ASA

An interesting article from a couple of weeks back that provokes a re-examination of what it means for minorities in the US to apply to college.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-03/asian-students-college-applications/51620236/1

It has been entirely too long since I’ve updated this blog ><

Sorry for being so slack.

Anyways, in my Asian-American Literature class, we read a book called Juvenilia. It’s a book of poetry written by…(guess who???) Ken Chen! He was also the winner of the 2009 Yale Younger Poets competition.

He came to Vassar today and read some of his work and had a QA session with us. Gotta say, he’s pretty awesome and so is his work.

I won’t pretend like I read the whole book carefully, but it’s definitely one I’m going to go back through over winter break and savor.

One of his poems:

Adversarial 

1. Even if God, who possesses infinite time and proficiency, read
every work of literature, he would still lack a neutral position from
which to evaluate the texts. He would find his adjudication tainted by
the unavoidable task of reading the books in sequence. My disputant
replied that a creature as impossible as God would find little problem
reading every single work after every other one, including itself.

2. “Indeed, one of the most    important books of Abelard, Sic et Non
(Yes and No), merely documents by successive quotations a list of over
150 inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Bible and in the writings
of the church fathers and other authorities, assuming them all to be
true and leaving it to the reader to try to harmonize them.” Harold J.
Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western
Legal Tradition.

Last night, I saw Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh and was struck by a scene in which a thirteen-year-old girl tells van Gogh that food is better than painting. If he stops painting, she says, he will live. If he stops eating, he will die. I thought about this and decided that it was an unfair comparison. Although food is more necessary than painting, each painting on its own is less replaceable. We may be required to eat, but it matters little what we eat so long as we participate in the general activity of food.
I told my neighbor about this scene and reasoned further that if we stop painting, we will live, but if we do not love one another, we will die.
My neighbor disagreed, on the basis that my ex was not “The One.”
I replied that everyone is “The One” because everyone is unique.
He thought for a moment and replied: “The germane analogy for the lover is not painting, but food. If everyone is equally unique, then everyone is equally replaceable.”

And when we found each other under the lake and when we held
each other under that lake and had he air, he would have whispered
Am I drowning and can I drown some more? In the bog of our bed, washed
up and sweat-hot, my heart began the timid beat boxing when I spoke
your name, wet name that conquers down into my throat and woke
your dozing heart. The day is drying to meet you! So, squeeze the
lime-sun and pour yourself on this nail and we shall dance together,
in spite of my allergies. Drag yourself by the hair to the motel where
our future selves fuck forgot to make reservations it’s okay we’ll sleep
in the station wagon, thriving in our own way, not nostalgic for when
we first met. Waited three days to present ourselves barefoot in the
snow and confess. Night coming, we wade slow towards our cold
milkfresh star, the eyelid theater that intrudes on sleep, the mix CDs
and Polaroids—tender proof of all our past! Neither of us knows how
the story will end, except that it is morning and we have just been
born, our hearts ladled with larks, no—sparrowsong and NPR
drenching the cool apartment, you kissing my eyes while I pretend
I’m still asleep.

Former ASA EB member Andrew Chang ’10 sent me this interesting music video – it’s a rap about the racism/ignorance that some Asians encounter growing up in America and maybe even now… It might be a little extreme in carrying its point across, but check it out and see what you think!

Decipher feat. Manifest & DJ Zo – Angry Asian Man

In South Korea, Plastic Surgery Comes Out of the Closet

Many people have heard of Korea’s obsession with plastic surgery, but this article sheds light on some details and personal accounts. An interesting read.