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I always felt that what defines and makes up an identity very fascinating. Most often I associate identity with religion, language, physical features and to some extent their likings and passions (eg. Type of food, subject, music, etc.) I try my best never to believe in stereotypes but it is always fun sometimes to guess a person’s origin and what they associate themselves as. Few days ago, I met guy A in one of my class. He looked familiar and reminded me so much of my good friend from high school. I told myself at that time, if I had to guess, he must be a mix kid (half Asian and half White). From then on, I proceeded with class and didn’t bother to go further and ask since my curiosity is sometimes pathetic. The next day, I saw him again and told him he looked so much like my friend from Kazakhstan. He immediately told me his parents are from there but he was raised in America. I always wanted to learn Russian so I asked him whether he spoke the language, as soon as he said yes; he began teaching me some phrases. Without much thought, I told A that I really like his identity, he neither looks typically Asian nor White, speaks a European language but grew up in America. I told him that it’s funny how you like meat so much and love math. My Kazakh friend is so similar. He didn’t say much but appreciated that I knew so much about Central Asia.

In all this talk about place and placelessness and belonging and home and porosity and everything, I remembered an idea I heard a few years ago in a Vlog Brothers video: the improbability of place. The video (which I'll include here if anyone wants to watch it) does a much better job explaining this concept that I probably could, but the idea more or less boils down to just how amazing it is that things are where they are and how they are and what and when. We condsider all these places when we talk about home–Bryn Mawr, Houston, Oregon, Madison, Chicago, Istanbul–but we never stop to think about how these places came to be and how amazing it is that they exist at all. The United States, for example, exists because a group of settlers formed an army and defeated the British, and ruthlessly laid claim to this entire swath of land, and came out on the winning side of both World Wars and the Cold War. But the US also exists because one explorer went the wrong way trying to find India and landed at a continent that existed where it did due to the motion of techtonic plates and the breaking up of Pangea, but only after the infamous Big Bang created that which is the Milky Way galaxy and our solar system in the first place. And if one takes the time to think about all of these events, and the billions of others not mentioned but of equal importance, that conspired to create any of the places we call "home" in the first place, claiming a city or a state or a two-story structure in suburbia as "home" seems rather arbitrary and shortsighted.

When I was little I loved climbing. I frequently put on a rather perfect impression of a mountain goat and, at the rocky outcroppings of the lake near my dentist's office, would jump from boulder to boulder, summiting each in turn to spend a brief moment standing on top and surveying the land around that to my three-year-old eyes possessed a sense of majesty.

At ten I still played at the park, running throughout aluminum and plastic playground structures sunk in to sandboxes. However I never let myself be limited by the parts of the play equipment and their "suggested use." I would climb on top of the monkey bars and crawl across them like a bridge. I would sit on top of the tunnel instead of crawling through it and slide down the seven or eight foot drop to the sandbox below. I would climb on top of railings and roofs and climb backwards up the slide.

One memory that really sticks with me, though, is from a trip to Yosemite at age thirteen. I was a teenager and of course thought I knew everything, and was very sure of my own limits. I wanted to climb Half Dome. It had been a dream of mine for years, since that three-year-old hopped between rocks and that ten-year-old abused the jungle gym at the neighborhood park. Unfortunately, my mom did not agree. I hiked and climbed whatever I could, but Half Dome is still a far off dream for me, something I'll have to do in adulthood (given I manage the funds to travel to California on my own).

Last Friday my friend and I went to Philadelphia, as we were walking down the main road of China Town we stopped to wait for the red light. It was then when a Chinese man looked at us and turned to the woman next to him; he pointed at us and said in Mandarin “Look, that one’s Japanese and that one’s Korean.” with a very stern tone too. I guess he probably didn’t think I understood Chinese, and I actually thought it was kind of funny and wanted to respond to him in Chinese and ask him why he thought we were Japanese and Korean. But of course, I didn’t. I think sometimes just as people, we are easy to judge and make assumptions based on looks, the way one dresses, and a lot more physical features. 

When I think about it now, it is like we always talk about microaggressions or racism and direct them toward whites. Yet, it happens so often between ethnic groups too. From smaller examples like I’m from the South and you’re from the North so we’re different, to issues more related to one’s “color.” This also reminded me of what we focused a lot on in my Asian American Community class, how we say Asians, but a lot of us naturally refer to East Asians, and sometimes don’t consider others as part of the “Asian” group.

In a casual conversation at lunch, a friend of mine, who is also African American, and I were talking about where were planning to study abroad. She was planning on taking a program where she studied at Spelman College for one semester. I told her that I was considering going there, but I decided to come to Bryn Mawr College instead. She made a face, which looked to be disgusted. I asked why she made that face, and she responded by saying, “I do not mind studying there for a semester, but to actually attend that school! You have to dress up everyday and I like here where I can wear whatever I want.” I immediately began thinking of another conversation I saw two of my friends having on Twitter. One went to an HBCU and another went to a different, very liberal school. The girl who went to the liberal school stated, “HBCU’s are party schools. When jobs see applications, they are not going to take you serious for attending an HBCU. It is a joke.”  The girl who went to the HBCU responded by saying, “all schools party, but they seem to publicize it more at HBCU’s. I love my school, and if you do not attend it, your opinion does not matter.” 

Happy weekend!

When you all finish typing up your portion of the women's stories about home, please send them to me (by Thursday, not too late...). I'll combine them into a single document with consistent formatting, and Sara will print off copies for y'all to bring in on Friday.

Since all the stories won't have attributions, it's not clear how Jody will create the record, for her "certificate" book, of who has done this work.

Also, one of you suggested that we needed a google doc, so that we can do the second round in this process--make the requested corrections in the women's stories. I have been tearing my hair out for the past hour, creating one, but here it is:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MP67sgIs6VVfwV26xKMqZPRvI2LKY_kpSJ2Ri3uiXs0/edit

I've just "shared" it with you all, so you can make the corrections directly on that document, which is the one we'll hand out at the end of the semester.

Thanks in all directions. What a project it is, that we are engaged in here!
Til Monday,
A.

Here are the lyrics to the song I wrote for the creative project:

Ghost Town

Oh, can you take me to your ghost town
Where no one’s winter is a May crown

I ask, but even if it were true
you can’t have it belong to you

I heard the song of a canary
its feathered wings coated with coal dust

and still it sang with proof and pudding,
There’s no place else to go.

I found a minimal connection
within a mineral correction

to be compatible with wildlife,
don’t let’s be guides who make ourselves at home and
draw maps on the earth
of what parts of the earth
will go where on the earth
and for whom on the earth,

are we ruling with a May crown?

How do I illustrate one landscape different from the rest,
when they all begin with the end of my nose
and end with the gaps in my tongue?

Blotchy sky and tangled structure
the terminology of rupture

the solid stars on trees of sweet gum
have heavy wood but soulless bodies

a colony of great blue herons,
they err on ivy made of poison, impoundment

oh can you take me to your ghost town
where no one’s winter is a May crown

a crack in the stream’s ice; but I only sadden because of the excavating machine behind it, which is only guilty by juxtaposition, so I apologize.

I begin this paper with with a brief walk-through of my places of origin. The where-I-am-from’s. They are like stepping stones. Or building blocks. By contemplating this list I am browsing through my memories to find the right ‘slice’ about which to write this essay. I find that thought process is worth paying attention to in order to observe what triggers your mind to go in what direction, especially when searching through past experiences and emotions.

Gliwice, Poland
Houston, Texas, USA
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Georgetown, Washington DC, USA
Dupont Circle, Washington DC, USA
Nairobi, Kenya
Istanbul, Turkey
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA

After reading The Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton I was focusing in on when he discussed nature and art as well as the idea of coexistence. At the beginning he says “Ecological thinking is to do with art, philosophy, literature, music and culture…Ecology includes all the ways we imagine we live together. Ecology is profoundly about coexistence” (4). I completely agree with his statement because nature can be found in all different aspects of life especially when it comes to thinking of objects at natural instead of man-made. On page 8 he goes into talking about residents not wanting solar panels because they don’t look natural or wind turbines will spoil the view. Renewable energy is something I’ve recently been passionate about and in my opinion I believe that incorporating solar panels and wind turbines into our environment is beautiful and is natural. The point of using solar panels and wind turbines is by harnessing Earths natural resources, which should be seen as beautiful. 

I like and agree with much of what Timothy Morton wrote in the excerpt of "The Ecological Thought" that we read, but I can't completely agree with his statement that "Fixation on place impedes a truly ecological view."  I can easily agree with one possible meaning of his argument, that we need to stop focusing just on the areas that we consider home, that we must be concerned with the world beyond ourselves.  However, when Morton writes that ecology has to do "with race, class, and gender... with sexuality...", acknowledging both the importance of people in ecological thought and the importance of acknowledging systems of oppression, I don't think that place can be separated from that.  Place plays an integral role in affecting privilege and marginalization, in determining who experiences the effects of environmental degredation and who doesn't (as Eli Clare and bell hooks made quite clear in their writings).  Growing up in a surburban, white, upper middle class neighborhood, I have been continually privileged and shielded from the effects of global climate change and other ecological threats.  For me, because of the place I come from, environmental justice has always been abstract- not a matter of life or death.  Therefore, when Morton lists the identities and marginalizations that matter to ecology, when he says that ecology has to do with "ideas of self", I don't know how he cannot include place in that list.