Category: Brevity

My Sophomore Fall Harvard Classes! (ft. Life)

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I realized I’m almost through with September and have not talked about the biggest chunk in my sophomore life thus far—my classes! There’s a reason why I’ve literally had no time to write about this. Life has been an absolute whirlwind. Here’s a snapshot of the residential problems plaguing our suite of four: I discovered black mold in my built-in closet last Friday and after lots of back-and-forth with the building manager and maintenance staff, we got it fixed (repairing the air-conditioning ventilation, painting the wall, sending my clothes to the dry cleaner, setting up a new portable wardrobe in the common room, etc.); last night, we noticed a small patch of black mold growing on our bedroom ceiling; today, an entourage came and arrived at a diagnosis that they needed to tear down part of our ceiling and our walls and eradicate the black mold infestation once and for all. In short, our room is no longer habitable as it is. UPDATE: my roommate, Ani, and I are moving to Adams temporarily until the Housing side fixes everything. It’s both strange and overwhelming, packing again, uprooting and anchoring the physical center of my life to another location after just getting used to DeWolfe.

What a day. But, I’ll be honest: this is a very skewed representation of what sophomore year has been like so far. Sophomore year, living in (or, more accurately speaking, on the periphery of—since we are in DeWolfe’s overflow housing instead of our affiliated Leverett House) an upperclassman house, the initial excitement of Shopping Week, seeing everyone again, reconfiguring the axis of my movements from the radius of the Yard to the Charles River to the restaurants of Harvard Square (an alarming statistic for my waistline: I have eaten at the dining hall for a grand total of fewer than seven times)… All these felt strangely natural, like slipping into another skin that is constituted by the atoms of past memories, unconscious habits, and the visible veins of known bonds.

My classes have also been unexpectedly rewarding and captivating. I love what I’m reading—some days I have to finish more than 300 pages in an afternoon—but I’m actually poring over each and pouring my mind wholeheartedly into every novel, secondary text, and philosophical treatise. I almost wonder why I didn’t do that in my last two semesters. I hope this sense of affection (quite lovingly) and fascination I currently harbor for what I’m learning in my classes won’t diminish as we approach the slew of midterm papers.

PHIL 129 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

One of my goals this semester was to take my first Philosophy class in college—I had loved studying epistemology (KI!) in JC and writing a research essay about the construction of historiography in fiction; I found that in retrospect I had unconsciously gravitated towards writing my HUM10 papers on Descartes and Nietzsche instead of, for instance, Austen and Joyce; I always entertained the thought of doing a secondary (read: minor) in Philosophy despite a distinct lack of concrete action on my part.

A friend recommended this class to me in the middle of shopping week but I was extremely hesitant, to say the least. But, in comparison, the other three Philosophy classes I had shopped were either too alienating, uninteresting, or foundational. When I finally shopped this class, forty minutes late and after missing the first session, it just felt right. Kant is, undoubtedly, incredibly dense and erudite = hard to digest. (How does he pack so much meaning into each sentence?!) His writings have also transformed the trajectory of Western thought, from epistemology to metaphysics, ethics to aesthetics, religion to politics. I see him as one of those thinkers that I need to read in order to even make sense of the world. Yet, I’ve not done so on my own initiative. But, I guess that’s what college is for—to really chew over and interrogate those books that we can’t conquer on our own or just wouldn’t have the devoted time and space to do so after we graduate.

We focus on one and only one of his major works of his for the whole semester, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/87). The text presents an account of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, with Kant setting forth his criticisms of rationalist metaphysics and empiricist skepticism, and defending his views on the nature of the mind and of experience, the metaphysics of transcendental idealism, and the foundations of mathematics and natural science. I’m daunted but so, so excited.

HIST-LIT 90DI Speculative Fictions in Multiethnic America

This is my first History & Literature seminar! I’m not a huge sci-fi reader but the keywords in this class really caught my eye, in particular, techno-orientalism, post-race, and Afrofuturism. ‘Orientalism’ is one of those words that I will geek out about. I’ve researched about it in the foreign policy context, in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, and in relation to the epistemology of postcolonial fiction. But, I know close to nothing about techno-orientalism—for a genre like speculative fiction, how are new critical theories emerging and old ones recontextualized?

