English

re: the book of salt:

i finished it this morning
...i liked it.
TBoS comes "full circle" in the way it's told -- not focusing so much on a distinct storyline or conflict as much as on the gradual revealing of a character. i ended up with a lot of questions about the ending of the book, because so much of it was so vague. and yet, i'm thinking back to the chinese folk stories i read at my grandma's house when i was really little, and remembering that i always had a similar feeling after those... the feeling that things are left unfinished and that the rest of the story is up to you to fill in.

Tuesdays always suck for me because I have three courses that all leave me feeling drained, be it from the discussion or from a very late time frame. Today was not different from this sad pattern that has become a painful habit for this whole semester. I wanted to write a post unpacking what I felt like during the class and how frustrated I am in continuing a discussion that centers Blackness as the culprit of racism, when it never was/isnt and cant be. I want to write and attach links to things I feel like are interesting, but don't have the energy. Im doing what I can and trying to engage. It is just a lot that I dont have the patience to explore in a classroom context. 

in a comment that anne left on the first english paper i wrote in our 360: "I also note that you don’t mention your own positionality in the complicatedly linked stories you tell here...Your difficult, stretching story makes me wonder what other stories of being Asian-American might deepen even further the probing account you give here of 'looking for innocence.’” 

i'm not sure how to reflect on class today - it seems like we've had this same conversation a million times and nothing has changed. i want to reiterate what i said earlier, that it's okay (it's good!! it is - actually - necessary) for us to allow ourselves to be wrong. people keep getting caught up in proving that they're right or clarifying that they didn't mean to offend anyone. i think we can all assume that no one means to offend others - that doesn't mean it's not going to happen. it's more valuable to accept that you said something fucked up than try to defend yourself. (i know that's easier said than done!! no one likes being wrong/feeling mean!!!) people have also gotten defensive when someone tries to move the conversation in a different direction.

Binh's father's voice seems to function much like a haunting, appearing throughtout the novel in almost a ghostly manner as Binh attempts to make a life for himself in France. I'm interested in exploring the ways in which this haunting might function to drive Binh forward--to make some sort of change--as the ghost does to her host in Beloved. 

       Truong interweaves the ideas of writing, cooking, sexuality and identity. Binh reflects extensively on what it means to speak a language not one's own and what it means to be forced into silence; to be exiled from a home to which one never fully belonged and identified with the very things from which one is ostracized.

 while reading "book of salt" i've been thinking a lot about Fanon and his ideas about what it means for "the native" to speak the language of the colonizer.... in this case the ppl of Martinique speaking French.. there's a LOT here to think about... I really hope we come back to language.

For my first reflection on The Book of Salt, I want to talk about some biblical salt. First, the title of Truong's novel replicates the style of the titles of each Biblical "Book:" Book of Esther, Book of Job, Book of Genesis, etc. 

I like that there is music for the songs in Getting Mother's Body. And not just music that someone wrote so that they could sing them, but music that the songs were originally meant for. It was such a joy to hear Suzan-Lori Parks sing; it brought Willa Mae more to life. And it was an even greater joy to hear Suzan-Lori Parks speak. I loved her sense of humor, and the casual way in which she described her writing and the writing process. I'm not surprised that she talks to her characters as though they were real people. That must be how she was able to tell the story of Getting Mother's Body from the perspective of so many different characters: They were telling her their stories.

this is connected to the work we will be doing with our exhibit and conversations that we've had about language in jody's class. after doing the exercise in class today with the poem, and talking about associations, and then reading more in the book of salt i became interested in how associations in different languages play out. so in the book of salt i saw the french word poulet which means chicken, but my first association in french is pull, which means sweater, but in english my first association with chicken is den. but also because i have a crude understanding of french when i think of pull and then automatically translate it to sweater but then my association is pulls in a sweater.