Real Life Connections

"Let's have a toast for the douchebags, Let's have a toast for the assholes, Let's have a toast for the scumbags, Every one of them that I know, Let's have a toast to the jerkoffs, That'll never take work off, Baby, I got a plan, Run away fast as you can." Kanye West.
LETS START WITH ANTHROPOLOGY
Everyone who knows me, knows that I believe I have been given an incredible amount of privilege for no reason at all. But they also know that my complicated ethnic and racial identity has been the source of most pain and the driving force of most inspiration. Yes, I've always been a private person, but something about existing in the realm of Vietnamese identity that doesn't acknowledge the ambiguous, and the people in between, who aren't really this, and aren't really that, is uncomfortable. It makes me feel complicit, because my driving force, unannounced to the Vietnamese community, IS that racial, ethnic, personal, space in between; the in-between-ness that made me feel so nauseatingly foreign in the place I was born yet drives me back there to help me understand the people who don't fit into its homogeneity; who belong to both the United States and Viet Nam but, more realistically, to neither.

Prof. Winifred Tate opened a vault filled with stories from Viet Nam vets, anthropologists, authors, and their experiences and understandings of the War. They are insightful stories and interpretations yet I tend to find myself frustrated and feeling silenced by the text even when it is meant to be evocative.

I did a presentation on my hypothetical memorial exhibits dedicated to the ARVN and black American servicemen. Simply because I'm a bit of a radical who does believe that those allowed to represented in text (thus history and thus memory) remains political, hierarchical, and hegemonic. The narrative of the white-middle class soldier coming back to Viet Nam to build schools, gain closure, and purge is a positional narrative, which is not wrong. The problem exists when there are no alternative narratives. ARVNs, ARVN POWs, Amerasians, and South Vietnamese in general. Why did they have to ship hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese to the U.S. after a humiliating war effort and why was that never discussed?

I believe too forceful a narrative of collaboration, commonality, and healing, enables people to forget that (social, political, textual) marginalization exists within Viet Nam just as it does with minorities within the United States. All this is to say is that the VC has his memoir so we could now be more sympathetic to his struggles as a person (brother, husband, son, friend to some in South Viet Nam) and not just a communist. The (White) American has his memoir but there are others affected by Agent Orange, skin color, and regions.
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EDUCATION, GENDER STUDIES

I have less to say about masculinity but to simply state that I see that it exists starting at a very young age. Good or bad, I can't say but the performance of it is real so much so sometimes that the performance engulfs the person and there isn't much left.
I feel as though people are always performing for me, a performance of indifference, a performance toughness, a performance of being okay, a performance of disinterest. But then if people have been socialized by this, I wonder if it just comes naturally, with no second thought. But I am guessing it does not come completely naturally to everyone; because a vulnerability which people don't always admit to in words, sometimes comes out in actions, as I am learning.

Women

"I just hope that you miss me a little when I'm gone" -Drake

I've been reading articles upon articles with a dictionary by my side so I can understand more than just the jest of things. It's routine... back to the basement of Miller Library, surrounded by books. I've discovered the Maya Angelou section. I kick my shoes off, and lift both my legs onto the chair opposite of me. I am, no doubt, a dork. Especially considering how quiet Miller is on many Saturday nights.

Three weeks into the school year and I'm already seeing kids sprinting to class at 8:59 a.m. and reading homework assignments at breakfast and lunch. In previous years it would have been stressful; today it seems to be a fact of life. My head is buried in books about the Vietnam War and political economy (a branch of anthro. that focuses on the resistance of marginalized groups), and I have nothing to complain about.

I'm the girl that walks around campus with a brown knitted sweater jacket (shawl?) with no buttons. I wrap it around my body and wear it as much as possible. I'm the girl who goes to parties and no longer thinks about wanting to hook up or getting drunk to get relaxed or dancing with strange men. They're for experience and used as temporary bandages for loneliness and insecurity. Freshmen and sophomore years are for being humbled like that, but I've been in love a few times, in lust a few times, and I know what matters.

So I dig my nose into war movies that I cry over, brought about eight shirts to college, (I'm not quite the fashionista I used to be), and from time to time, I ask some agnostic power to protect the people I love and to protect my heart.

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I spend a majority of my time in class doing participant observations of my two radically different (yet equally admirable) anthropology professors.

Catherine Besteman is beautiful to Winifred Tate's pretty. Professor Besteman, who I've mentioned in the past, is a strong quick witted woman and the obvious choice as Chair of the anthropology department. She is introspective, experienced, fashionable, strong... a woman I admire, to be sure, and easy to talk to. But her knowledge still creates an air of intimidation. I can only guess that she was a feisty blond who majored in something like Biology.

Winifred Tate, however, is a woman I empathize with and see myself as. She looks like the average pretty woman with 2 little ones. Her eyes glow underneath her glasses and she has beautiful black hair. Professor Tate is not feisty; she is cute. She is relate-able; I can imagine her flaws. Her sentences aren't as quickly spoken as Professor Besteman's. I can tell that she spends some time preparing for class and she says um every once in a while, then smiles. Sometimes the students respond; and sometimes they become disengaged but she keeps trucking because the woman knows her stuff. She's worked hard to be where she is.

Everyone admires Catherine Besteman but Winifred Tate is so beautiful in that she is human. She is who I can relate to when I feel unsure, when I speak, when I write, when I think. I dropped her class last year, feeling paralyzed sitting in a room full of white liberals who believe that their intellectuality alone will change the world. They wore flip flops and carried nalgenes; I wanted to vomit and Professor Tate did not lead conversation with this homogeneous group in the way I wanted. But now I think, she must've been terrified too, pulling those teeth. And I try to think after all of my education and research, being the shy, introspective person that I am, who's full thoughts don't form quickly into decipherable sentences, but a person who is knowledgeable, strong, and wants to circulate knowledge... how would I react in her shoes? I'm Winifred Tate not Catherine Besteman.
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I've had the same mentee and mentor for 3 years. And these are the people that keep me going here because I learn an equal amount of things and the same things from both. Talks with my Colby mother releases stress and teaches me confidence, patience, love, and the process of growing. Watching my mentee grow into a teenager and developing a relationship with him teaches me patience, reinforces my sense of purpose, and puts in front of me this undeniable love, passion, and joy that a child has. He gives some joy to me, and I (hopefully) to him, as we read or swing on the playground.