Welcome to the Week 3/27-3/31: James Baldwin’s “A Letter to my Nephew”

In a “Letter to my Nephew”, Baldwin pens an open note to his nephew, James, and strives to inform and prepare him for a life riddled with oppression, racism and its lasting impact on generations of Black Americans.

  1. In the letter, Baldwin refers to white people as “the innocents”. What are your ideas on the dynamics established by the writer in calling white people  “the innocents”?

“Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, ‘No, this is not true. How bitter you are,'”

This makes me think of the term crocodile tears, and how white people in the public eye, cry fake tears, portraying themselves as helpless, often to accuse and vilify black people.

More on white people “crocodile” tears : https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2020/12/09/why-white-women-crying-is-still-racist-the-work-of-trauma-narratives-in-self-stories-of-transracialism/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/08/how-white-women-use-strategic-tears-to-avoid-accountability

2. How do the allusions to historical events connect to the idea of a country “celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early”?

“…but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds…”

3. Baldwin exposes his nephew to the complexities of institutional and systemic oppression against black people, finding it necessary to warn him on the reality of an oppressive and ignorant white America. Do you think it is Baldwin’s role to advise his nephew on the traumas and harshness of the era? How does this relate to the “adultification” of Black children?

From the National Library of Medicine: “Adultification is the term used to define how Black children are viewed as older than they are. Systemic racism has forced Black children into social, emotional, and physical adult roles before they are adults, contributing to adultification.”

More on Adultification: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35575413/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2021/04/22/how-the-adultification-bias-contributes-to-black-trauma/?sh=651c13512b08

My bunny, Benito

Karen Tei Yamashita and John Okada’s “No-No Boy”

The Atlantic: John Okada’s No-No Boy Is a Test of American Character

Karen Tei Yamashita most recently introduced John Okada’s “No-No Boy.” She is a professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her piece reflects on the war’s aftermath, a duality of American identity, and the novel’s relationship to immigration today. She even talks about the 74 years it took for the Supreme Court to overturn its justification of Japanese internment—this while they supported the Muslim travel ban (the contradictions!).

“No-No Boy” is not limited to the time it was published, and being American includes more than its national connotations. Historically, exclusion finds a way to return, and does with Jim Crow laws right after WWII, and Trump’s ban and immigration policies (among more events). Yamashita believes this novel is a reminder “cruel history” should not repeat, and is about all the questions that relate to “what we are made of,” both as our own person and in the societies we live. I think it’s also useful to compare her introduction to Lawson Fusao Inada’s—he said reading this book will help us “see, and be, with greater strength and clarity. And in this way does the world begin to change” (Okada, vi).

Reading this in class lets us track how Ichiro’s thoughts repeat in others and apply parts of his experience to our own no matter our cultural, ethnic or national backgrounds. There’s an internal war Ichiro goes through that reveals how much the world has not changed. Once we understand it, then we can find a way to make it change and this theme can apply to our other readings. I think “No-No Boy” encourages people to think of how Ichiro reflects themselves, and speaks to all moments in time.

Yamashita, Karen Tei. “John Okada’s ‘No-No Boy’ Is a Test of American Character.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 May 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/05/karen-tei-yamashita-john-okadas-no-no-boy/588466/. 

Reflection on Reading No-No Boy

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jun-05-me-diaper5-story.html

Above is an article on the backlash on “The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby”. At the time of the graphic novel’s release, parents were torn on whether or not the novel was encouraging bad spelling, and its “toilet talk”. While the content is not as serious as “No-No Boy”, I thought it important to bring in the things that the American public seem to find scandalous and worrisome. “Super Diaper Baby”‘s content upset parents across the US, afraid children would be corrupted by the crude content and poor spelling typical of the series. It does not seem super difficult to be a controversial book in the US.

Reading No-No Boy was an enriching experience. When thinking of the classic American Lit canon, I often think of white men authors, and while their books have made lasting impacts in American society, it’s critical to include books such as No-No boy in curriculum. I think reading it today is relevant, in terms of reflecting on the immigrant experience. Most of the books we have read consider the American experience outside of white america, and No-No Boy touches upon the same dual identity that W.E.B. Du Bois considers, a double consciousness in reconciling with cultural identity and ideology.  There are hardships that are part of being an immigrant in the US, traumas which often go unrecognized without a white-lens perspective, and No-No Boy gives a firsthand account on what it feels to be an immigrant in the United States.

