The long reach of empire allows me to continue assigning homework from another continent!
- Harte, “Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee)” (read here) + Norton 頁1475-76
- Pound, “The River Merchant’s Wife” (頁2018-19, 2022)
- Far, “In the Land of the Free (頁1720-27)
- Song, “Lost Sister,” “Heaven” (頁2840-45)
- Lee, “Persimmons” (頁2846-47)
136 (Ken). According to the Norton editor, Harte's writing "sentimentalize[s] and stereotype[s] both settings and characters." Do you think this is true for "Plain Language from Truthful James"? If so, who or what is being sentimentalized or stereotyped?
137 (Letitia). Compare the view of Chinese-Americans in Harte's poem to the view of this minority in the illustrations that were published with the poem (view on the same website).
138(Lucille). Compare Pound's translation of "The River Merchant's Wife" to the original by 李白. You can compare them here. You don't have to compare each line/verse, but choose a few in particular and note the differences between the translation and the original, and why you think they occur.
139(Meg). Given what you know about Pound's ambitions as a poet at the start of the 20th century, why do you suppose that he wanted to translate Chinese poetry?
140(Natalie). The other Sui Sin Far story I read, when I got the wrong edition of the Norton last week, had an interesting symbolism in the choice of names. Analyze Lae Choo, Hom Hing, and the other names in "In the Land of the Free," including "Sui Sin Far." Do they have any significance?
141(Peggy). Read the Wikipedia entries for "Chinese Exclusion Act" and "United States vs. Wong Kim Ark." Use them to give a brief summary of the political/legal context of "In the Land of the Free," and give examples from the story that show Far's consideration of this context.
142(Qian Yu). Analyze the symbolism of 玉 in "Lost Sister." If indeed you read the "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" story, compare the 玉 in that story. If not, please ignore.
143(Rea). According to Norton, Song's poems show "a privacy that the poet discloses but cannot fully enter." Explain what this means and give an example. Norton also says that her poems are "too composed, too removed from the sharp impact of experience." Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
144(Sharon). We'll be analyzing Whitman and some of the older poets who helped develop the following technique, but for now... notice the arrangement of the lines/verses in "Persimmons." The lines do not stop on complete thoughts, and there is often no punctuation. And they are different lengths. The sentences often spill over onto the next line, which is called an enjambment. What kind of effect does this poetic arrangement/punctuation give? Choose a couple of particular examples in the poem and discuss them.
145 (Sherry). Do you think that Asian-American poets all feel a particular responsibility to reconcile their modern lives in the U.S. to their family history in Asia? (Like Far, Song, and Lee.) Or do you think that there is a selection bias, insofar as publishers like Norton tend to choose these authors to publish rather than other Asian-American authors who might write about exclusively modern themes. Are Asian-American writers "typecast" in other words? Or am I too cynical?
Sydney (post a question about Bierce), Tady (post a question about Pound), Ted (post a question about Far), Teresa (post a question about Song), Ting-Ju (post a question about Lee)
See you soon!
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ReplyDeleteThis is Natalie who is going to answer question No. 140.
ReplyDeleteIn the story of "In the Land of Free" written by Sui Sin Far, the name of the characters she choose have simething to do with the name of flower in Cantonese.
"Sui Sin Far" is the author's pen name, which is also the Cantonese name of the narcissus flower. The characters in the story, such as Lae Choo, Hom Hing, Quong Sum, and Kuie Hoe, are also have connection with flowers' name. (I am not sure which kind of flower does these names correspond to, because I do not know Cantonese. I have looked up the on-line dictionary, but did not get the answer I was looking for= =)
I think the reason for the author to choose these names for the characters is because she tends to associate these names with the title of the book "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" which is where the story "In the Land of Free" is derived from.
Moreover, I think it is because the author attemps to emphasize the fact that the background of these characters are the immigrants from China to North America, so she gives them Cantonese-pronounced names instead of English names. It can be seen as a situation that these immigrants have to integrate into the new life in North America, but at the same time, they still want to hold their 'roots'. Therefore, it can be said that these immigrants are strive to find a balance between their 'first identity' and 'second identity'.
P.s. I can not find the "interesting symbolism" which Aaron mentioned in the question...(Where is it I yell out loud= =)
Natalie, I meant that the names in the _other_ story had a clear symbolism. (It was from a different part of the same book.) In this story, I'm not sure. I didn't realize they were Cantonese.
ReplyDeleteI like your answer about the two identities, anyhow.
Hi, Aaron! This is Sydney. I think there’s a mistake about the author of “Plain Language from Truthful James.” Perhaps I should ask a question about Harte instead of Bierce?
