Answer one or more:
- How does the autobiography serve the telling of this diasporic narrative(s)?
- The flashback history journey that the autobiographical subject decides to embark in takes her through moments of Chinese and of Japanese history. How do these flashback journeys affect what you alresdy knew about Asian-American diaspora in the US?
- Choose the following or any other page (recording its number) to analyse in terms of text (close-reading) and image composition.
On page 160 of Tessa Hulls’ “Feeding Ghosts - A graphic memoir”, we are initially faced with the same image repeated 10 times. A new text accompanies it each time; in the image, we generally see a blank expression, with only a brief change in her attire. We also see no significant difference in her reaction across the images. Her lack of words and expressions when faced with stereotypical (“You must be a terrible driver”), often xenophobic/racist [“Go back to China where you belong”/”You got some Oriental in you, don’t you? (...)”], and fetishized comments (“Are you part Asian? My first wife was Chinese. My second was Filipina. Now my girlfriend is from Hong Kong…” and “Cool! Asian chicks are hot.”) can be seen or interpreted as Tessa having no real way to respond. Many of these comments stem from how people interpret her statement, “I am Chinese,” and from the conflicts or contention that may arise from the clash of expectations, preconceived notions, and her appearance. This is exemplified by Tessa’s own words, “The only points of consensus are that I am ‘vaguely ethnic’ and that my family is a lot more Chinese than is reflected in how I look,” and also in the first square, where she speaks about how being mixed in America is similar to a “sociology experiment” due to the forcing of binaries. One could argue here that this concept also coincides with the Third Space coined by Homi Bhabha, or, in this case, its absence, due to the lack of the possibility of negotiating one’s identity, culture, and, often times, essentialist structures. The “no response” reaction that she exhibits isn’t unusual and can often be seen as a defense mechanism or even fruit of not being able to define oneself, something we do see Tessa go through, particularly in the first portion of the book, where she speaks about taking on an identity, a Cowboy, in an attempt to idealize her cultural myths in a way to mask her woundedness. Essentially, this page reflects how Tessa’s attempt to adopt an American identity is confronted with her family heritage and the expectations placed on what Asian people are.
ReplyDelete"(...) in this case, its absence, due to the lack of the possibility for negotiation of one’s identity and culture because of the more essentialist structures within normative socity standards"
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