 

 

Experience reading + what it means to publish No-No boy

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/books/no-no-boy-penguin.html
An article by the New York Times titled “Dispute Arises Over ‘No-No Boy,’ a Classic of Asian-American Literature With a Complex History” talks about the controversy that arose when Penguin Classics re-published the novel, raising questions about its ownership. The ONCE-OVERLOOKED novel was published by Penguin in May of 2019 and was the first ever Japanese- American novel and JAPANESE-AMERICAN author that penguin had published. I found this article interesting because it made me think about the risks or lack thereof that publishing houses are willing to take on books that don’t fit into the “American novel” ideal. No-No boy for example, was only published by penguin after it proved successful when published by a university press.
I think reading this novel in class was an interesting experience for me which I really enjoyed. For the most part I always feel like the things I read in my English classes are written by white men, or white women if I get lucky (which I guess makes sense since that is what most of the literary cannon is comprised of) but at the same time it’s always nice to hear new and diverse voices. I also think that the fact that we are still reading this novel today highlights the relevance that it has on our current society. A large part of what the novel No-No boy is concerned with is themes of not knowing where you fully fit in and feeling like an outsider. I think a lot of people today can still relate to that feeling especially immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Relating to an Asian American novel as an Asian American

In reading John Okada’s No-No Boy, I reflected on my personal life.  I grew up in a similar, but different way to the Japanese Americans on the west coast.  As I grew up, I was always treated as different than my white classmates or neighbors, but I didn’t have an Asian American community that I was a part of.  So I can deeply relate to the isolation that Ichi felt throughout our readings.  No matter what clubs I participated in or how I dressed or what my interests were, I was always known as the “pokemon kid” or “anime face.”  Since my parents had grown up in very different circumstances, and in fact they wanted me to assimilate to White American culture, I was unable to relate to my family.  Ichi is isolated for different reasons, but to his own community he is ostracized because he said “no-no.”  In choosing to say no to getting drafted and no to renouncing Japan, he had also said no to both his American citizenship and his Japanese community.  Honestly, since I did the welcome to the week for this reading I will just include the photos of Japanese internment camps that I found for that video.  What strikes me the most about these images is that American Citizens who were born in this country were having their Great Writ of Habeas Corpus violated for years in an indefinite term.  It just goes to show again that the government in America has hypocritical definitions of who “Americans” are and what their rights are.

People wait in line for their housing assignment at the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert in 1942. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and placed in camps in several states during World War II

An American soldier guards a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, Calif., May 23, 1943. (AP Photo)

An American soldier guards a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, Calif., May 23, 1943. (AP Photo)

People wait in line for their housing assignment at the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert in 1942. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and placed in camps in several states during World War II

Accepting Your Reality is Painful in John Okada’s No – No Boy

Imagine having two questions on a measly piece of paper have so much power over you and who you view yourself to be. This is a big aspect of the book being titled “ No-No Boy” because you have two questions that go hand and hand with each other that create a label of identity whether you are ready to receive it or not. To be asked to leave a part of you behind and only focus on the other part of you that destroys what you have suppressed. Your identity being tied to nations, not knowing if you’ll ever be American enough or Japanese enough. It is powerful to read about question 27 and 28 that fortified the isolation and alienation of Japanese people as they would either have to let go of a vital part of who they are or face extreme consequences and abuse as repayment for not making the “right decision.” Those two questions gave the illusion of choice when in reality what is stripping of identity, a twisted form of natural selection where the “weak” are punished for not making the “right choice of saying yes.” 

Lyon, Cherstin. “Questions 27 and 28.” Densho Encyclopedia. 24 Aug 2020, 14:47 PDT. 23 Mar 2023, 13:52 <https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Questions%2027%20and%2028>.

This reminds me of Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory which spoke about the sexual trauma many women growing up in Haiti may experience, it is the main plot of the story as the protagonist Sophie deals with generational trauma related to sexual assault that continues to harm and debilitate her from a child into adulthood. In a Journal Article written by Masoumeh Mehni in regard to the reception of Danticat’s raw depiction of what it is like growing up with sexual trauma and how culture and family can have a big part to play states, “ McAfee claims that in Kristeva’s point of view, “Literature offers a way to help work through what afflicts us. In addition to displaying the symptoms of some kind of malady of the soul, literature can be cathartic” (McAfee 50). This is certainly true for abjection. In her book Powers of Horror , Kristeva says of abjection and literature:

By suggesting that literature is [abjection’s] privileged signifier, I wish to point out that, far from being a minor, marginal activity in our culture, as a general consensus seems to have it, this kind of literature, or even literature as such, represents the ultimate coding of our crises, of our most intimate and most serious apocalypses. Hence its nocturnal power (Kristeva 208).” 

Mehni, Masoumeh. “Analyzing the Problematic Mother-Daughter Relationship in Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory.’” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 7, no. 1, 2011, pp. 77–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41939268. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Danticat went on to publish a letter of apology as Haitian women felt they were being portrayed in a negative light and later had to state that not all women in Haiti will face this sort of trauma, however, it doesn’t erase the sexual oppression and control of women that Danticat witnessed growing up. Sometimes, audiences are not ready to have salt poured on their wounds because the truth of the pain may be too much to bear.

To read No- No Boy by John Okada in today’s society means to openly acknowledge the pain and suffering Asian Americans faced and were forced to relive during COVID. To openly read his book is to be vulnerable with your trauma and speak on it so that others feel understood but also supported. Minorities are not alone in their story, and they deserve to be recognized no matter how painful it may be to do so. We cannot erase that pain, but we can acknowledge its existence. 

