Morrison, Melville, Cosby, Spielberg, Boyd

In my May 24 blog entry on Counseling The Culturally Diverse, I developed an alternate plan for my study of Asian American Identity. I felt that the Sues' text just stated things that were obvious.

Quoting me: “...you can learn about people by being physically around them or by finding a way to immerse yourself in their worlds...” not by reading textbooks on race.

Rereading Nikki S. Lee was great. It made me experience this complex imaginative playfulness I haven't felt in a while. There is something so thoroughly manufactured and deliberate in her work, but also something so true. It was a great experience. Now in keeping with my plan, I'll read a bit of Toni Morrison.

In college, I remember there was a course being offered that read some of Toni Morrison's works alongside Moby Dick. Somehow, students were to come to see Melville's text as a complex comment on Blackness and Whiteness. The course was unavailable to freshman, so I never took it. I'm glad, now because I wouldn't have understood it at all. I eventually read Moby Dick on my own. I remember a very odd, morbid beginning, an unbelievably long middle and a suspenseful ending. Overall, the text had a scary and surreal feel to it.

It begins with Ismael and Queequeg getting married, there's a point where all off the men on the boat pull sperm out of a whale in this bizarre homoerotic bonding ritual, there are tons of references to Milton, to death, to Satan...it's odd. I couldn't figure out exactly what all of the text had to do with race, but I did get the idea of the text as an odd, complex dream. There is Blackness, Whiteness, slavery, colonialism, sex...it's all mixed up. It gave me the feeling that Melville was possessed when he wrote it. All of the ideas in his head sort of mixed in a giant cauldron and after letting the contents simmer for a few months, at the bottom, there was this novel.

Without entirely understanding what I read, or understanding what Morrison wished to say about it, in my mind, I developed an intuitive approximation of the text and Morrison's commentary. She saw something in this dream of Melville's that was not consciously racial, not with allegorical meaning, but somehow influenced by the absence of race. A child who loses a father at birth can have dreams where his missing parent's absence becomes a presence---a character, or a distinct set of feelings. This, I assumed to have occurred in Moby Dick. And I believe race in America to have these dreamlike, surreal, presence and non-presences. I've felt these presences in my own dreams, specifically, I can recall one that I had years ago that involved Bill Cosby coughing up blood. There was no direct allegorical meaning of the dream available to me. It is somehow affected by my odd unconscious American conception of race.

Now that I have the freedom to read what I want to, I figure it's time to finally take a look at Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature, a lecture delivered at the University of Michigan on October 7, 1988.

It seemed to me that the Sues simplified the lived experience of race and dumbed it down to put it into textbook format. Morrison doesn't do this at all. She explodes the contradictions within our ideas of race---amplifies the manifestations of racial thinking and unearths the way unconscious ideas of race inform our conceptions of the world. I wouldn't say it would be a good idea to ignore works like the Sues' or works like Morrison's.

In Morrison's lecture, criticism becomes a creative act. It's interesting for me to think that interpreting the world can require so much mental agility.

In the following key sections of her lecture, Morrison concisely explains the kind of reading she advocates:

“We can agree, I think, that invisible things are not necessarily 'not-there'; that a void may be empty but not be a vacuum. In addition, certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves; arrest us with intentionality and purpose, like neighborhoods that are defined by the population held away from them” (137).

I'll attempt to elucidate this point by reversing the structure of the metaphor:

Imagine, as Morrison does, a neighborhood defined by the population held away from it. I think of Jamiaca Plain in Boston. I can feel the presence of “invisible things” there very sharply. The exact geometry of the neighborhood is hard to explain, but Centre Street and Lamartine St. act as the primary invisible borders that separate the White world and the world of people of color. Although technically still part of Jamaica Plain, the worlds that lay on the sides of these borders are thought of as being part of Roxbury, a predominantly Arican-American and Latino neighborhood. What keeps White people in Jamaica Plain and people of color out? There is no specific mechanism that does this, to some degree these borders are porous. In Morrison's words, “...the void...” in these sections of the city “..is not a vacuum” Regardless of whether White people or people of color are in the neighborhood, what's experienced within these zones is a strong White cultural presence or a strong cultural presence of Non White people.

What creates these cultural presences and absences? Well, there are certain walking routes that lead toward public schools, some that lead towards upscale cafes and yoga studios. Some that lead to subsidized housing. Some that lead toward bus routes that extend to parts of the city unserved by the subway.