Growing up in a country as multicultural as Singapore, I’ve long had a fascination towards local narratives of multiethnic communities—consuming a diet of literature created by those on the periphery of the Western canon allowed me to imagine alternatives to how we live now. Yet, with age, I’ve recognized the pressing need to interrogate the ethics of representation in our global cultural matrix. In the genre of speculative fiction, reading works by writers other than the classic Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov entails an opening of our minds to the many possibilities of different, more hopeful ways of living as conceived from diverse experiences—such stories are a powerful resistance to the hegemonic (now splintering) visions of capitalism, of white domination, of nationalism, of technological ascendancy, etc.

ENGLISH 188GF Global Fictions

The reading list is to die for. How could I resist???

This course serves as an introduction to the global novel in English, as well as a survey of approaches to transnational literature. It considers issues of migration, colonialism, cosmopolitanism and globalization, religion and fundamentalism, environmental concerns, the global and divided city, racial and sexual politics, and international kinship. Authors include Teju Cole, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Liu Cixin, Mohsin Hamid, Jamaica Kincaid, Monique Truong, Michael Ondaatje, Ruth Ozeki, Arundhati Roy, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

I realized last semester while taking Professor Homi Bhabha’s seminar on the genealogies of global imagination alongside HUM10’s survey of the literary canon that I relished the opportunity to read books that are truly global in nature. Reading about modern cities, diasporas, migrations, identities in flux, histories in contention, the legacies of colonialism, and multiple subjectivities, I hope I can better grapple with the tensions between power structures in existing literary traditions and these textual acts of resistance and imagination, which are reinscribed in contemporary negotiations of identity in a globalized world.

ENGLISH CLR Introduction to Screenwriting: Workshop

I continue my addiction to the English department’s creative writing workshops. This is the third semester in a row that I’m doing one—I really couldn’t help but apply. There’s something special about the small community, the devotion to the craft, and the intimacy of knowing your classmates through their writings and their critiques of yours. After doing two fiction writing workshops under Professors Claire Messud and Neel Mukherjee, I wanted to try something different this semester.

Screenwriting is something I’ve always wanted to do but never did. In last semester especially, I noticed how I like to write with a lens in my head in my short stories—panoptic sweeps, overlaying vignettes, cinematic memory, and realistic dialogue. In fact, filmmakers have inspired my imagination as much as writers have. I admire Hayao Miyazaki for the touch of innocence in the ethical complexity of his narratives, Chen Kaige’s visual flair that almost defies language, Wong Kar-wai’s silent yet emotionally intense approach, the infusion of romance and psychological intimacy in Wes Anderson’s nested framing stories, and Roberto Benigni’s use of comedy amid a collapsing world. Not sure if I’m going to stick with this current vision, but two main directions I hope to explore in my writing for film include: firstly, a magical realism that harkens to the worlds of Studio Ghibli, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the martial arts epics of Louis Cha; secondly, local stories from across the global Asian diaspora that are driven by authentic voices.

***

In some ways, this semester has been both completely like and unlike anything I expected. I am grateful for all these experiences and people, with moments of startling clarity, absorbing books that push the boundaries of my mind, and seemingly unending, candid conversations, full of childlike digressions and guileless interest that trickle on and on.

If you’re interested in hearing more about any of these classes, or what I’m reading, let me know and I’ll write another post!! Also, hopefully, the black mold goes away. Forever.

Lots of love,

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Brevity: Why Literature?

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brevity (2)

Brevity features short posts on the interesting, incisive, or inexplicably moving ideas I encounter at Harvard. It’s a record of the detail in those intellectual and creative moments, as well as an exploration of the curious questions that keep me up at the midnight hour. Here’s an honest snapshot of my mind.

***

In contemplating topics as disparate and interrelated as identity and race, violence and colonialism, migration and kinship, religion and fundamentalism, truth and reconciliation, why do we (or should we) turn to literature?

In Girl in D.C., I wrote:

So here’s my tentative goal this semester: to go beyond simply reading and analyzing class texts (mostly fiction and books written by old white men; sometimes it feels like we are still discussing the same ideas as centuries before) to figure out how to apply that narrative lens to the social realities around me.

In one of my classes, Genealogies of the Global Imagination, taught by Professor Homi Bhabha, several answers to the question of ‘Why literature?’ have been gradually taking shape. Here’s a tentative synthesis of some of my notes, mostly inspired by Professor Bhabha.

Why literature_

While every discipline has its own discourse (from science to history to art), literature absorbs the discourses and structures of knowledge from all these disciplines. And it does so while keeping the subjective, the affective, and the emotional alive.

