Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Ya-Hoo!
I've finally left the welt on the seat I've been sitting on for the past month and a half. It feels real good, and I hope I can keep it running for a while. I just have to have them red shells around me at all times. I feel like I have to mark this milestone with something, and thus, I've been thinking of getting plugs for not one but both my earlobes. It's definitely a deliberated decision, and if I do make it (which I hope I do) I'm gunna have to face the fam when I get home. I don't think it'll be too much of a big deal, but I worry about what this may imply to them in their heads. This mark has to be a compromise, because it is that time for compromise, but in the end I have to do this for myself.
It is written and it shall be done.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Read/Write/Read
Jarrett Bato
ES100 – Final Paper
An analysis of Galang’s Figures and Gary of Okada’s No-No Boy: Hyphenated Identities in Characters who are Artists
Authors writing from a hyphenated identity are frequently viewed less as artists and more as victims narrating their lives largely due to the brooding, narcissistic, or sarcastic tones embedded into their prose. This is explicitly shown in the short stories of M. Evelina Galang and the novel, No-No Boy, by John Okada. However, within the somber prose exists critical social commentary as these authors skillfully demonstrate the largely internal existential battles that their vividly sculpted and complex characters constantly deliberate over. Questions of identity closely follow rigorous existential reflection and both Galang and Okada’s stories are able to extensively explore the frontiers of identity that are available to Japanese-Americans and Filipina-Americans. The interactions of these complex characters with their immediate American environment continuously implies their degree of involvement, or a measure of Americanness, to the accepted way of life in the United States. The deliberation of whether to maintain the strand they still have connecting their characters to their native culture is relentlessly tested and deftly portrayed in the seemingly quotidian imagery Galang and Okada employ. Specifically, it seems these authors both agree that the space occupied in the hyphen is explicitly defined when a hyphenated identity like Filipino-Americans and Japanese-Americans decide to identify themselves as artists. In Galang’s story Figures, an aging woman finally accepts that she is only fulfilling the stereotypical individualism by identifying herself as a painter. Even though she felt that a unique identity meant becoming an artist, she also finds that the artist mindset necessarily pulls her away from her family and the possibility of her starting one of her own. Okada presents a similar character in No-No Boy, an artist who of his own will decides to paint signs for the local rehabilitation center, thinking it as simply a way for him to exist in
Okada presents the artist, a character named
“It was good, the years I rotted in prison. I got the lead out of my ass and the talk out of my system. I died in prison. And when I came back to life, all that really mattered for me was to make a painting. I came home and said hello to the family and tried to talk to them, but there was nothing to talk about. I didn’t stay.” (Okada 223-224)
In Galang’s short story Figures, an artist named Ana is a character similar to
“She imagined [her and Harold] lying side by side, touching bone to bone, joint on joint, her spine to his stomach. They were a perfect fit. Breathing brought them closer together. She remembered them in tandem. All night long, in tandem. She remembered hearing the eternal tick of a clock and feeling palpitations.… She imagined they were one of Geni’s portraits. She tried to remember the last time they were together, was it the way she remembered it, or was this memory like those night time drawings of Harold?” (105-106)
This quote accurately portrays the binary of imagination and memory that Ana had to cope with in order to compromise the idea of “settling down” and her artistic life. Her memory gives her plenty of reasons for her to settle down and abide to her mother’s voice in her head saying, “You are not trying. You must try.” (103) Galang then portrays the intense tension between first and second generation Filipinos with Ana’s role in Figures. Her inner artist has chosen a creative life in nude paintings, and yet her personal life is muddled with a break-up that she continues to think about during her new relationship and her honest desire to settle down much like her sister. The fact that her mother’s voice still resounds when considering leaving Harold signifies how she longs to still keep family close even in pursuit of art. Galang thus stretches the ability of her characters like Ana to pursue very American pursuits, such as art or love, while simultaneously struggling to preserve the values that inherently stem from family, and consequently her Filipina identity as well. In this case, Ana goes as far as living the artist’s life but necessarily returns to her roots once she begins to consider the importance of her personal relationships.
Figures and No-No Boy may evoke brooding feelings, but they are feelings nonetheless, despite being perceived as mere victim narratives. Instead, Galang and Okada produced their stories with a purpose to preserve a saturated memory of time and emotion; thus, their novels reflect less an example of artistic ability and more a piece overflowing with historical meaning. This meaning preserved the harsh reality that a hyphenated public identity wrought on the Japanese-American or the Filipino-American, but mostly provided hope to readers of similar backgrounds to an existence that is unique and is in the process being forged and expanded. The Filipino-American and Japanese-American identity is strengthened with the growing appreciation of these novels. Showing that hyphenated identities can embody more than artists with the characters Ana and Gary, Okada and Galang also portray the tensions between first and second generation immigrants as inherently American. The conflict of first generation’s dreams in