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sword-dad-fukuzawa · 3 years

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my experience reading The Joy Luck Club

I have a lot of thoughts on The Joy Luck Club, most of them uncomplimentary. I had to read almost all of it in one day for school because I procrastinated. That is entirely my own fault, but a mistake nevertheless, because it was not a book I should have read in one sitting. It made me physically uncomfortable and almost ill on multiple occasions, so I had to put it down and take breaks every chapter.

I am still not entirely sure why I had such a visceral, negative reaction to this book when everyone else seemed to have parts they liked. Though, I think I can attribute some of it to the fact that I have a very good relationship with my mother and my culture, and I am very passionate about representation in books.

Before reading, I knew Amy Tan as the Asian American author. She was the one everyone talked about, and JLC was the crowning jewel of her works. I went into this book cynically, however, because I had read Fish Cheeks and Two Kinds and been bitterly disappointed with what seemed like stereotypical caricatures of Asian characters.

I have heard of the “piano-playing Asian” and the “prodigy Asian” all my life, and it gets tiring. Waverly fulfilled this stereotype of the genius Asian child to a T, complete with the accolades, the parental pressure, and eventual burnout. It is a story I have heard about since I was small, with some variation each telling, and it has never failed to make me angry—because Asians are already held up to an impossible model minority standard, and in reading this book, I saw it reflected over and over again.

It was brought up in the discussion that Amy Tan’s characters are not meant to be heroes. They are flawed and human and this is supposedly their selling point. But I have read books with characters who are flawed and human, and I have enjoyed them.

The issue I have with Amy Tan’s characters, then, is not that they were morally ambiguous and imperfect. It was that I could not see myself in any of them. They are miserable people defined by their trauma. So instead, when I read it, JLC was a chronicle of eight unhappy women and their unfortunate lives, because the majority of what happened to them was not even a consequence of their own characters—that would have been compelling. JLC read like tragedy without a message, pain without a point.

And I also understand that JLC was written in 1989 and set in the fifties. It was a different time. I have issues with the cheap shot at gay people taken by Waverly, the racist remarks by her fiancee that go unaddressed, and the crossdressing scene.

With the latter, it is because the revelation that the Moon Lady was supposedly a man all along is reminiscent of a rather transphobic trope: the one that metaphorically equates the discovery of someone's “real” gender with the loss of innocence or as a deception.

I also dislike the way eating disorders were brushed aside and treated as, instead of a consequence of remarks made by her mother, as a quirk of character and a plot device. But I do understand it was a different time, though part of me protests loudly that it is not an excuse for poor writing.

I also find the Chinese mysticism trope to be old and tired. Amy Tan spends the whole book portraying Chinese culture as backward, primitive, and superstitious. A woman cuts flesh out of her arm to feed to her mother. Pithy sayings are recited every few dialogue lines. There is an undercurrent of prejudice to the way the mothers in JLC are portrayed.

This is an old trope, and a poorly used one in a book supposedly held up as good representation. What few “positive” aspects are shown, there are glaring downsides. One of the mothers, for example, spends an entire chapter extolling the virtues of hiding one's emotions and repressing one’s true feelings in order to survive. I do not read about this woman’s pain and empathize with her. Instead, I pity her, because in my mind, she is not real.

I still believe Amy Tan’s overall message is that you cannot be both your culture and American, perhaps because she spent her whole life internalizing racism against her own people. I violently disagree with this, and I think it is a harmful message overall.

Perhaps it is period-accurate. Perhaps it was a different time. Perhaps it was true for people other than Amy Tan. Regardless, the only feeling I got from JLC was that the author, speaking through the characters, greatly disliked her own culture. I did not enjoy reading it. I hear enough disparagement of Asian cultures from non-Asians and the internet, and it hurts to hear internalized hatred coming from one of our own.

Because Amy Tan’s writing reads as if she is disgusted with where she came from. Where are the lovely parts of Asian culture? Where is the enduring spirit that allows people to experience trauma and come out kind, rather than spiteful and broken like the characters in the book? Where are the tender moments of American and Asian culture in agreement? I did find any. Instead, the book reads like an indictment.

Every character in this book has a fraught relationship with their mother. The mothers put down their children at every opportunity, and yet they always come out justified. Perhaps they were right about the state of a marriage, or they gave their daughter a jade pendant to make up, somehow, for the years of neglect and belittling.

I understand that the message is that the mothers never meant to damage their children. I understand that the message is that mothers love their daughters and want the best for them, and the barrier is communication and culture. But the best of intentions cannot make up for the fact that every single one of the daughters went through pain and trauma at the hands of their parent, and that makes me incredibly angry and sad.

I dislike how Amy Tan justifies their actions. I dislike how she attempts to humanize these mothers, who have their own share of suffering, but pass it down to their kids in the cycle of generation trauma. I dislike the message that laughing over Taiwan jokes, or a jade pendant given as a gift, can somehow make up for the utter failure of these mothers to connect with their children—because it is the parent’s job, the adult’s job, to be the mature one in a parent-child relationship. I have heard too many stories from friends of mine to ever believe that putting one’s child down can ever be justified.

My experience with reading JLC was, in a word, painful. I found it difficult to engage critically with a work that made me angry in a way no book has before. I may just be holding it to a higher standard because of how few Asian American books make it into high school curricula, because Moby Dick certainly had problematic themes, but I enjoyed reading it anyway.

All I can really say is that I was disappointed with Amy Tan as a writer and JLC as a book; rather, with Amy Tan as a prominent Asian writer and JLC as Asian-American representation. Asian American culture is not about pain, or about trauma, or about repressing one’s problems—it is not about unbridgeable divides, failed attempts at communicating, or abuse. And yet, the main message I took away from JLC is that the book is about suffering, and a culture of suffering. It was difficult to read.

#the joy luck club #amy tan #aurie reads books and yells about them #book reviews #for context i'm filipino american #long post

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relialin · 5 years

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TRICKSTER AGE vol. 32, 2016/10/15 Toshiya’s Creativity VOL.01 -The Five Senses-

Translated by DIR EN GREY - Italia

Please DO NOT repost or use any parts of the translation without permission.

Toshiya, bassist of DIR EN GREY, the rock band that achieves an overwhelming support all around the world and, of course, in Japan. He currently conducts the production of the apparel brand he launched by himself, “DIRT 100% Natural Dirty / DIRT 100% Dissolutive Dirty” and he started a series in this magazine. This time, as a kickoff memento, we must look for his interests and preferences, as he’s doing well in both music and apparel, so we did an interview having the five senses as theme; sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.

SIGHT

What are the things Toshiya has been seeing until now? The things that left an impression on him were many during his boyhood, as he’s curious about many different hobbies. That influence still goes on now…

“Sight”

Movies, Gundam, manga: childhood memories.

I haven’t watched any movie recently, but if I have to tell a movie that left an impression on me, that’s “E.T.”. It’s the very first movie I watched in a theatre since I was born. That time, since we were expecting my brother or sister to be born, I went to the theatre with my father, just the two of us, for the first time to watch that movie. Even if I was a child, I remember being greatly impressed by it. I said “Won’t he [E.T.] come to our house?” (laughs). I wanted to become his friend, I wanted to play the famous scene when they put their index fingers together.

I’ve been telling this since before, but I started liking Gundam when I was at the elementary school. The one that had an impact on me was “Mobile Suit Z Gundam”. The contents were clear, in the end the protagonist turns into a vegetative state and while watching those inappropriate things for a children I was like “what the hell is that?” (laughs). It was very different from the things about robots and heroes I’ve been knowing since that moment. I didn’t even understand the plot properly at that time, but to some extent, ever since I can remember, when I watched it I thought that it was a surprisingly deep story. I think it’s a story not suitable for children in which the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, in which there are opinions on both sides and each side fights for the things they must protect. I guess I liked it also because of that. Even if I started watching it in real time starting from “Z”, my favourite mobile suit was Qubeley. The robots I knew had an angular shape but, since Qubeley had a round shape, that streamlined feature was innovative.

I also went buying the gunpla with the pocked money I received. The first one I bought was a Char’s Zaku and, just in half of his body, you could expose the mechanics it had inside. Then there were supposed to be some kind of miniature bulb you had to insert where its eyes were so they could shine properly. That’s why I felt like it was more a thing to display instead of a thing to play with. But it was too difficult and I couldn’t build it well, so I remember asking my father to build it for me. Last year I went to the “Gunpla Expo Worldtour Japan” and there was a modeler named NAOKI who I became acquainted with, but that person is amazing. Recently, when I made a temporary store for my fashion brand, I was given a Qubeley gunpla as a present and I was so happy about that.

