiyoshi first finds a source of freedom by joining the military, and then gains the rest of his freedom through gambling and winning over $6000 dollars, which was enough to pay the debt and free Toshio from his duty of filial piety to their parents. In some ways it seems ironic that Kiyoshi spent most of the novel trying to pay back the debt by working, when at the end Kiyoshi becomes lucky and has enough money to settle the debt. It also seems ironic because Kiyoshi’s mother had once mentioned that their family had really bad luck and she even called herself the “bad-luck wife,” yet Kiyoshi ends up having enough luck in gambling to free the family of their debt (Page 16).