In his first speech as President-elect of the United States, Senator Barack Obama uttered the famous words which became the soundbite echoed across the world: “Change has come to America.” It was and is a highly optimistic statement, a statement that seems premature in light of the Michael Brown shooting and all that has followed since then. And I would be the first to admit that there is still much to be done in the areas of discrimination, institutional racism – well, racism of all sorts – and race relations in the United States. However, the U.S. just might not be the country that you think it is.
Change – mind-blowing change – has come to America in the last two decades. Read more »
lê thi diem thúy at Leuphana University in May 2015
When lê thi diem thúy (pronounced “twee”) visited Leuphana University this past May, not only did our students have the opportunity to attend her reading and talk, the three of us also had the pleasure of interviewing her. lê thi diem thúy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, but primarily sees herself as a poet. If you’re looking for some creative inspiration to start off the new year, take a peek at the interview.
ASB: When did you first decide to become a writer?
thúy: It was never decided that I would become a writer. What I wanted, ever since I was a child and first learned to read, was to be with words. Reading was both a challenge and a consolation, stories were worlds I could enter, and from a young age I understood that words somehow summoned worlds. At first I only wanted to be transported as a reader. Perhaps I became a writer when I realized that I, too, carried worlds within myself, and words were the key to unlock those worlds and release people, places, moments, questions, desires. Read more »
If it were up to me, American high school and college students would spend a mandatory year living abroad before a degree of any kind is conferred. This trip would be fully funded by the United States government. It’s difficult to quantify how exposure to a different culture can change one’s perspective for the better.
As a sophomore (tenth grade), I had the privilege of spending a week in London with several other students, during which we hit all the usual tourist spots and attended several musicals. It was a good trip, but honestly, I was too young to fully appreciate the new surroundings and the history of a city so much older than any in the States.
The next time I traveled overseas, I was 41 and brought my wife of nine years. I had become a published author with companies like Random House, and my German-translation publisher, Hanser, flew us to Germany for a ten-day book tour in cooperation with the embassy.
There are many things to recount – amazing German hospitality, breathtakingly intelligent students, gorgeous scenery… from the moment we first arrived in Göttingen, we were entranced.
I wrote this piece for a seminar called “Reversing the Gaze.” The idea was to write about difference and the challenging of stereotypes, so I tried to incorporate as many gazes as possible.
The characters were chosen for their ambiguity. After our discussions in class, Injun Joe seemed to be the perfect anti-hero instead of a common villain with a racial slur. Esperanza – with her identity struggle concerning ethnic issues, gender identity, social status, and her hints at the deconstruction of stereotypical gender roles – was a character that I felt I could identify with.
Ted Cassidy as Injun Joe in The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1969) | Photo credit: NBC television (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons
The notion of being neither here nor there, being in-between culturally, is something that I can relate to while recognizing what a privileged position this can be when one is not subjected to discrimination. The numerous borders the characters have had to face are reminiscent of fences around reservations or the brutality of the Mexican-American border. More specifically, it is about what happens years, maybe decades, later when the ancestors have long crossed the border, but the individual is still confronted with dividing lines and is forced to make decisions as well as create his/her own identity, which is always cultural and political.
Americana
By Sassetta Harford
I guess it’s kind of funny, what with political correctness and all. They just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to people like me. Half-breed, that’s what they used to call us, like a dirty mongrel pissing on their white picket fence. Precisely that makes me an American, more American even than George Bush or Washington himself, and certainly more American than their precious Jesus.
The American jazz queen, Melody Gardot, is still eager to explore the world around her, but her focus has changed and been narrowed down to her own country. Her fourth album, Currency of Man, features social commentary on American society – a commentary wrapped in a bluesy analog sound with warm soul and gospel influences and lots of horns, a commentary that has never seemed to have more currency than now.
Imagine a child that does not show up on exam day or shows up and refuses to take the exam. The child is not reprimanded by the parents but encouraged as part of a political statement. Imagine no more. This is happening in the U.S., and it is called the Opt-Out Movement.
In his first speech as President-elect of the United States, Senator Barack Obama uttered the famous words which became the soundbite echoed across the world: “Change has come to America.” It was and is a highly optimistic statement, a statement that seems premature in light of the Michael Brown shooting and all that has followed since then. And I would be the first to admit that there is still much to be done in the areas of discrimination, institutional racism – well, racism of all sorts – and race relations in the United States. However, the U.S. just might not be the country that you think it is.