The mangaka I like is Morohoshi Daijiro. When I was in elementary school or so I went to play at one of my relatives’ place and at that time he had the Weekly Shonen Jump volume in which “Ankoku Shinwa” was serialized. I started to like the atmosphere of the pictures and the contents a lot since I read it. As for the plot, its basis were ethnology and archaeology and it also had quite a SF atmosphere… Besides, having the mystery factor, it was a worthwhile reading. Also, the unique design was good too. In addition to this, I also liked sports manga, a little bit of everything, I read pretty much everything.

HEARING

“Hearing”: something you can’t miss being an artist. According to Toshiya, it’s a valuable sensation that shakes many different emotions and also makes childhood memories come back alive.

“Hearing”

A sound in which one feels comfort, and then music.

I guess a sound in which I feel comfort is the sound of public baths. I hear it when I use the baths, the voices and the sound of daily existence echoing make me feel good. But this good feeling I get by using the baths may be just a bit deceiving. Talking about public baths, lately [the number of] stylish health centers has increased, isn’t it? Somehow health centers have a mechanical image. Like, they are way too beautiful… Getting into the bath and then eat one thing after another, it seems like a task that just leads to mere sleep. I feel like that’s completely different from public baths, they have an heart-warming aspect, I feel like they’re somehow close to onsen. Well, it doesn’t necessarily means that I hate health centers because I said so. When I go to other regions because of the lives, I go [to health centers] with the staff. There I get my body scrubbed. But, to my surprise, it happened I got it done by young girls and therefore I was a bit in panic (bitter smile).

The sound I hate is the noise of road construction in the middle of the night. When to that sound when I’m just about to fall asleep while lying down willing to sleep, I end up waking up bothered by it. Because of that my drowsiness disappears and I can’t sleep at all even if I’m willing to. I really want it to stop once for all.

I’m totally fine with high frequency sounds that are often labeled as detestable like the one you get when you scratch on a blackboard. Everyone around me was just like “Argh!” and seemed they hated it, but I was fine.

I was born in a rural area in Nagano and, since the mountains were close to where I was, I prefer the sound of nature instead of the peacefulness of the town. Even the sound of the frogs in the summertime could calm me down (laughs). As there were rice fields all around, you could hear them croaking the whole time. That reminds me that in the past I have a feeling there were some kind of Notostraca in the fields, but lately I can’t really see them. Even if it’s something that I recalled by chance. It’s not like I look in the fields all the time (laughs). I look at them when I stare out of the shinkansen windows while travelling to another region or when I go back home to my family. Then, I can’t see fireflies anymore. When I was a child, they often used to come to rest on the window screen and shine. I strayed a bit from the topic, but when I think about sounds, memories of a long time ago come back to my mind like this. I guess it’s because the things I felt from my childhood still remain just like this.

Talking about music, I can listen to everything. Or, in a better way, I listen to a wide range [of genres]. I listen to pop music and enka as well. When I was a child, my mother liked Sawada Kenji and Anzen Chitai and their music was often playing in the house. Then there was Yamaguchi Momoe, I think. I remember listening to her along with the others. That’s why, instead of pop being a recent thing, it’s more a thing of long ago… I tend to feel like listening to nostalgic things. Talking about really old song, I think I can know their melody too.

SMELL

“Smell” and “scent”. The one that impacts Toshiya the most is the former one. He says he hasn’t a very sensitive sense of smell. He doesn’t even have a good nose.

“Smell”

Food and places… smells that linger together with memories.

[The smell] I like… well, I think that probably you’ll understand me if you’re Japanese, but isn’t it the smell of the curry you have on Saturdays? (laughs) Like, when I came home from school and walked down the street, I could sense that peculiar smell of people preparing dinner coming from every house around. I really liked it.

Then, I also like the smell of rain a lot. I can’t compare it well with anything, but I like that wet smell that I can’t even express. Or rather the peculiar smell of soil and asphalt. I feel like my heart calms down. Besides I think that the smell of historical buildings feel somehow familiar to me. When we travel to different regions while on tour, I occasionally go to visit castles and so on, but I can sense a familiar smell when I go to my grandma’s place in the countryside. It rather feels quite humid. When I recall that scent, which was a smell to me during my childhood, all the time anywhere I am I’d connect it to my memories. Then, even the scent of museums and libraries is soothing, even though it’s not like I always go there. I like the characteristic scent and the silence. Lately I also enjoy entering cafés etc. and relaxing in there. I have a luxurious time [in there].

