Volume 17 by Inkstone

2008

volume seventeen

Staff

Editor-in-Chief Serina Aswani

Co-Editor-in-Chief Alyssa Guo Art Editor Howard O

Literature Editor Jennifer Shen Publicity Chair Van-Anh Nguyen

Finance Manager Ann Fu

Production Manager JosĂŠ Zamora

Production Team Joanne Mosuela Secretary Niti Patel Fundraising Manager Tian Zeng Publicity Staff Andy Chaisiri Staff Alex Chiou Jyna Maeng Advisor Sara Yenke

[ nkStone

is a student-run publication dedicated to providing a medium through which people of all ethnic backgrounds can express their views concerning Asian American culture and identity. Inkstone is not affiliated with University of Virginia, but is student-run and is recognized as a Contracted Independent Organization. The views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the University or Inkstone.

t p e c n o C and H i s t o r y

In several Asian cultures, the inkstone symbolizes the beginnings of creativity. The artist prepares the ink by grinding a tablet on stone. While grinding, the artist meditates on what to create. Once the ink is made, it is used in combination with paper and brush to bring forth literature, art and other works. All cultures have used some form of this method to express their views of the world. Along this line of thought, Inkstone is in its beginning and thinking stage as we try to grind out the meaning of Asian American identity and culture. The idea for an Asian American literary and art publication orginated in the fall of 1991 with the founding of Paradigm by Vivian Hwang and Minna Minalo. The concept was to showcase Asian American creativity and to help dispel stereotypes. The publication has evolved from simply a showcase, which proved restricting, into a forum for the exploration of Asian American identity. In 1994 Michelle Bugay transformed Paradigm into Inkstone, incorporating the perspectives found in Slant, an issues-based newsletter published by the Asian Student Union for the Asian American population. Going beyond its roots, Inkstone is evolving into a medium in which people of all ethnic backgrounds can express their views concerning Asian American culture and identity and share them with the University community.

YEN

VAN-ANH NGU

cover: David Klein, photograph Page: 1 Staff Fan

Van-Anh Nguyen, mixed media

Table of Contents Turtles by Laura Lin, sketch

Self-Portrait from the Drawer of a Runaway Father Samantha Mina, poem Untitled David Klein, photographs

6 Sestina Jane Shin, poem

Untitled Yolanda Yu, photograph

to the Inkstone: An introduction to Asian American literature 8 Nose Joanne Mosuela, article Male Portrait Laura Lin, watercolor

Brilliance Mei-Jean Hsu

Việt Nam Ngày Đó... Van-Anh Nguyen, poem Vietnam Van-Anh Nguyen, photograph

An Exploration of Chinese Art 18 Calligraphic: Andy Chaisiri, article Untitled Andy Chaisiri, watercolor

Dr. Stradivarius’s Operating Room Samantha Mina, poem Music Laura Bell, acrylic

Table of Contents

LAURA LIN

Brains, Skills, and Culture: How Can Asians Succeed With All Three? Alyssa Guo, article Untitled Van-Anh Nguyen, photograph

Battle Scene Andy Chaisiri, acrylic

Soldier Andy Chaisiri, acrylic

Untitled David Klein, photograph

of Hope in the Chinese Language 26 Studies Justin Whitmel Earley, prose 29 Untitled David Klein, photograph

Untitled Rebecca Stewart, poem

Fish Serina Aswani, watercolor and cling film

“Tomorrow We’re Going To Be Better” Jennifer Shen and Van-Anh Nguyen, interview

Untitled Jennifer Wu, photography

Deadliest Shooting Spree in U.S. History/An Asian Male About Six Feet Tall Jessalyn Elliott, poem

Untitled Laura Bell, watercolor

Staff and Contributors pages: Untitled Denise Kaw, photograph

Colophon

Untitled David Klein, photograph

Self-Portrait from the Drawer of a Runaway Father Pencil lines speak of a strong, square jaw, a muscular, trunk-like neck, and short, spiky hair standing at attention like the spokes of a kid’s rubber Koosh ball. Faceted eyes, ribbed like two slices of lemon. His skin is heavily crosshatched; his hue must be honeyed. His gaze is shaded the same tint as his skin. Grey graphite— golden in my mind. Two topazes hard as diamonds.

My chest constricts like the winter I weathered pneumonia. Acid smolders in my abdomen, goosebumps grip my arms— Someone pulled my body’s fire alarm. On the cold, white toilet seat, shivers zip from my pelvic bone to my neck. My bowels refuse to loosen. I strain forward, put my cheeks in my palms, examining the bits of hair and dust in the grey grout of the tiled floor. I run my fingers through my tangled brown curls and find my forehead a stovetop. Citrus eyes watch from the sheet on my white wooden desk. I flip it over: Now he can’t see me. But I could see his imprint in the back of the page. To my bed insomnia escorts me like a piano accompanies a violin. But this time it’s a piece I don’t want to learn. I close my eyes and try not to look at the amber of my lids. And even though the paper is turned and my sight is sealed the golden eyes still follow —Samantha Mina

ALL ART BY DAVID KLEIN

SEST INA I sit in the heart of the kitchen, watching my frail grandmother cooking rice, until the smell of flowers and ripe, fragrant persimmons lures me outside. The warm summer air is thick like my long black hair.

She carefully brushes my hair after cleaning up the kitchen. The friction of the brush is warm and soothing against my scalp. Grandmother then cuts up firm persimmons, sweeter than the scent of any flower. She tells me I am her little flower, placing a white one in my tendrilous hair. The sweet, hard persimmon is still in my mouth, as I run to the kitchen to bring my grandmother another one to cut open in her warm hands. Oh, so warm, those days full of fuchsia-colored flowers, bringing out vitality in my grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s delicate face and her brittle, grey hair. Everything tidy in its place in the kitchen; and on the far left, sits the box of persimmons, different from the persimmons we pick from trees. These are warmer, mushy and fleshy, ripe with age. The kitchen window, sorrowful with the view of wilting flowers, that no longer decorate our hair. I see my grandmother studying my face lovingly, as only a grandmother does, while outside, the persimmon tree is blanketed with snow, white like her hair. We get close to the stove, in an attempt to warm ourselves. The window no longer exhibits any flowers, and the memory of Grandmother in the kitchen fades to white, like her ashen hair. The once warm touch of my grandmother, the pungent taste of persimmons, all replaced by a single white flower that has floated into the kitchen.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jane Shin

YOLANDA YU

er, w lo f le t t li r e h I am e m s l e t ir. e a h h s S u o il r d n e t in my e n o e it h w a placing

I -

NOSE TO THE N KSTONE

An introduction to Asian American literature

- - - - - - - - ----

by Joanne Mosuela WHEN ASKED TO DEFINE ASIAN AMERICAN literature, Swan Kim, a Ph.D candidate in the University of Virginia’s English Department, begins by mentioning the subject’s original meaning, as if the act of revision is somehow essential to its definition. “Formerly comprised of literary works authored by those of Asian American descent, Asian American literature has broadened its scope to include literary works by those who are from the Asian diaspora as well as any literary work that speaks to issues related to Asian Americans,” says Kim. In any course syllabus focusing on the subject, she says it would not be a surprise to find a work by a Japanese Brazilian writer followed by a John Steinbeck novel that barely features an Asian American protagonist.

