find balance and i'm tippin' off

Bibliography for Final Project

Argenti, Nicolas, and Katharina Schramm. Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission. New York: Berghahn, 2010. Print.

Alvar, Mia. In the Country. Knopf, 2015.

Edmunds, June, and Bryan S. Turner. “Global Generations: Social Change in the Twentieth Century.” The British Journal of Sociology 56.4 (2005): 559-77. Web.

Edwards, Brent Hayes. “Diaspora.” Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second Edition (2014): 76–78. Web.

Gilroy, Paul. “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture Of Modernity.” The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. Print.

Hamid, Mohsin. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Riverhead Books, 2013.

Hua, Anh. “Diaspora and Cultural Memory.” Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home. By Vijay Agnew. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2005. 191-207. Print.

Kirmayer, L. J., J. P. Gone, and J. Moses. “Rethinking Historical Trauma.” Transcultural Psychiatry 51.3 (2014): 299-319. Web.

Klecker, Cornelia. “The Other Kind of Film Frames: A Research Report on Paratexts in Film.” Word and Image, vol. 31, issue 4, Oct. 2015, pp. 402-413.

Muller, Valerie. “Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory”. The English Journal, vol. 95, no. 3, Jan. 2006, pp.32-28.

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Hamish Hamilton, 2000.

P.S. These are the 10 critical sources we have now but we may add more!

Reflection 3

Reflection 2

The past few weeks of class have been both awesome and draining. While I am still grateful to have a space to intentionally think about diaspora and globalization–and for me, this is often thinking inwardly about myself–it has been confusing and dizzying at times, saddening at others. I chose the passage for my first recitation because I felt such a close connection to both Samad and Irie. Although I am neither first generation (Samad) or second generation (Irie), I felt myself relating in a lot of ways to their fears and anxieties, about feeling homeless, about feeling tolerated but never accepted. This class so far has been really great, but it has also been exhausting especially as we are discussing things that so emotionally and personally relate to me. Perhaps I am looking too seriously to our texts to provide some kind of answers to my feelings of ambivalence and confusion about my Asian American identity. Perhaps I should think of what we are reading and discussing more as thought exercises, as inspiration for further thought, rather than necessarily trying to tackle and completely understand these complicated issues and feelings. I think I felt that exhaustion a bit this week, so I was a little less engaged. I’m hoping this is okay; it seems important to step back when one needs to while being more present when one can. I was very drawn to Gomez-Pena’s discussion of hybridity. I felt myself drawn to this concept, finding solace in the ambiguous, finding solace in a sense of homelessness. At the same time, I am excited to see how other authors think about this, how other characters navigate these complex issues. I think I should try to remind myself to be patient with myself and understanding of my needs as we move forward.

tumblin bout it 9/18

Yum, food, food, food. Definitely thinking about food and its place in White Teeth. I really like the points below about food/restaurants as a form of empowerment. For both Alsana and Samad, despite all the chaos in their lives, food is what keeps them grounded. I’m working my way through Irie’s section and reading about the Chalfens, and in what is a moment of crisis for Alsana, who is terrified that the Chalfens are taking away her son, she seeks the refuge of a collective meal time (in this case, it is tea time, but it harkens back to an earlier section where Alsana, Clara, and Neena all share food together). Both Alsana and Samad take pride in their excellence in gastronomy, and food becomes somewhat of a safe space for them.

Another thing that I want to think about in tandem with this, though, is the ways in which food is often (mis)used as a site of cultural exchange, as a celebration of multiculturalism, and thus a way of sidestepping very real power dynamics and processes of othering. Especially in London, where diversity is celebrated and amplified to such a degree that folks sometimes mistake this diversity as represented of all of Britain, food is a contested and complicated thing and space. There is definitely this recurring theme of authenticity, especially where white Britains are questioning the cultural authenticity of people of color. There is a certain expectation that they expect to be fulfilled by every “Indian” (thinking about how Poppy Jones thinks that Samad is Indian, even expects him to fulfill her colonial fantasy of what a proper Indian is like) they meet. Thinking about Brexit and what it is ultimately about: the divide between “us” and “them.” Food can be a site of understanding, but it can also be a site where expectations, stereotypes, and othering occur.

tumblin about it 2.0

notbestbutstillgood:

I have been so hungry while reading this book. After reading about the Chicken Bhuna Shiva makes for Samad, I had to take a break and order a korma. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how food functions in this text. Not just the offhand mentions, but how consumption of food creates its own geography within the text. For the most part, we oscillate between O’Connell’s and the Indian restaurant at which Samad works. One is a place of rest while another is a space of work. They both appear to be essentialized by ethnicity: one is deeply English while the other is deeply “other.” Yet, these restaurants seem to act as liminal spaces–havens somehow separate from the world outside. This is most apparent in the Irish pub run by a family of men named Abdul but I’m also thinking about the role of the Indian restaurant. Samad is described as a great waiter because he can navigate the space between East and West. He can meander through the tables, deal with the difficult customers, make up histories for the foods he serves. As the text says, “he could show others the right path: how to disguise a stale onion bhaji, how to make fewer prawns look like more, how to explain to the Australian that he doesn’t want the amount of chili he thinks he wants…inside here, within these four green and yellow paisley walls, he was a one-handed genius,” (118). In this space, he can leave behind the struggles he has and come closer to the ideal he wants to be. Not only that, but he becomes a guide for the other waiters–some of whom may be recent arrivals in London.