Among the smells I hate, the very first one to come to my mind is the one of stinky tofu. It’s eaten all over Asia and it’s made by fermented tofu and it’s a food similar to Japanese natto or kusaya, popular among foreigners. Again, its smell is just way too strong. I think we were probably touring somewhere around Shanghai or Taiwan and, as I wandered around the streets with all the members, there was a smell far from being the one of udon. It was so bad to that point of saying “I guess people’s dying somewhere because of this?!” (laughs) Actually I don’t know if that smell killed people. But its smell is so strong to the extent you pinch your nose. Since I was feeling uneasy about it, I asked the local people “What smell is it?” and they answered me “It’s the smell of food”. I thought “It can’t be true!” but people say that, even if it smelled so bad, once you eat it, you get into it. It’s horrible if you just take a smell of it, but I heard it’s delicious if you can manage to put it in your mouth. Even if I was told those things, it was absolutely impossible for me. I can’t eat it. Or perhaps I should say I can’t take it to my mouth (laughs).

I wasn’t really joking when I told that I pinch my nose. Either speaking of it, I think I’m an insensitive person. Sometimes there’s people who perceive something like “It doesn’t feel good” and who have a fine ability for sensing things. But I feel like women are definitely more sensitive about that.

TASTE

Toshiya, the one who isn’t picky about food, so far. As he said “I’m not that sensitive to taste, but I end up overreacting to hot and spicy food”.

“Taste”

He’s not really picky, but in fact he has a sweet tooth.

When we travel to different regions while touring, I look forward to eating those regions specialties. Even if I say so, I’m not even the type who’s a picky eater. It may sound unexpected, but I like sweet things. I like both japanese-style sweets and western-style sweets. I buy pretty much sweets of the konbini. After having breakfast, I drop in at the konbini and while thinking “Mhh…” I’m already reaching out for them (laughs). It’s hard to say what’s my favourite sweet thing. It fairly depends on the mood I’m in that very day. Mh, maybe it’s the moon cake (laughs). When I see it, I often feel like grabbing it. Some drinks to accompany it are hot green tea, soy milk or cow milk. The chemistry between those three and the moon cake is the best. I also like alcohol, so I drink it too while eating sweet things. Even moon cake and sake are absolutely perfect!

I don’t think there are things I can’t eat, but I don’t like spicy foods. Red things like chili are definitely out of discussion, and I don’t really like pepper as well. But for some reason, I’m fine only with wasabi. Since I’ve never eaten anything that stimulated me since I was young, I guess I haven’t that much immunity against hot food. Even the curry at my parents’ home wasn’t hot. In the past, when I used to go to play to at my friends’ home, I usually had curry. I remember being astounded after eating by its excessive hotness. Like “Is curry this hot?!”.

Then, I thing I still can eat but I don’t really like is coriander. I guess I prefer not to eat it. The ones who like it seems to appreciate it very much, but I can’t believe it. Lately on TV I saw many shops specializing in coriander, many all-you-can-eat coriander restaurants and so on and I thought that isn’t a thing I would eat like that. I heard there are many women who likes coriander, although I think that sweet things are suitable for women, but I can’t understand coriander.

There’s one more thing I hate. When we were on tour overseas, I really hate the pizza we used to have on the bus. It was more a matter of quantity than a metter of taste. It didn’t feel like japanese delivery pizza, a single slice was already too huge. We ate it all together, but it was… (bitter smile). I can’t like it. The pizza we ate in Italy was delicious, so it’s not like I hate pizza. That catering pizza we had overseas was awful.

Speaking of food, I used to cook often before. But lately I don’t do it that much. I used to make hamburger and cabbage rolls. When I cook, I may pay particular attention to it. Before I tried to cook thinking that if I cooked using incredibly expensive ingredients, it would have been super delicious, but it wasn’t really like that (bitter smile). I guess I didn’t like it because I wasn’t raised in a bourgeois family.

TOUCH

It feels that “touching” leads to many different sensations and behaviuor. It’s also something that’s connected to one’s interests and likings and that becomes an important factor to determine one’s appearance. How’s Toshiya’s touch being surrounded?

“Touch”

Painting, developing, building up.