RA LAU

LIN

A century-long literary tradition with a constantly expanding canon, Asian American literature is neither a novel concept nor a settled genre; it occupies a developing space within American literature where assumptions and expectations from new readers are common. This article introduces the history, art and visibility of Asian American literature by examining its relationship to societal and demographic shifts in American history, the creative impulse of its writers, and finally, the growing attention towards the subject by the academy and mainstream America. “SOMETHING FAMILIAR RATHER THAN EXOTIC” In large part, the institution of the term “Asian American,” spearheaded by young Asian American activists during the 1960s and 70s, was a fight to dispel the immigrant-based visions of the first Asians in America—at their most extreme and distorted, visions of “Orientals” separated into individual Asian ethnic groups that have little in common with each other, foreigners with no knowledge or connection to American culture and ghosts without a term for selfand academic reference like the then-existing labels

“Native American” and “African American” provided for their respective populations.

anguish remaining even in very recent texts, suggesting a still-unresolved relationship to the nation.”

“During the Asian American movement, students and activists began to conceive of the broad, panethnic category of the ‘Asian American’ as a way of acknowledging their shared past, present, and future,” says Sylvia Chong, Assistant Professor in both the Department of English and Program in American Studies, as well as Director of the Asian Pacific American Studies minor. “It is not culture or geography, but rather the peculiarities of American history that have thrown these disparate Asian ethnicities together under the name ‘Asian American’.”

The son of a farmer in the Philippines, writer Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) directly addresses immigrant hardship in his autobiography, America Is in the Heart (1946). While scouring the western United States in search of labor, Bulosan discovers the paradox of America: low wages, shabby living conditions and instances of violent racism (including his own brutal kidnapping, beating and arrest) cause Bulosan to equate being Filipino in America with being a criminal, but the young bachelor is simultaneously moved and inspired by an idyllic vision of his adopted homeland. Later empowered by the English language, Bulosan views writing as a political act, publishing poetry, novels and articles with an activist agenda. This is not to say that early Asian American literature rides as close to autobiographical material as Bulosan’s work does, or that Asian American writers alive during this time even considered America their primary home.

Similar to the drive behind these young activists (many of whom were a generation or many generations removed from the immigrant experience) Asian American writers seek to define and redefine what it means to be Asian in America. Even Asian American texts that do not explicitly engage with subjects and themes like ethnicity, culture, politics, exile and alienation, or keep a purposeful distance from this list of immigrant-driven ideas, these texts still ultimately speak to the self-definition, “Asian American” through their criticism. What does it mean to be Asian American anyway? How is it different from being Asian? From being American? With answers that seem to range from no answer to an infinite amount of them, these questions are at the heart of Asian American literature. The most passionate devotees of these questions have been and continue to be Asian immigrants themselves. Sought out as a new source of labor for a rapidly developing country, the immigrants that arrived in the late 1800s from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and India make up America’s first wave of mass Asian immigration. Whether spent cultivating cane in Hawaii, picking fruit in California or constructing the First Transcontinental Railroad, these immigrants led challenging, and often grim lives. “Perhaps the greatest difficulty readers find in Asian American literature is the sadness and anguish that permeate the earlier texts in the field, texts by immigrant authors and their descendants who struggled for a place in this country against various forms of racist exclusion, some institutional and some interpersonal, some violent,” says Caroline Rody, Associate Professor in the English Department, who has taught Asian American fiction for about nine years. “And then it may be disappointing, as well, to see the traces of this

Take transnationalist Yone Noguchi (1875-1947), an early Asian American novelist and poet, for example. The publication of his novel about a young Japanese girl discovering America for the first time, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl (1902)—the first English novel published in the United States by a person of Japanese ancestry—was an auspicious beginning to Noguchi’s life in America but the writer did not stay long. Raised near Tokyo, he began his literary career with The American Diary in New York, found success in London but returned to Japan for good to teach in 1904. From then on, Noguchi continued promoting Japanese forms like the haiku and Noh drama in English literary circles and kept in touch with English literary giants like Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats all the while calling Japan home. To further complicate his status as an Asian American writer, Noguchi sided with Japanese politics during World War II. It hardly had a name, but Asian American literature during Bulosan and Noguchi’s time already varied in its approaches to ethnicity and challenged its would-be label, both current features of the genre. Dominated by East Asian voices until the Immigration and Nationality Act amendments of 1965 (which abolished quotas favoring European nations), Asian American literature has recently embraced writers with Southeast and South Asian backgrounds such as Calcutta-born novelist Bharati Mukherjee and poet Mông-Lan, who left Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. The writers that call themselves a part of this new immigrant group at

once revisit familiar subjects and themes and introduce new ones to the genre. For instance, “these recent immigrants often identify more closely with their country of origin when compared to earlier Asian immigrants. They may not share the attitudes of the first Asian American activists, many of whom were second, third-, and even fourth- generation Asian Americans and had few ties to their reputed ‘homeland’ in Asia,” says Chong. Both Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine (1989) and Mông-Lan’s collection, Song of the Cicadas (2001) are essentially immigrant stories but reveal new aspects of the experience such as Mukherjee’s portrayal of gender struggles and Mông-Lan’s poetic perspective as a war refugee. “Asian American literature, like all good literature, provides a perspective on the world that is not found in one’s personal experience or face-to-face encounters with others,” says Chong. She hopes that new readers view Asian American literature as something that deepens our understanding of what it means to be an American. “Something familiar rather than exotic,” she says. “INTERROGATING ETHNICITY” When Asian American poet Jennifer Chang began submitting her work to literary publications, she received rejection letters from editors suggesting that she write “closer to her culture.” “I would have preferred getting rejected because my poem sucked,” says Chang, a Commonwealth Fellow and Ph.D candidate in the English Department. “Getting rejected because my poem wasn’t authentic to my last name indicated to me that before I’d even set a word down on the page, someone else had already decided how I should write my poem.” When it is her turn to define Asian American literature, Chang’s response is less confident than her peers that do not contribute to the art of the genre. Much less confident—simply put, she doesn’t know how to respond to the request. “In fact, I’m afraid to,” she says. As a writer of color, is it Chang’s responsibility to speak for her ethnic group—to voice her experience as an ethnic minority? The word “closer,” taken from the suggestion originally given to the poet, implies that a range of distances from cultural themes is available to her. In order for her work to be appreciated does Chang have to swear allegiance to mainstream society (where her work is treated as mere ethnography) or

claim that she is the voice of her ethnic community (that looks to her for a representation of itself)? Can’t Jennifer Chang the individual—born and raised in New Jersey, daughter of very eccentric Chinese parents—be the only one in the room when she puts pen to paper? For Chang, writing with an agenda limits the creative possibilities of her writing. “And it limits the reader as well,” Chang says. Quoting her mother, Jennifer Chang says, “We don’t sit around thinking about how Chinese we are; we think about how cold the air is, how hungry we are.”