ReplyDeleteSo here’s my question: I’m confused about the author’s intents, since the Norton editor says “Harte challenged the dime-novelized treatment of the frontiers. His gamblers may be libertine, but they are also chivalrous.” But I can’t find this in the “Plain Language from Truthful James”. The truthful James knew that both the gambler and the Chinese cheated in the game, but only the Chinese was punished. The gambler didn’t feel shame about what he did and the truthful James didn’t give Ah Sin a hand. I think it is not only the Chinese, but all of them share the name of “sin.” Therefore, I wonder if the idea Harte wants to express in this poem conflicts with his own ideas in other work?
Hi, this is Ting Ju who is going to ask questions.
ReplyDeleteJust as Norton's note has suggested, Lee uses many sensual descriptions to write about memory. However, why does he choose "persimmons" particularly as a medium? How can the persimmons connect ideas in the poem?
P.S. I can see a vague idea of time and growth, does this has anything to do with the persimmons?
This is Meg to answer the question 139.
ReplyDeleteAs a poet at the start of the 20th century, Pound wants to produce a sophisticated, worldly poetry. He wants to “assume various identities and to engage in acts of historical reconstruction and empathy.” During the same period of time when he translates the poems from different languages, he also writes his Cantos, in which he hoped to write a poem for his time, and representing his mind and memory. The Chinese poem he translates is about the similar theme. A Chinese poet assumes himself as a young wife writing a letter to her husband; in the letter “she” talks about the memory of her relationship with her husband from her earlier life, and then expresses her mind of missing her husband. Such poem is what Pound wants to write. Also, he thinks that the United States was “a culturally backward nation,” and the poets there were narrow at the time; therefore, he wants to introduce other kinds of poems from different culture to broaden the culture back to his country. Moreover, he wants to behalf his country as a sophisticated, worldly poet. That is why he wants to translate the different languages, including Chinese, poetry, which was seldom known for Westerners, to practice his ambition.
Both the illustrations and the poem show the stereotype toward Chinese-American.
ReplyDeleteChinese’s images in the comics are portrayed as dark skin, with odd braid, and wearing evil and sly smile on the face. The poem suggests that Chinese are clever and dishonest, and always play trick. Sly and clever are the main impressions to Chinese in Americans’ minds. However, the poem also gives me a kind of satire’s feeling. It seems that the author intends to make the speaker a radical racist against Chinese at the very beginning of the poem and imply the speaker already has prejudice.
By the way, I wonder why Americans always think people who are good at math cunning. Movies usually make fun of people from India and China under this stereotype.
I think the reason why the lines do not stop on complete sentences is that the writer takes this technique as a way of delivering cultural barriers imposed by language and customs.
ReplyDeleteAs we can see in the first stanza:
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
Slapped the black of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between "persimmon" and "precision" and makes a play on other words which sound similar like “fight” and “fright” and “wren” and “yarn” in the following stanzas.
In addition to cultural barriers concerns, I also consider this enjambment written by Lee a language word-play that Lee is trying to mix Chinese writing style with English. That is to say, the place where English words are stopped in the poem is the place where Chinese punctuation is supposed to be.
If I rewrite Persimmons with this rule in Chinese, the above stanza would be:
華克先生在我六年級的時候，
打了我後腦杓一巴掌，
還讓我在牆角罰站，
因為我分不清兩個英文單字的差別：
persimmon 和 precision。
該如何鑑別
Simply here is an example to see the place where the sentences stop is the place where Chinese punctuations like “，,。,：” will appear. Instead of strictly sticking to grammar, we can see Chinese punctuations are freer to place and usually follow the emotion of the words delivered. We can still find out many examples later on. =)
Before asking a question about Far, I like to say something about my own experience. A lot of my American-born Chinese or Taiwanese friends like me when I was little, still have the same kind of identity crisis while living in US now. They can't define the border between being Taiwanese or American even when their whole family is Taiwanese. The problem still exists maybe because that Asian group are probably the latest ethnic group to enter the American culture.
ReplyDeleteMy question is,
Is it possible that a large proportion of Far's American idealism related with capitalism? In fact, I don't think it is the real "capitalism" that Far is trying to examine. The way she criticizes James Clancy the lawyer as a money-lover seems like she's portraying a stereotype "white" person that's selfish, indifferent, and racial. The same model applies to the officers in San Francisco and also the missionary woman at the nursery (without much description, Far gives a good hint of what type of American idealism the nursery taught the Little One as he felt distant and isolated from his own mother). It is as if this American "capitalism," in Far's words, is far from being free and just; it is simply a tilted scale where anyone but the whites suffer from the system.
Aaron, welcome back! This is Rea giving my answer to question 143.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading Song’s poem, sometimes my brain automatically portrays a picture in mind, and some times I hear Song’s voice telling her story. In Lost Sister, most of the times, Song uses the third person to compose her scene from the “window”, giving the readers a sense of distance. Nevertheless, in the last stanza, she turns to use “you”, which suddenly awaken the readers, making them recall themselves from the picture and consider how the character—and the readers also—feels. Song’s readers would know from her poem that there is something in the character’s mind because she writes much about the surroundings—nostalgia filled with abundant China-oriented words. As a reader, I feel I can see something in the character, but cannot tell everything. That is “a privacy that the poet discloses but cannot fully enter.”