What would these absences consist of in a text? The places where the author unconsciously distorts reality because of the impact of something unbearable on her mind. What happens when the creators of texts are forced repress and distort memories to shield themselves from traumatic, painful realities.

Someone who can simply choose not to focus on painful things is functioning at a high enough level as to not be affected by the distorting factors Morrison discusses. She makes this clear when she tells us this when she is “not recommending an inquiry into the obvious impulse that overtakes a soldier sitting in a World War I trench to think of salmon fishing” (137). She is also not interested in asking 'why,' as 'an Afro-American,' she is 'absent' from the scope of American literature, as it is not a 'particularly interesting query (137). Instead, the “exploration” she suggests is one that asks

“...what intellectual feats had to be performed by the author or his critic to erase me from a society seething with my presence, and what effect has that performance had on the work? What are the strategies of escape from knowledge? Of willful oblivion?” (137).

What would happen if I were to ask myself these questions? What works of art have I seen recently that would be worthy of a Morrisonian reading? I don't have the brains or training to conduct the high level of literary analysis that Morrison performs on Melville. But if I look on the culture that I've consumed in the past few months...sort of try to re-dream the series of experiences I've had...let's see what I come up with.

Last night, I saw Super 8, the film by Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams. I can't remember the specifics of the plot---they are unimportant. Aliens seemed to represent a force with the natural power of the tornadoes that hit Springfield Massachusetts and a violent, evil rhetoric to match that of Osama Bin Laden. I kept thinking that Abrams must have had Bradley Manning in mind when he wrote the script, as there was a consistent theme of capture and imprisonment, by both the aliens and the army. The only man who was able to make contact with the aliens was an African-American. There were two African American characters on screen. He was the victim of tremendous violence early in the film and died in the middle. The other African American was killed quickly, as dictated by racist Hollywood cliché, the first in his group to be laid to waste. I'm lead to wonder, were these sort of sacrificial Christ figures, or victims of a collective desire to see African-Americans get hurt onscreen?

While JJ Abrams talents as a writer cannot compare to Melville 's, his work is similar to Moby Dick in its level of confusion and disruption. Abrams does not attempt to create an allegorical film, but it is clear that events carrying unbearable psychic weight bared upon his mind when creating the film. The presence of Al-Qaeda, the effects of global warming on the environment, the US government's treatment of suspected terrorists---all of these things are on his mind, and come out in a twisted, distorted form in his work. Morisson would want to know---what specific “intellectual feats” displace race from the text? Unfortunately for the symmetry of my analysis, I believe that it is an escapist, racist desire for an all White world that eliminates an African American presence in the text rather than deep pressures weighing on the author. “Intellectual feats” are not abundant in Abrams's work. Anyone who has seen Lost can attest to this.

I'm hard pressed to find an example of a contemporary author's “intellectual feats” in distorting a text---this is something that I will continue to look for. Would people have to be living in a time where historical forces have more of an effect on their day to day lives in order for these “feats” to be performed?

The presence of “invisible things” is always around me. I remember feeling it in particular at a Red Sox game I went to last month. Prior to the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, a few African-American students were on the JumboTron being honored for winning an academic prize. As the camera panned in on their faces, the announcer made several explicit references to the fact that these “disadvantaged” students were winning awards for “underprivileged” students. I could see the award winners faces sour when this announcement was made. At this moment, they ceased being proud scholars, and became objects of the audience's charity.

The ballpark was filled with White people. I thought of Boston's history as a racist, White city, of Oil Can Boyd's mistreatment when I was a kid and the racist legacy of the Red Sox, of the split I've noticed between Massachusetts Latinos who root for the Yankees and Whites who root for the Sox, of the few people of color in the audience and what they must have been thinking, of the failure of civil rights, of the inequalities in Boston Public Schools, of bussing,...all of this comes up. It's unnamed, yet it's presence undoubtedly exists. Morrison gives words to the experience of living with this presence.

My analysis sounds crazy? I'm not so out of line in applying these ideas to my own day to day life. According to Morrison, Melville was “Overwhelmed by the philosophical and metaphysical inconsistencies of an extraordinary and unprecedented idea that had its fullest manifestation in his own time in his own country...” (142). Slavery ended less than 150 years ago. It is easy to imagine that Morrison would imagine Americans in 2011 to still feel the impacts of this massive cultural disruption.