“We don’t sit around Thinking about how

Chinese we are; we think about how cold the air is, how hungry we are.” JENNIFER CHANG While questioning why certain novels and collections of poetry are lined up on shelves and included on syllabi under the label “Asian American,” and how they can be placed there so definitively (Is it wrong to assume that they are? Chang’s experience suggests the classification is a more precarious task …), reading Asian American literature is priority number one. “Above all, readers will be moved and challenged by audacious, beautiful writing. They’ll see interesting transformations worked on traditional Asian cultural forms, and in recent texts, some surprising experimentation with conventional forms of the Euro-American novel, in the service of new visions of Asian American life,” says Caroline Rody. Wendy Hsu, a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Music, is currently researching Asian American indie rock musicians—studies that provide an interesting parallel to Asian American literature’s most recent interpretations of what it means to be Asian American. Naming instances of Asian American indie rock’s innovative genre-bending, Hsu points out Carol Bui from DC, who blends elements of Vietnamese pop singer Khanh Ly’s vocal style in her Sonic-Youth-andRiot-Grrrl-inspired post-punk songs. Then there’s indie experimental rock band Kite Operations, led by Korean American Joseph Kim, who just recently covered a

Korean pop song in a free-jazz, late-Coltrane style. Like the musicians that play with genre conventions in current Asian American indie rock, recent Asian American writers make use of innovative writing styles to accurately express themselves in a world much different—in both experience and resource—from the one belonging to their parents. Korean American Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s (19511982) collection, Dictee (1982), is neither poetry nor prose. Dictee reads like an experimental scrapbook with its captionless images: black and white photography, film stills, charts; and its written word (in voices often not her own): poetry, handwritten letters, school lessons, stories. Compiled and written by a student of avant-garde film, poetry, the French language and performance art, Cha’s autobiographical memoir utilizes various media to tell the story of several women (most notably her mother and herself) as well as to navigate through Cha’s obsessions with language and memory. “All of those who delve into Asian American literature can depend upon a constantly expanding canon that will enrich the more familiar contours of their knowledge base even as it exposes them to traditions well beyond their prior acquaintance,” says Jim Cocola, a Lecturer in the Department of English. “I think my generation of Asian American writers has shaken up preconceived notions of Asian American literature,” says Chang. “One reason might be because many are of a generation removed from the immigrant experience. I don’t know. But I see a greater diversity of subject matter and aesthetics.” Referring to the latest work of writers like Cathy Park Hong and TungHui Hu (Dance Dance Revolution [2007] and Mine [2007] respectively), Chang says “I guess what I love about these poets is that they don’t centralize ethnicity, even as they interrogate it, and that their questions are ultimately metaphysical, existential. They write poems that share a new way of thinking—these are my favorite kinds of poems—rather than simply display ethnic culture and difference.” “THE DURATION OF THE SPOTLIGHT” Under President Carter, Congress passed a joint Congressional Resolution in October 1978 to declare the first few days of May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week, a celebration of the contributions and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. But it was the change made to the event name and length, ten years later, that Jim Cocola calls

Edited by Chinese American playwright Frank Chin, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974), the first anthology of its kind, was a watershed event in the history of Asian American literature. In addition to fulfilling the above goals, Chin’s compilation provided one of the first definitions of what it means to be an Asian American writer. Even the controversy surrounding the political and aesthetic opinions of Aiiieeeee’s editor—Chin’s opinion that Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) were distorting Chinese lore to proliferate the stereotypes held by their primarily white audience—sustained the dialogue on Asian American literature. What the six University of Virginia scholars in this article have in common is that they believe this dialogue is a worthy one. All participating in Asian American literature studies, they are a part of one of the fastest-growning and most productive fields in both creative and critical realms. “Whenever I tell people that I am working in Asian American literature, surprisingly a lot of people comment that they are glad to know that there are ‘enough’ Asian American literary texts I can work with,” says Swan Kim. “As a literature major or non-major taking an English course, I believe Asian American literature not only exposes students to diverse issues but lets them look beyond the canons to develop an original perspective about literature.”

Don’t know where to start? Six University of Virginia scholars share their favorite and must-read works of Asian American literature (with some music and film thrown in).

JENNIFER CHANG

Comparable to the revision of this national celebration as a sign of the continued recognition of Asians in America, Asian American literature relies on the persistent release of prose, poetry, drama and autobiography; the accumulation of accompanying critical literature and the compilation of anthologies to legitimize the genre, increase its level of visibility and ensure its growth.

Personal Recommendations

voice and evocation.

Matadora (poetry by Sarah Gambito): Sarah is a UVA alumnus and a co-founder of Kundiman, an Asian American poetry organization committed to cultivating and promoting emerging Asian American poets. Her poems are alive (and poignantly vulnerable) to the surprising details of urban life and are driven by

Empathy (poetry by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge): A poet of exquisite perception, Berssenbrugge writes sentences that transplant the reader into new and strange modes of thought. Each sentence displaces you; it’s mesmerizing, confusing, and exciting poetry. Glass, Irony, God (poetry by Anne Carson): This book contains one of my favorite poems, “The Glass Essay,” which is at once intensely intellectual and emotionally devastating. It’s got a nagging mother, Emily Bronte and the moors, and a really horrendous break-up. American Woman (novel by Susan Choi): This novel follows a young Japanese-American woman who joins 1960s radical political group whose terrorist activities forces them into exile. It begins as a thriller then Choi deftly transforms it into a troubling and profound meditation about consequences of social and racial alienation.

Go For Broke (1951 film): A fictionalized portrayal of the exploits of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a group of Nisei volunteers in World War II who became the most decorated combat team in the entire U.S. military. Although the narrative is sentimental and also focuses on the purported white “leader” of this team, it does provide a pretty accurate view into certain aspects of Japanese American life during the 1940s, and, incidentally, most of the Nisei soldiers are played by real veterans, rather than actors.

SYLVIA CHONG

a great moment in Asian American history. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush expanded the celebration from a week to a full month, renaming it Asian Pacific American History Month. “In addition to lengthening the duration of the spotlight on an important cultural formation, this change eliminated the dreaded slash from the Asian Pacific dynamic while also introducing ‘American’ as an object term that was just as fluid as the ‘Asian’ and ‘Pacific’ modifiers that preceded it,” says Cocola.

Flower Drum Song (1960 film): A 1958 Rogers and Hammerstein musical based on a novel by Chinese American author C.Y. Lee, this Broadway musical was made into a film in 1960 that starred practically every Asian actor in Hollywood (and some non-Asian ones in yellowface as well). Although again, the narrative is dated, the film is an amazing portrayal of Asian American talent, particularly in the two female leads, Miyoshi Umeki (who later won an Oscar for Sayonara) and Nancy Kwan (also famous for The World of Suzie Wong). This play was rewritten by playwright David Henry Hwang (of M. Butterfly) in a 2002 Broadway revival.

Enter the Dragon (1975 film): The only Hollywood-produced film to star martial arts legend Bruce Lee, this film shows an interesting although ultimately fantastic triangulation between black, white, and yellow masculinity in this Orientalist remake of a James Bond-like narrative. Lee singlehandedly altered the predominant image of Asian men as effeminate servants, although it is argued that his hypermasculine persona institutes another oppressive stereotype for Asian Americans. Nevertheless, the film is highly energetic and entertaining, and is widely quoted throughout American pop culture.

Crying over Pros For No Reasons (music by edIT): Among the leading artists of glitch hop, Edward Ma’s album defines rhythm and familiar sound bites of the early 2000s pop cultural landscape in the U.S. Everyone Wore White (music by Carol Bui): With a post-punk distorted guitar, Carol Bui sings to profess her experiences of confronting and struggling with the norms of suburban America. “Tracing Paths” on Dandelion Day (music by Kite Operations): Beautifully composed abstract lyrics about, and sonic patterns of, circularity, non-linearity, and connection.

Dictee (collection by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha): Originally published in 1982, the book is a postmodern pastiche of texts, documents, and images and becomes an important turning point for Asian American literature that has largely focused on immigration issues to that point.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (novel by Yukio Mishima) and Good Morning (1959 film): A pair of defining works from the period immediately following the U.S. occupation of Japan (1945-52) which speak powerfully to the ways in which American cultures and Asian cultures were mutually imbricated as the theater of war in the Pacific shifted from Japan and Korea to Southeast Asia.

Native Speaker (novel by Chang-Rae Lee): For some reason, I always find this book aural and soft-spoken, but extremely eloquent.

The Ocean Inside Kenji Takezo (poetry by Rick Noguchi): A decadeold favorite that I know well.

WENDY HSU

Mine (poetry by Tung-Hui Hu): A year-old favorite that I’d like to know better.

Rising (music by Yoko Ono and IMA): This 1995 album captures Ono’s signature powerful proto-emo outcry about society’s inequalities, supported by the edgy and arty sounds from Sean Lennon’s band IMA.

Viva! La Woman (music by Cibo Matto): The late 90s duo, consisted of Japanese New-Yorkers Miho Hatori & Yuka Honda, rock out with feminist anthem and radically inventive proto-indie punk electro-pop sounds. Friendly Fire (music by Sean Lennon): I can’t think of anything more

Eat a Bowl of Tea (novel by Louis Chu): The novel is a satire of 50s Chinatown’s bachelor society. I hardly see this book on Asian American reading lists, but the story is very compelling and humorous.

Native Speaker (novel by Chang-Rae Lee): In this ambitious first novel, a young Korean American hero lives out his racial alienation and his life’s tragedies by working as a New York City spy, among a bureau of urban ethnic impersonators. A poetic tribute to the great city’s heterogeneous mix, Lee’s novel positions its conflicted hero amidst the compulsions and appeals of whiteness, blackness, Koreanness, and the multicultural crowd.

CAROLINE RODY

JIM COCOLA

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takahashi (1991 film): An experimental documentary by Rea Tajiri that documents the entanglement of personal memory, official history, and the forgotten gaps of both in retelling the impact of the wartime internment of Japanese Americans on her immediate family. Tajiri works in an Asian American film and video avant-garde tradition that includes Trinh Minh-ha, Marlon Fuentes, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, that is very aesthetically and intellectually influential despite their lack of mainstream success.

SWAN KIM

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1985 film): A documentary about the murder of Chinese American engineer, Vincent Chin, in Detroit by two white American auto workers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, at the height of anti-Japanese sentiments over trade in the U.S. This case, later prosecuted as a hate crime, was a major galvanizing event for pan-ethnic Asian American politics, and this documentary by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena is also considered a classic in Asian American film and video.

melancholy, beautiful, and catchier than this solo album by Sean Lennon.

Mona in the Promised Land (novel by Gish Jen): This novel of a 1970s teenaged Chinese-American heroine who, confounding her parents and all literary tradition, converts to the Judaism of her suburban New York neighbors, brings about a hilarious ChineseJewish-American fictional hybrid that celebrates self-transformation while seriously interrogating the boundaries of family, friendship, ethnicity, and community. Tropic of Orange (novel by Karen Tei Yamashita): Crossing and re-crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, this novel’s tragicomic, mediasaturated vision fabulously reimagines the changes and cultural collisions now being created by the economic forces drawing Asian immigrants across the Pacific and Latin Americans north to the U.S. When the Tropic of Cancer creeps northward across the U.S. border to Los Angeles, it drags behind it and into the orbit of multicultural L.A. the entire peoples, cultures, and histories of the Southern Hemisphere.

Brilliance by Mei-Jean Hsu

NgĂ y Do...

VAN-ANH NGUYEN

And there she waits, longing for her sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s safe return And there she waits, holding on to every last ounce of hope An oil lantern in her hand, its flame flickering in the wind.

Golden yellow with three red stripes Waving brilliantly against the midday light A symbol of such courage, of such resilience A reminder of crimson blood, of war-ravaged land A past forever etched into being, Of history, of livelihood, of motherland For I can see the red stain on her white áo dài So innocent, so carefree—now gone in a lightning flash I can hear her chilling cries, her hopeless whispers Dispersing like dust through the desolate night. I can smell the pungent burning of flesh and straw dwellings Its angry flames shooting high, engulfing the darkness. I can sense his grey-haired mother’s hope and fear Her eyes penetrating through a silent emptiness Her weak body leaning against the blackened door And there she waits, longing for her son’s safe return And there she waits, holding on to every last ounce of hope An oil lantern in her hand, its flame flickering in the wind. I can feel the pirates’ claws on her sun-damaged skin His savage hands, his violent force Helpless. Fearful. Her throat too dry to scream Her ravaged body rocking with the battered boat, A fragment of life amidst endless water And there, she hopes, if only death would come sooner… From North to South, from East to West Lives shattered; a country torn apart, But for every leaf that falls, a new bud shall bloom For every hope dashed, a new beginning emerges And I am here, a product of our survival Scattered far and wide across the four corners of the earth. Golden yellow with three red stripes Waving brilliantly against the midday light. A symbol of such courage, of such resilience A reminder of crimson blood, of war-ravaged land A past forever etched into being, Of history, of livelihood, of motherland. —Van-Anh Nguyen

Calligraphic:

Exploration

WHAT MAKES CHINESE ARTWORK ‘CHINESE’? Obviously, geographic location is one way to answer this question. If it comes from China, then it’s Chinese, right? But the whole story is much more than that. Chinese artwork encompasses the accomplishments of a tradition as long as human history—one that extends beyond the boundaries of geography and time.

Chinese Art

by Andy Chaisiri

In Chinese culture, the root of visual art is calligraphy, or the writing of characters by brush. Artists adhere to calligraphic standards in their careful attention to weight, composition, and form. This calligraphic tradition was developed over thousands of years. Chinese characters began as pictographs, and over time writers refined their representations down to

ANDY CHAISIRI

The characters then became ideographic as writers mixed separate symbols to form new words and ideas. The arrangement of the words imbues them with meaning and feeling. Each word appears balanced and complete.

(sun)

(moon)

bright

When calligraphy is written well, it is like gazing upon a natural and harmonious form that rivals a flower, an animal, or the branches of a tree. Even our brain recognizes these characters as art. The right side of the human brain is associated with logical and analytical functions and is where alphabet-based language is typically processed. Though Chinese characters are processed in the right brain, the left side—associated with intuitive and holistic thinking— has been shown to play a role as well. Along with organic beauty, another important element Chinese artists aim to capture in their work is the ‘feeling’ their subject inspires. Since the emotion is dependent on the look of the subject, however, the visual end must uphold the emotional end. Both need to be represented. A successful artist is able to pare a scene, a creature, or an object down to its essence while still maintaining its aesthetic appeal.

more abstract symbols. To illustrate:

(sun)

(moon)

As an artist myself, Chinese brushwork stands out as one of my favorite forms. Though the final product is a still image, you can see the direction of the movement by observing the strokes. You can see where the artist placed the brush down, where weight was placed, and where the brush was lifted. It is movement preserved in an unmoving imprint. I was fortunate enough to learn calligraphy from a family friend from China, but am still very much a novice. Compared to the layering techniques of oil paint, Chinese brushwork feels more spontaneous. Due to the clarity and permanence of each stroke, Chinese brushwork seems like performance art. If you falter in your step, it will be evident in your finished work, though a good dancer knows how to keep the show going. Scholars of the past have compared wielding the brush to wielding the sword. As both an artist and a fencer, I can see their point. For me, calligraphy comes straight from the heart. I get the satisfaction that what I am doing is in agreement with the flow of the natural world. As wild as life can be, the one thing I can always count on to be there, as long as I can remember, is my feeling for art.

LAURA BELL

Dr.

Stradivarius’s

Operating Room

In Nicolo Amati’s ward, surgeon Stradivarius sees his first patient: a newborn baby in critical condition. He stitches her soundboard of seasoned spruce to her backpanel of maple. His scalpel slices the flesh of her face, forging two f-shaped breathing holes. He slides his tweezers into her left nostril, straightening her dowel-spine so her ribs won’t collapse. He twists her tonsils, tightening her vocal cords. Her neck snaps in his hands. She is laid to rest in a velvet-lined coffin for three centuries. —Samantha Mina

Brains, Skills, and Culture:

how can Asians succeed with all three? THE SMART KIDS. Strong work ethic. Model minority.

by Alyssa Guo

It is not a stretch to say America associates many positive work-related stereotypes with Asians. 44% of Asian Americans are college graduates, way above the national average of 27%. Sure, Asians seem to possess all the qualities for success, but looking around, there are few prominent faces illuminated by success in America. At the entry level, corporate America does not hesitate to hire people who hail from the Pacific and beyond. Somewhere in the middle, however, the path deviates. Somehow, these ambitious kids are passed over for promotions. With the exception of Andrea Jung of Avon, Steve Yang of Yahoo, and a few other familiar names, Asians maintain a low profile in the corner offices. Even in technology-driven Silicon Valley, where 30% of employees are descendants from the largest continent, only 12% receive management positions. What went wrong? In several Asian cultures, children are taught to always put the family, the team, and the community first. Asian children are taught to work hard because those around them eventually recognize hard work.

VAN-ANH NGUYEN

“Don’t toot your own horn.” My own parents constantly reminded me that it is impolite to praise my own accomplishments. Be humble. Be modest. Don’t be arrogant. Growing up in this stifling environment, Asians tend to work hard but avoid speaking about their accomplishments. After all, management will eventually recognize a job well done, right?

Over the summer, I worked with six other interns at a major U.S. corporation in New York City. The management evaluated the interns on work performance and offered full-time positions to those they deemed valuable to the company. One of my fellow interns was an American-born Asian girl from California. Growing up in a predominantly Asian neighborhood, she exhibited a quiet and demure attitude. During her time with the company, she worked more hours than anyone else in our group. Yet because of her attitude and upbringing, she was the sole intern who did not receive an offer to return. She thought it was enough to work hard, but that’s simply not true in America. America respects and rewards those who look confident. In public speaking, your appearance counts for over 60% of the listener’s judgment, and over 30% depends on how you sound. Only 8% of your actual performance matters. Speaking candidly, however, is not a virtue most Asian cultures would promote. In fact, in Japan, the word “no” is rarely used, even in business negotiations. In a day and age where equality is the word and differences are mum, there is still an enormous culture gap between Americans and Asians, even those who were raised in America. So as the next generation of Asian professionals prepares to be the hardest-working or the smartest in the office, make an effort to reach out and build the social networks that form the foundation of a successful career. With the right combination of self-confidence, informal relationships, and networking skills, you’ll be first in line for the next promotion.

In public speaking, your appearance counts for over 60% of the listener’s judgment, and over 30% depends on how you sound. Only 8% of your actual performance matters.

ANDY CHAISIRI

DAVID KLEIN

ANDY CHAISIRI

Studies of

in the

hope

Chinese

La n g u a g e Chapter I: Shanghai Lovers on Bikes I LOVE THE WAY THE GIRLS HOLD THEIR lovers here—this is what began my study. I saw them sitting sideways on the backs of bicycles with ungreased squeaking wheels and spokes that clicked down on fast, flat, faded pavement. There’s a flat brace made out of quarter-inch welded wire that sits just a bit above the back wheel—and on it they sit so perfectly still, frail and painted with their faces calmly tragic, eyes fixed to stare at nothing. (Observation One: They must know something I don’t, to keep so still in a city so fast.) Wrapping their arms around their boy’s thin stomach, they press one cheek against the back of his white cotton shirt, just between his shoulderblades, gazing out at the panorama of a passing city. He moves steadily, shoulders rising and falling as high cheekbones stretch taut the smooth young skin. They pass one construction site and then another, dōng běi and hǎi xiān food cart smells mix and rise and pass on to the other—cigarette smoke, a chocolate factory, bus fumes, steamed noodles, and open sewers. The bridge bumps over one canal and then the next and the punch of stagnant pollution comes and goes amidst concrete dust and taxi exhaust. Still the girl, a stoic, doesn’t move.

I thought, why is it that they rest their cheek on his back? And why is it that they hold so still with faces so tragic while he steadily pedals on? What do they love in their boys riding bikes, that they sleep sitting up as the bike wobbles on? How so solemn a contentment when everything goes and nothing stays. Chapter II: A Study on the Effects of tiān qì and shí jiān I was able to buy graph paper and rulers at an art store. But it was really just another concrete garage with a revolving door. Inside there were office supplies with brand names I had never seen stacked in shrink wrapped piles with dust on top. I also bought two mechanical pencils. I spent entire Saturdays riding the buses while looking out the windows into the bike lanes, taking notes, and organizing them into t-charts and possibility lists. These were then divided into analyses of what a lover’s fixation could mean and how it affects one’s posture on a bike. Because of the road bumps, it was hard to get some lines straight. So most evenings I would take my findings and copy these onto new sheets of graph paper, check my numbers, and then store them in my room where the air conditioner outside buzzed like a fly trapped between windows. On off nights when I didn’t feel like rewriting things, I sat at intersections in the evening with a reading light, plotting points and penciling lines to help explain the

by Justin Whitmel Earley Table of Contents Chapter I: Shanghai Lovers on Bikes Chapter II: A Study on the Effects of tiān qì and shí jiān Chapter III: Effects of the Maybe Chapter IV: Conclusion - Loose White Cotton Shirts

main trends in holding a lover while he pedals. I quickly found that things like tiān qì and shí jiān must be taken carefully into account—that is, respectively, weather and time.

hǎo tiān qì jīn tiān,’ maybe we say “jīn tiān tiān qì bù hǎo.” The first thing I did at home was to make a chart. One cannot say:

(Observation Two: We’re bound by these things over which we have no control—if we can’t change them, they change us. Naturally, of course.) And this came to certain specifics. For example, if the shí jiān is late, there is a sure tendency that the girls will dangle their feet, skidding the soles of shoes lightly against the road in mostly inaudible squeaks. (As opposed to flexing their quadriceps slightly, so that the feet hover just above the moving concrete.) Further, if the ti ān qì is bù h ǎo (meaning not good, of course, which could be anything from cloudy, to rainy, to just a day with high-pollution index), then there’s a more peaceful glaze over the girls’ eyes, but that has no quantitative effect on the lovers’ pedaling speed. Yesterday, while explaining my results to a Chinese friend, I drew the correlation between the interesting angle one particular lover chose and the fact that there was “bù hǎo tiān qì jīn tiān.” What he then explained shook my whole theory. “Maybe,” he began, “maybe in China we don’t say ‘bù

bù hǎo tiān qì jīn tiān bad weather today One ought to say: jīn tiān today

tiān qì bù hǎo weather bad

Needless to say, this changed everything about my study’s results. But to explain I must digress for a moment. Chapter III: Effects of the Maybe When speaking English, the Chinese tend to misuse the word “maybe”. (And I have the pie charts and one Venn diagram to back this up.) They use it to ask a question when the whole idea is really a suggestion. One might say, “Maybe we’ll get dinner now?” when he becomes aware of his hunger. For them, “maybe” softens the spoken desires, and acknowledges rejection as a valid or even probable possibility. “Maybe” keeps you from feeling silly. If they were to speak English, an exchange between two

Shanghai lovers might go as follows:

Shirts

Lover 1: “Maybe we will have children soon?”

The tiān qì and the shí jiān never affected posture in the first place. They weren’t a factor in the slightest—it was the white cotton shirts all along.

Lover 1: (moving slightly towards the sink to pick up the washing soap) “Maybe…oh yes, of course, you’re right, maybe no, maybe still too expensive.” “Maybe” carefully keeps in mind that most things don’t turn out the way you hope. “Maybe” reminds us that if you don’t hope too much in the first place, things will never hurt as bad. With this in mind, I immediately realized that when my friend said, “Maybe in China we don’t say ‘bù hǎo tiān qì jīn tiān,’ maybe we say jīn tiān tiān qì bù hǎo,’” he really meant that I was very wrong. Going over my grammar books, I came to realize that you can only say, “Jīn tiān tiān qì bù hǎo”(see chart above), and not the other way around. It’s the order of the words that matters. (Observation Three: Order is important. Things must be kept in order.) “Jīn tiān tiān qì bù hǎo, míng tiān tiān qì bù hǎo,” I experimented thoughtfullly. “Míng tiān tiān qì bù hǎo?” And this is where I finally found what I was looking for. Because míng tiān means tomorrow, but what’s interesting is that the two words are “bright” and “day.” Everything was falling into place. “Can you really say, ‘Míng tiān tiān qì bù hǎo?’” I returned to ask my friend urgently. “Of course,” he says. And this brought me to my conclusion. Why would they say “bright day” if tomorrow will be cloudy? Or really, what if it’s going to be cloudy—how can you call it “bright day”? The answer changed my whole theory on girls holding their lovers. It wasn’t the time or the weather that affected posture—it was something in the language. Let me explain. Chapter IV: Conclusion – Loose White Cotton

The loose white cotton shirts, buttoned halfway up from the bottom—specifically the smell of the shirts. For a whole week I felt so silly for not realizing it sooner, but my friend reminded me that “maybe it’s hard to tell sometimes.” Of course it’s hard to tell. But now I see that by pushing their still faces so close to the wrinkled white cotton, they smell the calm of yesterday, the opiate of tomorrow. Which, of course, is why none of the other smells mattered. But in between each stitch of the loose white cotton, DAVID KLEIN

Lover 2: (responds with silent shock, her face wordlessly reciting China’s one-child policy and heavy taxes on younger siblings)

they smell the lingering scent of uncovered drains in small apartment kitchens. They hear the open ring of a room that is all concrete and metal with no rugs. They picture, with those still eyes, that drying white shirt hanging stiff on a thin wire strung above a bed where they both lie naked atop the sheets dreaming of the maybe. Flies are buzzing between windows next door.

(Observation Five—Even a tragic and guarded hope is still a hope.) I’ve thrown away my graph paper now and left my charts behind my bookshelf. I’m sitting at the intersections with no reading lamp, just quiet in the blinking glow of the Shanghai stoplights reflected off tile-covered buildings. Watching lovers pass on bikes.

“Maybe tomorrow we will have a family.” “Maybe tomorrow we will have children.” It’s that place, their minds flooded with the maybe, lying beneath the white shirt they’re trying to get back to. And that’s why they lean so close on bikes.

“Kě néng míng tiān.” “First find better jobs. But then maybe.”

Suddenly maybe and tomorrow fit so well together. Maybe is like tomorrow, míng tiān, an organic hope in the language of every day that hasn’t happened.

It’s written on their faces even in the dusky wǎn shàng. “Maybe even three or four.” Maybe.

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â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rebecca Stewart

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SERINA ASWANI

“

Tomorrow We’re Going to Be

Better ”

Third-year student Zhenyu “James” Liao is president of the UVA chapter of Dream Corps International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to achieving education equity for children in disadvantaged migrant communities in China. Every year, Dream Corps sends volunteers overseas to build libraries and offer support to students at selected sites. In an interview with Inkstone editors Jennifer Shen and VanAnh Nguyen, he shared his volunteer experiences and suggestions for the future. How did you get involved in Dream Corps, and what motivated you to do so? I got involved when I received a newsletter from CSSS (UVA’s Chinese Students and Scholars Society) in 2006 and decided to apply. I was selected and went to the site, which was Lao Chang Ying Village in Dengzhou, Henan Province. I’m now this location’s site director.

What motivated me most was that single summer experience, during which I saw and felt the needs of these children in rural China. I saw what their daily lives are like, and the problems and the pressure they continually face. And I chose to act on it. What was your biggest source of concern before you went? Understanding the villagers. I honestly have to say that even after two summers, there’s so much I don’t understand about them. That’s the thing that keeps me coming back and contacting them. China is such an interesting setting—internationally, people see the economic boom in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Not many people know what’s going on with 80% of the people, poverty-wise. Who were your contacts at the village? Did you speak to them before you left for China? We talked to people at every level of society. Our main contact was the village chief. Basically, in village settings in China, the chief is the leader for all. People listen to whatever he says. We talked to him primarily to understand the village’s needs. We also called the village doctor, who is very respected

since everyone needs to seek help from him. We asked him about health and environmental issues that were affecting the village. Next, we talked to our host family, one of whom was the chief ’s best friend growing up. He gave us more background on the village chief ’s decisions and more information on what direction the village was going. The next person was the principal of the school. We suggested our plans for the library to him and asked him whether we could implement a reading program. Then we talked to the teachers to get more information about the conditions of the classes and the children. Finally, we talked to the children themselves. We called and asked them about their daily lives: how school and their lives were going, what kind of activities they wanted us to do this summer, etcetera. What was your first impression of rural China? My first impression was: It’s beautiful. On the first day we arrived at the village, it was just the start of their harvest season, so the whole village was covered in golden crops. Our site leader took us on a walk in the field, and I saw the endless fields of golden crops, the peasants working in there, and all these children running around. The first day we were there, we were basically the outsiders. People looked at us like we were from another planet. Honestly, I came away thinking: It’s not as bad as I thought! However, the more I learned, the more I realized that what they lack isn’t monetary or material—they can eat, they have enough food, they have enough warm clothes. Rather, the problem is intellectual What the children lack are opportunities for a better life. When you arrived there, how did the local population react to you? Did that reaction change by the end? Like I said, the locals didn’t want to approach us at first. We dressed differently, we talked differently, we laughed and ran around the village—it’s like, who are these crazy people singing in the middle of the night? However, this changed by the end of the summer. What happened was before leaving, we put on this three-hour talent show for the children. At the conclusion of the show, as our group was singing the song

“明天会更好” (Tomorrow We’re Going to Be Better), the children—who were sitting down—suddenly all rushed up to us. We were planning to stay there for half a day longer, but they thought we were going to leave that very night! They all hugged us and cried so loudly that we couldn’t finish the song!

village chief, and our host family were all there. All the children lined up outside and started singing the songs we had taught them. We took pictures with each class and started saying our goodbyes. They were all crying and saying, “Come back next time, come back next time.”

