alexandria/notes/2024/as-am-5/week-2.md

# Week 2

## Lecture 1 (10/07)

- America is in the Heart -> What is the life that Bulosan is living as he's
  producing the book?
- 1950s/1960s -> series of radical changes (CRM, Brown v. Board, CRA, Voting
  Rights Act, Immigration and Nationality Act)
- Asians from Assimilation -> Model Minority
  - Compliance, emasculated -> in contrast to "loudness" of African Americans /
    Latinos (in fighting for civil rights) -> Model way to be minority is to be
    silent
  - Supposed _cultural_ traits -> better at math, stronger family structures
- Asian American literary response -> "claiming America for Asian Americas"
- Community -> desire to remain "others" but by defining our own "otherness" ->
  resistance to domination
- History of Asian America is also a history of how race works in United States
  -> there is a particular history of race in America which is understood by
  looking at the Asian American history, cannot be understood solely by looking
  at history of other groups
- Liminal Asian America -> simultaneously included and excluded
- AA living between America and "origins" -> transnational to achieve something
  that is quintessentially American
- How are our writers expressing the notion of being included and excluded
- Bulosan is telling his own story from the POV of an older, wiser person
- Using Spanish words -> showing people that they have a whole separate POV,
  distinct group of people
- Bulosan's aesthetic eyes fall on the natural land -> repeatedly talks about
  how beautiful his home was -> his way of explaining ("translating") life in
  Phillipines -> a certain "transcendence to nature" -> same in one place to
  another
- Once Bulosan leaves America, never comes back -> act of writing is nostalgic
- 1899-1902: American-Phillipine War -> 1907-1924 approx. 52,000 Filipinos
  immigrate to US -> 1946 Phillipines gains independences -> Bulosan arrives in
  between
- Context between Bulosan's arrival in 1930 and publication of book in 1946:
  The Great Gatsby -> Emblematic of Roaring Twenties; not a huge hit
  immediately -> Fitzgerald explores the life of striving outsider -> critique
  of American promise (upwards mobility, second chances)
- Context 2: The Good Earth -> American born Pearl S. Buck, daughter of
  Chinese, grew up in China, Wrote her most famous novel about inhabitants of a
  Chinese village. Shaped ways in which Americans viewed Chinese in America
- Greatest connection: Grapes of Wrath
- First few pages of Bulosan -> Nature, Bulosan's location, translating
  Filipino reality for Western audience, split between young and older/wiser
  Bulosan
- What is Bulosan doing besides just talking about nature? Why is he
  concentrating on it? -> in conversation with specific type of literary style
  -> the "pastoral"
- The pastoral is a literary tradition -> traditionally, poems about shepherds
  -> beauty of life, waking up early, farming, etc -> idealized lives of the
  poor -> tension between cultivated author and low born subjects -> Bulosan
  deconstructs pastoral through realism
- Social Realism -> unvarnished and unfiltered economic racial injustice ->
  working class figure as hero -> scrutinizing ills of society -> reality
  without illusion -> one problem: emphasis on collective vs. individual
- Do for Filipinos in America what Lange tried to do for working class -> book
  as work of pastoral social realism

## Lecture 2 (10/10)

- AH is a biography in the "social realist" mode -> leaves home in the
  Phillipines after beaten down by harsh realities of life -> tries to maintain
  optimism about American Dream as he continues through his journey

## Section

- Pastoral
- Realism -> depict life as it truly is, complexities, imperfections, etc,
  verisimilitude
  - Social realism -> see peoples' struggles, critiques about causes/reasons,

### Writing assignment

Then, please write up why Carlos portrayed them in this particular manner.

Each individual should write your own answer. Please write the name of the woman you are analyzing.

1. Mary Strandon
2. Marian
3. Judith

Mary Strandon was portrayed as a kindly woman who gave Bulosan work and allowed him to read