Her interpretation of Melville makes him seem quite contemporary and relevant. At the end of this exercise, I'm left wondering, though why Morrison winds up feeling so dated. Although we may live in this chaotic sea of shifting, wrenching cultural meanings, must people seem to feel pretty much okay. Despite whatever 'complex interplay between signs' we may have been witnessing at Fenway park, everyone seemed to be pretty much having a good time. To study the areas in which race disappears because of its overwhelming presence---this is a taxing endeavor! There is something so attractive about this complex way of thinking about race, but ultimately, if you engage in this practice, you either get a PHD or go mad---two options not available for the average person. I'm searching for a balance between this way of thinking and that of the Sues'. It would be forcing a false structure on her work to pose Nikki Lee as doing this, however convenient it may be for me to do so.

I'm looking for a way of thinking about race that is both pragmatic for day to day life, like the Sues' and creative like Morrison's. This search will continue in this blog.

No!

No!

One thing I forgot to mention about the Sues' textbook.

They discuss the concept of high-low context cultures, an idea that originates in the work of Edward T. Hall. I hadn't heard of this before, but I could recognize the phenomenon in my day to day life.

High context communication relies on...you guessed it, context. In these cultures, words rely on the speaker's physical presence to fully convey their meaning. In these cultures, message itself is not as important as the way in which it is conveyed.

The authors give the example of the word "no," as it is usually said by (presumably White) US Americans would be taken to mean "yes" by an Arabic speaker. Usually, when saying "no" Arabic speakers give the word greater verbal emphasis and accompany it with hand movements.

Perhaps this has happened to me in situations where I've felt misunderstood.

If it had been ten years earlier, bad taste would not have been the only crime committed here

In 1967, the supreme court ruled against antimiscegenation laws.
It's so easy to forget.

A Mythic Being

Here's something fun! In the introduction to Projects, Russel Ferguson mentions a tradition I'd among artists working in the USA that I'd never heard of before. He cites Adrian Piper's work as an example of this tradition.

Until reading the introduction, I had never heard of Piper's work. Here is the artist in a still from a 1975 street performance in Cambridge Massachusetts titled The Mythic Being: Cruising White Women.

This still of Piper's holds a special place in my heart, as it is taken in front of what is now Au Bon Pain, home of the most convenient public restroom in Harvard Square.

Wow. Cruising White Women right by the Harvard campus. The Cambridge cops must have given him a hard time. Think of what they did to Skip Gates! And he was just walking into his house!

The 70's...what a wild time. This cat was an artist. An ar-tiste! People used to take risk back then! They lived on the edge. Rent control was in full effect in Cambridge. You could live for nothing. There were no yuppie bars or chain stores in Harvard Square. There were radicals living life to the last drop!

Adrian Piper, The Mythic Being is kicking the awesome science:

...Here the mythic being is again, ready to deprogram and reprogram. This revolution will not be televised. No siree!

Here's a more contemporary picture of Piper:

What? Adrian Piper is a White lady????

Here's a video clip from School of the Art Institute of Chicago's video data bank where she discusses her awakening as an artist. On the website, we this description of Piper's work:

As a black woman who can 'pass' and a Professor of Philosophy who leads a double life as an avant-garde artist, Piper has understandably focused on self-analysis and social boundaries. Over the years her work in performance, texts, newspaper, unannounced street events, videos, and photographs has developed an increasingly politicized and universalized image of what the self can mean.”—Lucy Lippard, Issue: Social Strategies for Women Artists (London: ICA, 1980)

What? Adrian Piper isn't a White lady???

She's in costume! Nikki Lee is carrying on in this same tradition. The ideas behind her work are different, but the two artists' work share one thing in common: they use this odd construct of race as a canvas. This is so much fun to watch.

Above, she's doing performance art photography. Here she is in action.

Two more facts about Adrian Piper.

1. She started out doing acid art in high school.

2. She was terminated from her position as a professor at Wellesley college because she refused to fly back to the US after being put on a TSA watch list.

Am I the last person to find out about Adrian Piper? This is great stuff and it makes me enjoy being alive. I hope you like it too.

On Nikki S. Lee

Okay, I'm not going to lie to you. I've hit a bit of a wall. I have a few more interesting (I hope) things to say about Counseling The Culturally Diverse, but I'm very frustrated by the text. Handbook of Multicultural Counseling leaves me cold as well. It's 926 pages, it has an authoritative tone, but I can't help but feel it's constantly stating the obvious. It's as if it were written by a computer or a very large group of people who bickered over every detail.

So, as I said in my last blog post, I'll revisit the work of Nikki S. Lee.