 



Alienation in “No-No Boy”

World War II Political Cartoons – by Dr. Seuss

This political cartoon, drawn by Dr. Seuss, depicts Hitler and a Japanese man. The fear preyed upon here is the exagerated idea that their faces will be carved on Mount Rushmore as opposed to American founding fathers. I am not sure if the Japanese man is meant to represent a specific person, but is interesting to note that he does not like the Japanese emperor during the time of WWII in my opinion. It’s crazy to think it might just be a stand-in figure for all Japanese people. This just goes to show why people may still have been hesitant for a book critical of anti-Japanese racism in 1956. Japanese people, and racist charicatures of Japanese people, were a bonafide symbol of villainy.

 

What does it mean to read No-No Boy in this class? In this time period?

This novel is still extremely relevant today, and goes to show how universal the immigrant experience in the US can be. Ichiro feels alienated and isolated as an outsider due to his nationality. This theme is particularly relevant in the context of modern politics and the rise of alt-right xenophobia. There has been a growing sense of nationalism and a backlash against diversity and immigration. In the US, this is particularly relevant for immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, and in Europe it is especially focused on the Middle East/North Africa. In the last few years, the rise of fascism internationally has occurred parallel to this backlash against multiculturalism, meaning both the discriminatory practices against immigrants/people of color/foreigners and the global threat of fascism are still present. Racism and anti-immigration movements, both in policy and socially, reject many individuals who try to find a place in Western societies, mirroring Ichiro‘s personal struggles with being an outsider. This novel is still very important in reflecting the experiences of people of color and immigrants in the West.

Reflecting on No-No Boy

I vaguely remember reading Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and illustrated Dom Lee in Middle School, as a picture book, cover included below. It describes the experience of a Japanese-American boy who also ends up in an internment camp with his parents and the internees, led by his father, make a baseball field and provide equipment with which their children could play, and this saved them. Also I found the pdf for the text of said picture book., so if you wanna read that that’s below too.

Baseball Saved Us - Plugged In

2 Baseball Saved Us.pdf (webs.com)

Alright, so about my reading experience, I don’t really have massive responses to this type of reading. I mean, I would say how unfair it feels from Ichiro’s perspective, but I feel like that’s an obvious enough point to make. Of course he would feel like it’s unfair, everyone who was in those camps would find it unfair, for a vast amount of reasons. Anyway, moving on. I guess seeing Mrs. Yamada’s outright denial of obvious facts and information (calling anything that didn’t suit her belief that Japan has won the war as lies and propaganda, including letters from relatives asking for help) was … quite reminiscent of the world we live in today. Well, that’s still been a problem for a while now. Ichiro’s dad felt like someone trying to make it through the day-by-day life. In addition, bring it back to the whole unfairness thing, it felt like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing. Either you refuse to serve and get thrown in prison (with some shaming from those who did packed in) or you do and end up like Kenji with his leg blown off or like Bob, who couldn’t tell the tale. Also I know I keep coming back to things, but Mrs. Yamada showing up to the Kumasaka household with Ichiro in tow to show that her son’s “devotion to Japan” served him better than their son’s decision to choose was very, very … scummy. Just goes to show the depths of her self-denied delusion. Besides that, I don’t know, nothing’s popping up atm. Oh well, that’s what class is for!

 

Class Trip to the Tenement Museum

Visual Reflection on The Tenement Museum class trip March 17, 2023

Photos of layout for Tenement museum (the original historical buildings on Orchard street in the Lower East Side)

 

Baruch College Students in Eng 3025 American Lit 1865 to present looking at a display case of materials found in stars of a tenement building.

 

Journal on sewing found in an apartment featured in the display case at The Tenement Museum in the previous image. The first line reads: “Most women [ missing word] sew. Most women must sew whether they like it or not.”
We got to learn more about the significance of space, people, and their stories as the tour continued to the Levine family apartment (pictured below in three images, one of the students and tour guide, one of the places for dressmaking under a clock, and a baby or toddler’s bed). The Levines were a Jewish dress-making family that lived in the apartment in 1902. A total of 7 people lived there (roughly the size of our tour group. The space was small, but reflecting on this got us thinking about the kind of intimacies people must have had living so close in the apartments and in the neighborhood.

I was especially intrigued to learn how Jewish mothers and wives in May 1902 protested the rise in the cost of Kosher meat, and despite the denigrating articles in The New York Times about the protest, which referred to the protest as a “riot,” these mothers were able to influence the cost of meat to provide their families with food AND to maintain their cultural and religious practices. This connects to our reading of The Jungle, demonstrating the push and pull between big corporations or businesses and the people who buy goods. To learn more about the protest, check out this article from the Jewish Women’s Archive. One woman apparently assaulted an officer by slapping him in the face with a piece of liver, according to our tour guide at the Tenement Museum.