As for the second summer, I was a little nervous about returning because I didn’t know if they would remember me. But when we arrived on the train, a lot of people were waiting and waving at us. They all remembered me and called out my name: “Welcome back, 小廖!” I was so overwhelmed. We arrived in the afternoon, so the students were still in school. We cleaned up a little, had lunch, and I then took the new group out into the fields. At that time, the children just got out of school, and I could hear them calling my name in the distance. There was this group of boys I saw in the distance at the end of a road—they were running towards me. This one boy just came in and ran into me and was like, “小廖哥哥, 你回来了，你回来了!” (“You came back!”) I looked at him in the face and saw that he was crying. He was laughing very hard, but crying at the same time. I started crying too at the same moment.

Did you have plans for what to do once you got there, or a daily schedule?

When we left the second summer, we put on the same show, and the show was on the night of a big thunderstorm. Everyone had to leave right after it was over because it started raining. But the next morning, we were woken up by the cries of the children. When we went to the school, the principal, the teachers, the

When I became a site leader, we developed a plan for the library—for instance, adding a reading program and integrating that program into the school curriculum. Then we gathered funding and bought various supplies from Beijing that we brought down to the village. Our daily schedule was waking up at 6:00 AM, eating breakfast at 6:30 and finishing it by 6:45. In the afternoon, we had classes to teach in the elementary schools. We had six people at each site, so we broke up into two teams. Three people worked on the reading program and the library facility, and the other three taught music/arts/dance classes. At night, we finished dinner at 7:30 PM, took a bath afterward, and then we all would sit down and write reflections in our journals. We would also have a group meeting every night under the stars, sitting on the roof. We talked about our plans for the next day and our long-term plans for the rest of the month. Finally, at around 1:00 or 2:00 AM, we went to sleep. How did you find the working and living environment? Was it easy to adapt? Did people already have teaching experience, or did you have to learn?

Three words for the living environment: Mosquitoes! Bugs! Heat! We didn’t have air conditioning. We were originally going to stay in one room, but with six people packed together the body heat just got overwhelming. So we slept outside on the rooftop instead. Overall, it’s not a nice office space. You have to be emotionally involved with the villagers and walk in

play basketball and ping-pong, use the computer, and showed them the videos that we took. They were like, “Oh my God, I’m running in this little box!” This year we’ll be bringing a projector—imagine that! Mostly we provide support for the teachers and ideas for their lectures, and try to understand their needs. It’s all about listening to what they want.

ALL ARTWORK BY JENNIFER WU their shoes. It’s not like, “I come here, I help you guys, I sightsee, I do whatever I want.” My first year volunteering, I wanted to go sightseeing, and my leader said no. I almost got into an argument over that, but later I understood why. You always have to be focused on the program—there’s so much to do in one month. When our team members got together to talk, it wasn’t about ourselves. It was always what the village needed and what we wanted to accomplish next. It’s not about you, it’s about them. As for teaching, none of our volunteers are professional teachers. We can’t help the children with their core courses. What the students lack is the motivation to learn, since they have a monotonous academic life without any “creative” classes—art, free reading, gym, music and dance, etcetera. So we helped out with these extracurricular activities. I taught kids wushu, how to

Can you describe the experience of building a library? Not as easy as we thought! The first time, it was like, “Bring the books, put them on the shelf—the library’s open!” No. The bringing books part is easy, and the putting them on the shelf is easy, but keeping the library open is very hard. The library has not been opened for the past two years, I’m sorry to say. In social work, the most effective method is to teach the locals how to help themselves. It’s critical to our program development. Getting the locals to take the initiative is the hardest part of our job. We’ve been trying constantly to educate the locals about the library and let them see the results—and well, that’s why we put on a talent show at the end of the summer. When the children are motivated, they perform better in school. Music and art classes do not distract them from learning. It builds their motivation to learn. It

broadens their knowledge and helps them make better decisions. They gain more opportunities and can eventually live a better life. The thing about rural China is that it’s a vicious cycle of poverty. During our visits to the families, we asked them, “What do you see in your child’s future?” They would always say something like, “We go out, we work, and our children go to school. Once they finish middle school, they come to work with us and make more money. They have their own children and send them to school, and so on.” We’re trying to break that cycle by providing education and opportunities. Can you name some of your favorite memories from the trips? Every time I come back home from the trip, I spend the next three months organizing all the photos from our trip and putting them into albums. When I look through the pictures and see a child’s face, I remember everything. There’s one child we had during the first summer. His dad and his dad’s whole family were thieves since he was little. They went out and stole cows from other families. His dad was punished with a life sentence in jail, and his mom ate poison and committed suicide when he was about four or five years old, leaving him with only his grandma. His father’s side all left the village because they felt too ashamed. The rest of the villagers call him “賊娃” (thief ’s son). His situation is very tough because his family doesn’t have anyone who can generate income. The village does not give him financial aid although he’s entitled to it. The locals are so hateful towards his family, saying he has the blood of a thief and things like that, so the village doesn’t give him money. He always has a very tough time getting support. We didn’t know about this during the first summer. He was one of the kids who got really attached to us. He’s a great basketball player, but he had been doing very poorly in school. He’s a mature kid—when children have been through certain difficulties, I think they grow up faster—and we were so shocked when we found out about his background. He told me he and his grandma only eat plain noodles every day, with one or two slices of vegetables. Meat is unimaginable for them, while the rest of the village eats meat and vegetables regularly. I wasn’t there the day we went to visit his family the first time, but the other team leaders told me that his grandma just “跪下” (broke down, literally “kneeled”), begging for our help. So the next time our team went back we brought him a thousand yuan to pay for his tuition and other life expenses for the year. They were very grateful. His grandma just

held on to my hand very tightly and stood there thanking us for half an hour. It was such an emotional time, I can’t describe it. We just stood there in silence—we didn’t know what else we could do. So he’s now in sixth grade and is going to move on to middle school. He was planning on skipping school and going out to find a job if it weren’t for the funds we gave him. How you do you keep lines of communication open between you and your contacts in rural China? Also, what are some of your plans for the future to keep things in order? Most of our work is accomplished in the month while we’re there. The rest of the year involves us trying to develop the program. I want to do something during those eleven months. Part of the problem is that Dream Corps is staffed by volunteers—we have fulltime jobs, and you’re preoccupied by your own work as a student or as an employee. You want to think about the needs of the villagers, but it’s hard because you get distracted all the time. The only line of communication available is the phone. We have the phone numbers of every student and the leaders in the village, and I try to make a phone call once a month to ask what’s happening. They really look forward to the calls, and I’m trying to get other past volunteers to get involved as well. Regarding my plans: after graduation, I want to stay in the village doing field research and teaching. I really want to create a sustainable development program that we can duplicate as a model for other areas. At the end of the day, if you could describe your DreamCorps experience in one word, what would it be? Passion. Once you get to know more about the situation in rural China, you feel yourself getting attached to it. Once you know about it and have experienced it, you feel obligated to act. My DreamCorps experiences have cultivated a passion that will stay with me forever. _______________________________ For more information about Dream Corps International, visit http://www.dreamcorps.org/