I own a copy of Projects and I read it from time to time. I first became aware of the text when I was in college. Some of the photographs of Lee have really stayed in my mind. They act almost as memories. For the past ten years, I've been associating things in my own life to the photos.

The photo of Lee on cover of the book reminds me so much of a woman that used to hang out near the building where I once worked in Lawrence. She was Latina, but everyone talked about how 'China' she looked. Yup. She was a nice enough lady, and I enjoyed talking to her a few times. She was Dominican, or Puerto Rican, and she looked kind of Asian, so everyone called her (in Spanish) 'La China.' Nothing too deep here. That's about it.

The photo of Lee in a doorway in the Ohio Project section has stayed with me as well. I've never thought of why they stayed in my head, but I can guess. It seems that in either photo, Lee is commenting on the gestures, postures, clothing and facial features of the women around her. She's not really saying anything specific about the people who surround her. She's just assimilating herself into their group and seeing what happens.

These comments she's made about Latinas and White women have stuck with me, but really, they can't be put into words. If you want to know what I'm talking about when I think of the photos, look at them yourself.

That's kind of a frustrating thing to say, I guess, but I when I looked at Lee's photos for the first time in a few months, I was frustrated as well. I could say something about race being fluid (obvious if you look at the photo) or the fact that context seems to accentuate the presence of Lee's identity while simultaneously obscuring it (just look at the photo, and this is completely obvious too.)

I had never before been so aware that Lee's work consisted of snapshots and how although the people in them were posed and the text of the photograph was composed as well, more than anything, the pictures attempt to recreate the style of photos taken by people who don't know how to take photos or care too much about composition. So here, her work resists interpretation, or discussion. You look at the photo, and although it communicates something, it does so in a way that does not draw too much attention to technique.

There's something almost opaque about the photos, particularly those in the yuppie series.

The interview Lee gives with Gilberto Vicario in Projects motivates a lot of these new feelings I have about Lee's work. Remarking on the fashion world, she mentions this interplay I've been beginning to notice between the 'snapshot' way of creating a photograph and the 'artistic' way of creating a photograph:

“...the one thing I respect is its shallowness: it's so deep---it's so serious! It can be hard to get that kind of shallowness because of its depth and seriousness. It's very tricky!” (99).

Okay, the photos aren't just snapshots. I think I went too far there when I said that. Really, the book cover, is very much a composed photo suitable for the cover of a book. She has a contemplative look on her face. She's not in the exact center of the picture (I remember in high school photo class being told never to put your subject in the center---this, I have always believed to be the difference between 'art photography' and snapshots. Here, we see the value of this lesson---these are not just snapshots) her body arches, you've got the space between the stairs sort of...adding composition and variety (two words a friend of mine in who went to art school would often use when doing impressions of people in his critiques---but I think I'm using them responsibly.)

In the 'yuppie project' photograph above, she does something interesting with depth, using the diagonal line created desk on her right to play off a similar line created by the florescent lights above her. She's off to one side with a roomful of men around her. She looks as tired as the men on her left, but she can't let her body go as they do. The one guy in the white shirt has a gut. If Lee's character became this overweight at her corporate job, she'd be fired. Yuppie Lee looks trapped. The lines created by the desk and florescent lights suggest a prison or cage holding her in.

Later in the interview, Vicario steers the conversation back toward the issue of 'depth' in Lee's photographs:

“A lot of people have been provoked by your work, or questioned the validity of it. You know, 'Okay, so she's going into these different communities. That's great, but I want it to go deeper' ” (102).

She responds:

People do come up to me, asking 'why don't you go deeper' as you said.

"But it's not about Nan Goldin's work, you know, going from bathroom to bedroom.

Go to your house and look at your snapshot album. You don't have pictures of sex scenes. Most people only have snapshots when they go travelling. They don't really take a look at the details." 103

What kind of depth do people want from Lee? What do they want from a photograph? Do they want her getting close ups of people smoking crack in their houses while their kids are in the home? When Projects was published, Brenda Ann Kenneally was doing just that! Look!

Say what you want about Kenneally's work, love it or hate it, but one fact remains: this is just not what Nikki S. Lee is trying to do! She does not aspire for the same kind of 'depth' as Kenneally. What do people want when they someone to go “deep” into a community? Do they want sex and drugs? Do they want tears and abuse? Lee is taking a different direction, and her lack of “depth” is not paired with a lack of substance.