And, of course, there’s all the cultural and social charge attached to food. Food facilitates conversation, creates community, and shares culture. It’s a way to stay connected to one’s past. As Michele Norris said in her convocation this week, food is the way we can finally tell stories. 

I wonder about the historical role of restaurants for immigrant communities. Did they provide economic resources for new residents, community centers for ethnic populations, or spaces of assimilation/cultural reinforcement? 

There’s so much to say about food in this book. Who cooks it, who eats it, where is it had, what does it mean? I don’t have a thesis per se about the role it plays, but it just keeps coming up. Perhaps it’s worth further investigation. 

Fat, Pretty, and Satisfied on Her Conclusion

disnarrative-ode:

At (page 66, “White Teeth,” Zadie Smith.)

I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of this description. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of this scene, for that matter: three women of drastically different personalities and opinions drawn together by unusual yet shared experiences. As momentous as this scene was for the characters themselves to find joy or at least comfort in each others’ presence, I also consider any instance of women eating together in public to be an act of resilience, particularly when one or more of the women are fat. This brings me to my undying love for the violent, uncompromising, astringent, nurturing, and beautiful Alsana.

In my presentation this past Thursday, I presented a comprehensive analysis of appearances of the word “fat” as well as descriptions of body size throughout the first half of the novel, particularly those that systematically correlated being fat with being lazy, complacent, disgusting, or otherwise unappealing. Whether this perspective belongs to Zadie Smith, the narrator, or the characters themselves, this book lies deep in a rhetoric of fatphobia. However, there is one character that remains impervious to these negative, fatphobic associations: Alsana. Descriptions of Alsana’s body, particularly when in respect to her weight, almost always find themselves accompanied by descriptions of her beauty and pleasant nature. Earlier in this scene, the narrator describes Alsana, “folding her dimpled arms underneath her breasts, pleased to be holding forth on a subject close to this formidable bosom” (65). The words “dimpled” and “formidable” paint Alsana’s body in an indisputably positive light, even highlighting the sensuality of her size. My favorite description in this scene is, as I mentioned before, “She peels the lid off the tub and sits fat, pretty, and satisfied on her conclusion” (66). Once again, we see Alsana’s size in a remarkably good light, emphasized by the fact that she is not only beautiful in the narrator’s eyes, but happy with herself, as well. This unapologetic self-love is another act I consider radical among people whose bodies are subjected to systematic violence and hatred, such as fat women of color.)

However, as much as I appreciate Smith’s decision to present Alsana’s fatness in an appealing, even desirable manner, I can’t help but wonder why. What is it that allows Alsana to have “pleasant fat” (164) in the gap of her sari but reduces Varin to a “big dejected blob”(5)? I’ve pondered this question a lot, and I believe the answer lies in another description of Alsana, namely, her “cullinary nose” (123). Most if not all of Alsana’s biggest scenes involve cooking, eating, or talking about food. In the context of the aforementioned scene, Alsana has brought several dishes for Clara and Neena, and opening several layers of plastic wrap, says to Clara, “Eat up! Stuff yourself silly! It’s in there, wallowing around in your belly, waiting for the menu” (61). This statement immediately clarifies the reason this food is important to Alsana: it is the way she takes care of people, and in doing so, defines her role as a mother. The care she shows for Neena and Alsana by providing the food is mirrored in her insistence that Clara feed her unborn child.

To further conceptualize food and cooking as the bridge connecting Alsana to her motherhood, one might look back at her first scene, in which she demands of her husband how he expects them to survive without food. In a profound display of her own emotion and power, she overturns a sewing machine, slams her fist on the kitchen table, and throws open every cupboard in the kitchen. When two plates smash to the floor, “She [pats] her stomach to indicate her unborn child and [points] to the pieces. ‘Hungry?’” (52). The scene ends with her tearing to shreds every stitch she has on and leaving them in the middle of the floor. At first, one might judge Alsana to be over-dramatic, but upon deeper analysis, Alsana’s theatrical actions have exceptionally symbolic significance. Each item she disrupts or destroys in this scene - the sewing machine, the kitchen table, the plates, her outfit - are representative of patriarchal expectations for a woman’s role within a household. Yet even after the room is disrupted, her clothing destroyed, she holds fast to what’s most important to her - providing food for her family, including both her husband and the life growing inside her.

Alsana’s connection to food is not only emphasized in these topic-specific scenes, but maintained in the very language she uses. I think to one scene in particular, when Alsana says to Clara, “When you are from families such as ours you should have learned that silence, what is not said, is the very best recipe for family life” (65). At this point, I begin to wonder exactly how close I can read without distorting authorial intent, but considering the close association with Alsana and cooking, I believe the use of the word “recipe” reflects how her values have permeated even her language.