Essay Topic

I've finally decided what to do after finishing the 'book'. I'm going to talk about my own refugee experience focusing on my culture shock in america and then compare it to the culture shock that Pham has when he returns to Vietnam. For me, moving to America was a huge change and radically impacted who I am today. The same is true for Pham after his visit to Vietnam of course. I want to explore how those social perceptions change through experience. I had already visited the states before I moved but had no idea what it was actually like to live there, similarly Pham lived in Vietnam but did not remember the exact nuanaces of his people and culture. I think I might even include something from my first trip back to Croatia and the changes that I noticed while visiting. I'm very excited about the essay although I will unfortunatly miss the next class, I think I will do well on the paper. I normally wouldn't have read a book like this but I am glad that I did because I found a lot that I relate to, almost a frightening amount. I think there is some universality to the immigrant experience.

Catfish and Mandala is certainly an interesting novel. I’ve been brainstorming ideas for what to write about and what experiences I can include to relate to Pham’s experiences. I have had my own refugee experience fleeing from the war in Fmr. Yugoslavia but my only worry in creating an essay on that topic is that it is too obvious. On the other hand, what more an appropriate life altering experience to choose. What I worry about though is that if I do choose that, the essay becomes emphasized more on my own personal experience than on the comparison of my experience to Pham’s. What will jump out to the reader is not Pham’s experience made more abstract by its presence in a mainstream novel, but my retelling of my own experience. Fortunately there is still a bit of time to decide. I really want to visit Vietnam after reading the novel. I’ve never been to southeast Asia and it seems like it would be really interesting to see since its so different from anything in my experience.

Also I find that I really relate to Pham’s cultural isolation. If I am in America and I see something strange that I don’t understand, or don’t agree with, or even every time I hear someone try to pronounce my last name, I feel like a foreigner. Yet, when I go back home to Liznjan every calls me American or ‘the American’ even though I speak the same regional dialect as them, grew up with the kids over there and have gone back every year usually multiple times, me even being in America for a year dubbed me the title, ‘American.’ I usually don’t let it bother me but it’s discouraging not being able to relate to anyone wherever you go. From this lens I can understand why Pham went on such a journey especially after a tragedy like the suicide of his sister. In his description of Chi and how she was tied into Phan Thiet it seems clear that Chi was more ‘Vietnamese’ than Pham and in the tragedy of her suicide Pham was seduced to understand more about what psychological conditions Chi may have felt to lead her to such a point—feelings which Pham gets to experience firsthand. Certainly feeling isolated in a new country is a very tough thing to deal with and Chi felt that she could not even rely on her family which no doubt took a massive toll on her. I haven’t finished the book yet so I don’t want to speculate too far as to what each characters or persons motivation were, but the feelings and things that they deal with strike very close to home. I don’t have to deal with prejudice at all since I’m white, usually people just think I’m Russian or a jew from someplace in eastern Europe, and when I say I’m Croatian most people don’t know where the hell it is so they haven’t yet to form any opinion about it. In fact that, and not having any diasporas to run to in a foreign land and only a few family members in the states can really be a downer.

ENG 1A..

Well, I'm not sure how formal or informal to be, whether to swear or not since I swear a lot. This isn't my first blog but it is my first for a class and for actual credit. Just as a quick recap for myself, so far my Foothill experience has been successful and I hope it stays that way. English has been interesting so far, I don’t know anyone in the class which is too bad but everyone seems intelligent at least. I’m a little annoyed when I was trying to make this blog since I run my own server at home and spend out the ass for the service on Comcast, but the mother-loving software wouldn’t install properly on it and so it is I have to use this free service. Unfortunately I may have missed a crucial class but I haven’t heard anything amazingly unknown to me about the novel in discussion which is good. I really don’t know what else to write for a first blog, lately I’ve been pretty occupied with current events. I’m defiantly not looking to be a political science phd (poly-sci, why try) but it is interesting to look at the geopolitical relationship between nations and peoples and in understanding how they have formed to rationalize why this backwards miserable miserly world is the way that it is. I’ve thought about America and its role especially—how could one not considering the new position this nation has placed itself in—and the bad rap the U.S. gets around. The U.S. consumes the most resource, pollutes the most, etc. but while the country does all of these things, the U.S. and it’s 13 trillion dollar GDP are essentially what drives the global market. Without American consumerism the world would have little hope for quality of life and opportunity to improve. It seems to me the issue is not consumerism but rather the way it is put in to effect, manufacturing and everything else has to become much more efficient and eco-friendly. Anyhow, that’s all for this experiment of a first blog.