Most texts from other disciplines refer to the disciplinary paradigm that they are situated in (e.g. scientific method, ethnography, historiography, social practice, forms in art, religious ritual, legal constitution). Yet, literature creates the norms within its very narrative and makes us rethink these norms. Even if a work of historical fiction is historically situated, the provocative gesture of the literary will not be judged on its factuality, but by other criteria such as emotional ferment, imaginative capacity, empathy, etc.

In particular, literature makes us think about language in a self-conscious way (an act of interpretation) and interpretation as an ethical endeavor because:

  1. the act of reading assumes a dialogical relationship
  2. therefore, engaging with literature is based on faith and trust in a dialogue with something outside you.

When we consume literature, we think, Why ishe/she saying this to me? More than just an act of meaning-making, we are also engaging in subject formation—we ask, How am I being implicated in the textual process?

So, why literature? Because it’s an encounter—like friendship—with some mode of meaning which doesn’t immediately reveal itself to you. You have to work with it in a meditative, normative approach in order to interpret.

Do you think literature is needed to understand our world today? If so, why?

Lots of love,

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Brevity: Can Fiction Save Felons?

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Hi friends, I’m trying out a new feature on this blog (on top of regular posts). Let me know what you think. 🙂 

brevity (2)

Brevity features short weekly posts on the interesting, incisive, or inexplicably moving ideas inspired by my Harvard professors and classmates. It’s a record of the detail in those intellectual and creative moments, as well as an exploration of the curious questions that keep me up at the midnight hour. Here’s an honest snapshot of my mind.

***

Can fiction transform the lives of prison inmates?

I attended “The Words to Say it: Teaching, Writing, and Incarceration” panel last Thursday, featuring a discussion with novelist and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Richard Price, writer and prison-reform educator Edyson Julio, and author and legal scholar Michelle Kuo, moderated by my fiction writing professor cum novelist Claire Messud. In short: so many writers!!! And all of them discussing not simply the craft of writing, but the question that began this post, which on broader terms, entails an interrogation of this:

How does fiction matter to real-world issues? 

As a person who loves to read and write, I think about this question a lot. It bothers me because I can’t seem to find a concrete answer, but I also feel assured in its uncertainty because of course! There is no simple answer in life, least of all in the humanities.

I find this dilemma between what is deemed ‘practical’ and fiction, which is not, so sensitively expressed by Edyson Julio. He is a Bronx native from the Black community — one which is beleaguered by disproportionately high incarceration rates. To put things in perspective, one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. As a community, black Americans are incarcerated at an average rate of 5 times that of white Americans.

Going home to write stories felt weirdly self-indulgent.

– Edyson Julio

Yet, what brought him to his incarceration work was a work of fiction, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (I had read an excerpt of it previously during fiction writing workshop). The novel moved him so much that it prompted him to teach creative non-fiction writing class at Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. Something unexpected happened: As he taught the inmates how to write, they began to create for themselves whole new personas, inventing new gestures, names, identity, and what seemed to be a new skin to cope with the bleak, violent realities of imprisonment.

Fiction presented for the inmates the possibilities of writing the other self, of transcending a fixed identity of a criminal that they have been condemned to. All three panelists agreed that the current state of incarceration in the US was that even if you didn’t enter prison a criminal, you would leave as one. Can fiction allow them to imagine being more?

What happens to the imagination in jail? The truth is stark: those dreams that the inmates have before entering prison get utterly dispelled. Even when they leave the prison compounds, they are changed, or as Price says, “you can’t get the prison smell off your brain”. In jail, the inmates have been conditioned and manipulated by their environment to fight or flight. It doesn’t occur to them that they are entitled to have dreams. For many, their natural instinct becomes basic survival.

Sometimes, fantasy is on scale with the reality. Your world becomes this vicious crowded phone booth. You think, maybe if I move this way, I’ll get this free pocket of air… You don’t think: “I want to fly a plane”.

– Richard Price

Fiction compels us to inspect the underlying narratives of our culture. That, perhaps, our concept of sin since Genesis — Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — is incomplete. Instead of perceiving the act as falling into an eternal state of sin, it can be viewed as a necessary awakening of human consciousness and a chance for human growth.

Maybe what fiction can accomplish is more subtle. It steers me to comprehension by nurturing the chaos of reality into a recognizable shape. I exercise the muscle of imagination and of empathy. And in spotting similar things between me and the character on the page, I recognize the humanity within myself. What can fiction do for felons? It does what it does for all readers — it allows the inmates to recreate themselves so that they can become multitudes, multitudes that can encompass contradictions in their identities (criminal versus father, son, brother, etc.) and disparities between their dreams and realities.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

…

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman