independent study -- planning

"your body becomes more like mine... mine marks me, announces my weakness, displays it as yellow skin. it flagrantly tells my story, or a compacted, distorted version of it, to passersby curious enough to cast their eyes my way. it stunts their creativity, dictates to them the limited list of what i could be... generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same."  -- Binh, The Book of Salt (152)

i'm hoping to "query black and white" by examining the (east) asian-american experience... i want to explore antiblackness in asian communities and the ways in which asians benefit from the "model minority" stereotype. at the same time, i'd like to question that stereotype and point out the ways in which nbpoc interact with the racial binary. the stratification of racial oppression is something that seemed to come up frequently, particularly in our class, and ever since Janaya Khan came and gave a talk at BMC last year i've been questioning that "lowerarchy", so i'm hoping to dig deeper into that as well...

i'm using The Book of Salt for that, to contrast asian invisibility and otheredness with black hypervisibility and dehumanization. i'm also using my observations from the class and looking at others' serendip posts to get a better gauge on the racial discussion or non-discussion in this 360. finally, i'm going to look through two books -- Vivek Shraya's even this page is white and Jeff Chang's We Gon' Be Alright -- for more context and perspective on race and racism and colorism, and hopefully i'll be able to use one or both for my final paper.

(a tentative schedule:
by the 3rd, i'm hoping to have read through all the materials and have marked sections i want to include/investigate.
by the 7th, i'd like to have an outline (or at least a rough idea of what my paper will look like) and i'm hoping to start writing.
by december 10th, i'd like to have a complete draft of my work.
sometime between then and the 13th, i'm hoping to workshop/read through it with Anne, and then do some final edits before turning it in the morning of the 14th.
and then i'm done and then i go home!!)