Deadliest Shooting Spree in U.S. History /An

Asian Male about Six Feet Tall Two shootings yesterday morning resulted in at least thirty-three fatalities, including that of a gunman, and about thirty injuries…O’Dell, who was shot in the arm, described the shooter as “an Asian male, about six feet tall.” —Cavalier Daily April 17, 2007 Identity revealed he was troubled— a loner, from a wealthy family— Korean. Heads turned studied my hair— my eyes, hey, aren’t you— Korean? Consciousness awakened naked in a crowd of wary eyes— pained like the pin piercing to my lapel the orange and maroon ribbons— the tears of a brother and a sister. Head hung in remembrance, in shame.

—Jessalyn Elliott

“Heads turned studied my hair— my eyes, hey, aren’t you— Korean?” A

R AU

Staff

DENISE KAW

Contributors

Serina Aswani is a 2nd year Studio Art and French major who has found working on Inkstone to be amazing! She is thankful to everyone who worked with her and who made sure that the food at meetings was always finished, that the ratings did not go without hot debate, that the articles were read (and read, and reread, and changed, and not to mention, changed again!), that the Coup never became lonely, that the money always came in (with only a few scary moments!), that the dingy back classrooms of Cabell did not go unused, that (all?) membership dues were paid and that this blurb FINALLY got written! ;) With only a Starbucks meeting and a Day in the Gardens looming ahead, she eagerly waits for next semester, where she is sure to be greeted by the questionable phone reception that defines the hallows of Newcomb Hall, her now newly made home away from home. Till the next blurb.

Ann Fu is a fourth-year who will miss Inkstone greatly after she graduates. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worry, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll come back and visit. Alyssa Guo is the co-editor-in-chief and a fourth year at the McIntire School of Commerce at UVA. She feels lucky to have be a part of such a talented group of students. Inkstone has helped her appreciate and enjoy the more artistic side of life and the diversity of Asian culture. She will be working in New York City next year but Inkstone will also have a special place in her heart. Samantha S. Mina graduated from South Lakes High School in 2005 as Valedictorian, IB Diploma recipient, orchestra soloist and science fair champion. She currently is a straight-A Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia, working to receive her Bachelors

of Interdisciplinary Studies in English, Anthropology and Government in 2009. She serves as the Secretary of Silver Wings Air Force Society, Director of Support for Arnold Air Society Area II, Webdesigner of UVA Archery, Camp Counselor for the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capitol, Co-Chair of the Building Tomorrow Destination Kampala Entertainment Committee, Co-Captain of UVA/VT Combo Odyssey of the Mind Team, Sunday School Teacher at Reston Bible Church, Secretary of ‘Hoos Helping Our Troops, and webdesigner for three other campus organizations. She is also active in the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, National Scholars Honor Society, Golden Key International Honor Society, National Dean’s List, Musicians On Call, Virginia Themis Society, Agape Christian Fellowship, and the Charlottesville Church Choir. She ultimately aspires to publish her eight novels—over 3500 total pages—and to become a university professor of law. Joanne Mosuela is a hungry second-year Poetry Writing major (with some minors thrown in for heat) who can’t believe the COUP is still standing after a year under her watch. She thanks her COUPstars for their open rage and ultimate patience. To her Inkstone loves, an assurance: we’re Twisted enough. Van-Anh Nguyen is a rising fourth year doublemajoring in foreign affairs and Handler-inspired anthropology. She hopes to soon reconcile her realist tendency in politics with her cultural-construction understanding of the world. In the meantime though, she likes to waste her time reading hot-off-thepress celebrity news. (Yes, she’ll admit it: perezhilton.com is on the reading list!) She also enjoys discovering those wondrous, troubling, revelatory, and just plain silly videos on YouTube. Speaking of which, she thinks everyone should go there now and listen to the “A More Perfect Union” speech. (Three cheers for racial dialogues, people!!!) Niti Patel is a second year whose chronic procrastination has left her an undeclared, aspiring foreign affairs major. In her free time, she enjoys attempting Sudoku, listening to NPR, and partaking in

various other collegiate activities, i.e. consuming mass amounts of pizza and coffee. She has really enjoyed working on the magazine with her fellow Inkstoners, and looks forward to another fantastic year! Long-range lenses, longer hours color-coding, making peace with Excel. That’s how Jennifer Shen saved the circus. And now she is famous. To those who said and did: let’s do it again. Rebecca Stewart likes the e-school but there’s never time to take all the Humanities electives she’s interested in: cinematography, photography, poetry, literature, German, Japanese, bass, chorus, piano… She is glad she discovered Inkstone. She needed an excuse to write poetry. Sara Yenke is a fourth year at the end of the line, who can only, at this point, thank Inkstone & the COUP for four years of litmags, labor, & love. Tian Zeng is a rising third year double-majoring in Economics and Commerce. He has been banned from the NBA for also holding a job as the bus driver because he was taking everyone to school. He hopes to travel to around the world, master many languages, and catch the motion of the ocean with his 10 foot boogie board. He often loiters around the library hoping to achieve these hopes and dreams. He talks to himself when no one else is around and acts in different characters to reason out conflicting feelings. He would like to thank Inkstone for the opportunity to enrich his experience at UVA and those who have worked hard to contribute to another year of success. There are no words to express the worries in his mind as José Zamora looks to the future. Not even the spreads he made know how to reply when he asks them. All they can really say is “just hang.” So for the time being, “throw the fashion-show academia out the window and let us bask in the sunshine of human enjoyment,” he says. He’s just trying to hang out. From the politics of corrupted institutions to the almost trite defense of cultural relativism, he has one year left to think!

Colophon

Inkstone is published annually by the Contracted Independent Organization of the University of Virginia that shares the same name. Individual copies are distributed without charge on Grounds. The body text and page numbers for Inkstone are set in Adobe Garamond, 10 pt. Headlines are set in Juergen, Luna Bar, Mosquito, Siple and TX Timesquare. Endmark and page number folios were created using Adobe Photoshop by JosĂŠ Zamora. Inkstone took form on the Apple Macintosh operating system using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word. Final publication was submitted by disk to Colonial Printing in Richmond, Virginia.

We encourage creative work and correspondence from all walks of life. Send any written or artistic work to inkstone@virginia.edu or to the following address: Inkstone Literary Magazine Newcomb Hall - SAC University of Virginia PO Box 400715 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4701 For more information, visit: www.student.virginia.edu/~inkstone

DAVID KLEIN