She goes on to tell Vicario: “If people think it's boring, that's fine. But somehow it is emotional, because I do have an attachment with those people, although I never force it. I don't usually get really close to anyone's personal issues, but I don't consciously maintain a distance. I just open up to people, and if they come, I accept it. I don't force anyone to be close to me” (103)

She has a distinct relationship with her subjects. She does not become completely 'enveloped' in their community. She does something else. She is subtly playing with ideas of race and representation. Look at this photograph from The Schoolgirl Project:

The three students around Lee seem to feel awkward in her presence. She is smiling much more than they are. She seems to be deliberately posing with this group.

Here, we see a similar effect. The woman with the 'Wilson' t-shirt in the middle of the photograph seems uneasy next to Lee. You can tell by her facial expression and the way she is holding her shoulders. The woman on the far right side of the photograph seems to be of the same attitude. Her arms are crossed and her fists are balled up. You can see tension in her flexed right shoulder blade. The other two people in the background of the photo seem to be deliberately avoiding the photographer's gaze to prevent from laughing.

Does that say something distinctive about her own Asian identity? NO! That would be too simple! Lee is not just 'blending' into the photos. She's not just doing a trick to impress her audience. In this last photo, she seems to be almost showing herself of as a kind of oddity. She's playing with the idea of race. 'Playing' with the idea of photography. Lee's viewers are not just given cheap thrills. There is something much more subtle going on. The 'depth' that her critics desire of her work would only come along with the sacrifice of these careful, subtle details. We don't see this subtle attention to mood and nuance in Kenneally's work, do we?

She provides further insight into how she wants to be interpreted later in the interview when she tells Vicaro “this thing about identity in the West is all about the individual” – Vicaro asks Lee to clarify, and wonders if she means to say that “one's self is always understood in relation to that which surrounds you” (100). Lee agrees and tells him “the underlying concept” in her work is that “other people make me a certain kind of person” (100). It's about inner relationship and how those really address the idea of identity.” This is something Lee draws our attention to---that there is a greater meaning in her work. She's tells us she thinks that being labelled “a chameleon...” is “ a cliché” and that people are too lazy to invent new words,” but she forgives them (100).

I remember a friend of mine in college saying how the Lee's photos were a commentary about the fluidity of Asian identity. I remember this comment made my twenty year old self get a bit agitated (it wasn't hard to do those days). While I do agree that's a part of what Lee is doing, more than anything, she is having fun. She is playing with our ideas and just kind of being a jester. Look at this odd social construction we have in this country. Let's see where it is. I think I can learn a lot more from this kind of spirited play than by reading Multicultural Counseling.

On Counseling The Culturally Diverse

I believe I have read all that I needed to of Dearald & David Sue's Counseling The Culturally Diverse It's one of those therapy/social work books that just winds up stating the obvious in spite of its pages and pages of charts theories. I got the feeling that the book was very clearly articulating some ideas to somebody who was interested in what the authors had to say. Unfortunately, that somebody wasn't me. Where to start...It’s hard, because while I didn’t agree with everything in the book, it never really aroused an emotional response in me. (2003).

For entertainment’s sake, I’ll start an interesting two sentences taken out of context.

“Mass murders committed over the years have been traced to Chinese juvenile gangs operating in Chinatowns and recent news reports show this trend to be on the increase.”

(Sue & Sue, 2003, p.329).

What? This book goes out of its way to cite sources, and here, without saying where these “juvenile gangs” are, which chinatowns they are taking over, or which “mass murders” they are committing! Did this happen in the Chinatown in Boston where I go for dim sum and dumplings? Are there hidden mass graves inside the Big Dig tunnels? I’m not going to write off the entire text because of this one error, but it still says something about the authors’ way of looking of the world and their intended audience.

I did learn a few interesting things from the text:

●According to research by D. S. Sandu, the poverty rate of certain Southeast Asian groups is “five times higher than that of the general population.” (cited in Sue & Sue, 2003, p.328)

●Southeast Asians are three times more likely to be on welfare than is the general population.” (cited in Sue & Sue, 2003, p.328). These facts illustrate a larger problem that comes up when discussing Asian Americans---there is tremendous variety in race, ethnicity, culture and standards of living within Asia.

For example, Korea is a country roughly the size of Indiana with a population of around 48 million. Technology arrives in Seoul before it is released in the US. Cambodia is country the size of Oklahoma and has a population of 14.8 million. It is still recovering from genocide. Some of the main players in this genocide are currently working in the Cambodian government. Somehow these totally different cultures share something in common. To an untrained eye, Cambodians and Koreans look similar. Aside from this, what do they share? There may be some commonalities, and I’m really interested in seeing where they come from historically. This will be the topic of a later post.

It seems that more than any kind of training of the art of empathy or “therapeutic technique,” to engage in successful “multicultural counseling,” people need to get lessons in history and geography. Ties between cultures can be better forged by concrete knowledge than abstract technique.

I believe in the richness of human experience. Regardless of intention, writing like we see in the Sues’ text only serves to solidify stereotypes:

“The father maintains an authoritative and distant role and is generally not emotionally demonstrative or involved with his children. His role is to provide for the economic and physcail needs of the family. Shame and guilt are used to control and train the children. Mothers are more responsive to the children but use less nurturance and more verbal and physical punishments than do Euro-American mothers (Kelly & Tseng, 1993).”

Rather than simply accept this portrayal of Asian fathers as the truth, it is more helpful to Asian American clients to find out more about their complex interior lives. How would Asian fathers explain this way of acting? They must have reasons for acting the way they do. In their own words, what are these reasons?

In this recent article in the New York Times about a training program for Korean fathers, we see participants make real changes in the way they act towards their families. I'm curious as to what it is that these men actually experienced while going through these changes. The best way to get a better idea of these men’s lives is by forming close relationships with people in Korean families or reading Korean literature. Books like the Sues’ don’t seem to be too helpful.

In their chapter on Culturally Appropriate Intervention Strategies, the authors present a diagram titled “Communication Style Differences (Overt Activity Dimension-Nonverbal/Verbal)

Here is a reproduction of the first line of the table:

American Indians	Asian Americans and Hispanics	Whites	Blacks
1.Speak softly/slower	1. Speak softly	1. Speak loud/fast to control listener	1. Speak with affect.

(Sue & Sue, 2003, p.143)

Regardless of whether or not these characterizations are accurate, how can a counselor utilize this sort of information in his or her practice? I've noticed some of these traits of speech in my own personal life by being around different kinds of people. If you need a chart to explain these differences in speech, you probably lack perception and shouldn't be a counselor.

As I've said: you can learn about people by being physically around them or by finding a way to immerse yourself in their worlds. The Sues' textbook does not help you do either of these things. By presenting its information in official, authoritative, almost scientific sounding language, it promotes the illusion that it may be a substitute for actual learning.

In order to try to find better ways of becoming close to cultures other than my own, I will try reading Morrisson's essay on Moby Dick, Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey & The Language of Discourse and analyzing the photos of Nikki S. Lee. It's a gamble, but I have a hunch that I will learn something valuable.

Banchan

Before I begin to read Counseling The Culturally Diverse, I'd like to mention a few disparate interesting things about Asian American identity. Please comment or email if you know anything about these topics.

1. Is there a theme of feeling displaced in Asian American literature? I haven't read enough of it to know, but I have noticed this phenomenon in the Asian American people I know. When you are being treated as a foreigner in your own country, when your parents speak a different language, when the place your parents have come from has changed so much in the past 50 years, it is hard not to feel somewhat out of place. How does this manifest itself in the way Asian Americans think of themselves and of the world?

2. I feel that Asian food, specifically Korean food has some magic powers that most of the food that I ate while growing up doesn't have. Korean food seems to communicate some kind of deep messages between generations. It has subtle flavors that add balance to a meal. The banchan add variety and set the slow pace. When meat is cooked at the table, it demands complete attention from all of the people at the table. I like my mom's meatloaf, but it just can't compare. When this food is commercialized and marketed towards non-Asian consumers, all of the messages contained within it are lost.

3. Is there any such thing as a pan-Asian-American culture? What similarities exist between Asian American groups within the US? Historically, where do these similarities come from? Why does Sue's mother remind me of the Thai women that I used to work with at my last job? Is it my own innate tendency to find commonalities within similar experiences, or is it because of China's influence on both Thailand and Korea?

4. White people like Asians, but at the same time, we think they are different. The blog-turned-book, Stuff White People Like has an ironic chapter on this. I read this and I hate how we can take this kind of difference and use it to separate people from one another. This kind of humor actually encourages white people to stick to dating their own race. If you date an Asian woman, you are doing so because you are 'that kind of white person who dates Asian women,' not because you like her.

People have a right to be seen as individuals. I'm just as guilty of making fun of the concept of Asian/White couples as the authors of Stuff White People Like, but I really think it should stop. I'm curious as to how long white people have exoticized Asians. Where did this start? Why does it continue?

Okay, time to start reading Counseling The Culturally Diverse. Stay tuned to see what the book has to teach us.