As for whether the poems are too composed and removed, I hold a negative position. In fact, I love this characteristic. It makes me think of the “alienation effect” of Brecht in theatre, which means the audiences are aware of the fact that the play is merely a play. I am not sure if she wants her readers to feel like this, but Song’s poems give me the same feeling. We are reading a poem, what we need to do is not feel sorry for the character, but reflect on ourselves.
This is Peggy's answer for quesion 141.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese exclusion act was the law to prevent from Chinese immigration to US. The new Chinese immigrants needed to get the certification from Chinese government which was hard to be proved. The law not only made Chinese have difficult to immigrate to US but also made lots of Chinese family broken. Far was talking about this kind of story in his article, “In the Land of the Free.” In the story, the Chinese couple’s son was taken away unreasonably. No matter how the father explained to the officer, they insisted to take his son away. I think the author used his story to consider how the discrimination and exclusion toward Chinese people was brought by this law. They were excluded from America’s society and even cause lots of separation between Chinese families like the story’s couple. The title “the Land of the Free” was also very ironic to the story itself.
Answer for Q142:
ReplyDeleteIn “Lost Sister”, jade actually symbolizes the culture and people of China. The most obvious symbol of jade in the poem is the symbolism of Chinese women. In the first stanza, Song mentions that “even the peasants named their first daughters Jade.” Therefore, “jade” can be seen as the symbol of Chinese women.
Jade also symbolizes the virtues of Chinese women or we can say Chinese people. The description in line 6-9 reveals the strength of Chinese people.
Also jade can be seen as China, the nation. In the last stanza, Song says “…a jade link handcuffed to your wrist.” Here, the link is actually the link with the nation China, also the memory in China.
I am not sure whether the attempts in these writers’ works are really to achieve reconciliation. The only text that I could perceive signs of reconciliation is Persimmons, a work that allows the “Chinese apple” to show up in class and permits Chinese speaker to receive education as other people and build close relationship with a white girl. Stanzas in other poems, like “unremitting space of [one’s] rebellion” and “he had always meant to go back” seem to me to show that the writer never treats America as a place that she should reconcile with. Nor, in my opinion, is Sui Sin Far viewing America as a place that worths reconciliation or friendly attention. The break of family bonds, the indifference of American lawyer and the prized, meaningful jewels taken away in the story seem to me to show more anxiety, fear or even enmity than attempts of achieving reconciliation with the land.
ReplyDeleteThough holding doubt on the will of reconciling of the writers, I do not suspect their intention of dealing with the relationships between modern lives of theirs and their history or tradition. This intention is a great similarity between Far, Song and Lee. I do not think that all Asian-American writers write like them and are therefore all typecast. I tend to believe in the selection bias mentioned in the question. I suspect that the authority treats this kind of texts – the texts that deal with the gap between modern life and original tradition – as the only texts significant in Asian-American writing. I suspect that this selection of works imply that American people treat this struggle of Asians as the most (or perhaps the only?) important part of Asian experience in America. I know not whether the question or even my own answer is too cynical. However, I think that it is worthy risking being cynical, if one aims to practice critical thinking and become a keen thinker.
Some comments...
ReplyDelete1) Consider Rea's concept of alienation vs. identification in a poem; Brecht was talking about theater but I think it does apply. This is useful for Song but also for later poetry we will read. I mean, think of how cleverly Hong Kingston manipulates these tools in "Woman Warrior," particularly in the depiction of the mother's character. She won't allow you to be fully outside or inside her characters... she's pulling you back and forth like you're on a string! Although she may be on this string herself. One of the main complaints about conventional novels and films that is often given is that they produce identification too easily ("Avatar"!) and have more difficulty producing alienation.
2) I started to consider how scattered my timeline of Chinese-American history is. I will post this to the main blog display later, but here is a more precise timeline:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.sfsu.edu/~ericmar/catimeline.html
Sherry's thought here about reconciliation is interesting. It can certainly apply to Hong Kingston. How can we classify various writers we've read this year?
ReplyDelete-----
Which writers seek to produce reconciliation between conflicting identities?
Which writers say the conflict is unreal or irrelevant to Americans?
Which writers offer fantasies of reconciliation?
Which writers refuse reconciliation as a lie or a trap?
Which writers see reconciliation as an ongoing process?
Which writers suggest alternatives to either reconciliation or conflict?
----
Let's not forget that even among the "white male" writers, nearly all of them have some kind of conflict of identity or group affiliation. For most of the earlier ones, it is the colonial relationship with England.