It’s not really a hobby, but from long ago, around the time I went to Art school, I liked drawing. When I was a child, since in my neighbourhood there were more girls than boys, I often played with girls. But I started hating being rallied for playing house and from that time on I started drawing at home by myself. Since crayons stained, I draw a lot using pencils. Speaking of what I used to draw… I feel that I used to draw a lot of robots, as expected. I also draw the character of a picture book I liked called “Memementama” all the time. Like, it was this kind of cute ghost with just one red eye and a black body, a bit round. This mementama liked red things, so it would eat all red things. The story is a bit grotesque because the point of it is that when it finds out its own eye is red, it ends up eating it.

Then lately I’m interested in Rolex. In the past I used to think that Rolex were somehow too royal, but since I had the chance to hold in my hand one that was made in the same year I was born, I changed my mind and thought that good things are fine. From that time, whenever I tried to look for many different things about them, it was more interesting than expected. The Rolex company itself became a sort of secret society and the whole thing didn’t become evident. Maybe that’s because the brand image is firmly encircled. Because of that, nearly every information coming from Rolex comes like something that an employee leaked. Now I know things like that model was made around that time, but that’s a leaked information as well. Even that model and the newest one will change and I’ll seem like not knowing it anymore, but surely in a few years won’t anybody leak anything once again? That kind of hidden side is also intriguing.

Speaking of touch, I’m also interested in how a body is made. Meaning that I like to touch my body by myself. I’m turning training into an habit. When I say training, no matter how effort I put in doing it, but when I lost my concentration even for a bit, it loses all its meaning. That’s why I have to keep doing it every day. When I first started doing it it was fun, but the fatigue piles up little by little and doing it every day is tiresome. There are also times in which I’m too tired to do it. However, when neglecting it like that, my muscles disappear immediately. When I do it, I gain them on the part I trained, but when I don’t, they will degenerate two times faster… I think that kind of simple cycle became interesting. From that I learned again that I have to keep on doing anything.

“In conclusion”

About his current interests, roots and serialization.

This time, as a commemoration of the very first column of the series, we had to investigate Toshiya’s interests and likings by interviewing him about the five senses and, lastly, we tried to ask him about the things he’s interested in right now.

“Let me think… maybe it’s the long drama called “Maguromaru” (laughs). It’s the most interesting among these days’ dramas. Until now it was “Aibou”.”

In the entry of Smell the word “castle” popped up too, and it seems like he likes historical things very much.

“When I was a child, during Tango no Sekku [the festival that later became Kodomo no Hi, children’s day] I used to wear a paper helmet and an armour and, instead of having my name written on them, they had like “1Xth generation”. After having asked to my grandmother many things about that, somehow it felt like my family was a line of warriors. In my hometown Nagano once ruled the Takeda family, but there were the twenty-four generals of Takeda Shinken and it feels like my family was a descendant of one of them. That’s why, considering that, I may somehow feel fascinated.”

Toshiya is active in many fields like being a musician and making apparels but, does he assimilate various data from daily things in order to create anything?

“As far as the things I’m interested in are concerned, I think I’ll try to look into it them some extent, but I’m a lazy person (bitter smile). Because of that I guess it’s a fifty-fifty. I think it’s okay not to know in particular those things that I may be interested in, but I’m also fine not knowing. So, I’m the type who don’t really think he will create something from himself. But I cherish the connection with this.

It seems that the attitude of reaching out as much as possible for things he’s interested in didn’t change since he was a child.

“In fact I’m spoiled. I’m the type who gets anything he wants, but as I grew old I realised that there are also things I can’t get. So I learned that maybe I have to reach a good compromise with myself (laughs). But if there’s any chance, I tend to reach out for it. That’s because otherwise I won’t be able to grasp it.”

In this time serialization, we’re planning on having his creative part as a feature. As the one in charge of editing says, it seems that there are already a many different projects, but perhaps even showing his other aspect, the one that’s different from the usual one of him playing the bass on stage, would be great.

“I wonder how will it be. As far as personal things are concerned, I guess I’ll refrain a bit from telling them because I want to keep them for myself. That’s why I’m a bit afraid of telling the truth (laughs).”

This series, which will dig into Toshiya from various points of view, will start for real in the next issue. Don’t miss it!

#direngrey #dir en grey #toshiya #translation #toshiya's creativity

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crimsonblackrose · 4 years

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2019 is over and seeing 2020 on my calendar is strange. I had planned to go to bed early and get a lot of things done today, but instead I’ve found myself just wanting to spend my day resting.

My mindset this year was, it’s my last year in Korea so if there’s something I want to do, do it.

January

In January I was teaching my final camp (a cooking camp) for my country school and saying goodbye to friends who were going home.