During class discussions on "The Upside-Downness of the World as it Unfolds," I was a bit surprised to hear that the story was framed as being cliched and having lost its social commentary on the conditions of queer and Asian communities. I suppose I understand what people mean by, "That narrative has been done before," but I think a more important question is not whether the story has been told before, but whether the conditions depicted in the narrative have been in any way resolved. Although written in a humorous style, the issues of gender, racial, and sexuality brought up throughout the story are in no way any less serious. I think the problem is that public sphere does get oversaturated with these sorts of narratives, and instead of people responding in a way to counter-act the forms of oppression and unequal power dynamics, they are passed off as being remnents of a previous era. The thing that comes up in my mind as a really good example of this is racism. I do not know how many times I have heard people tell me that racism is something of the past, and that the Civil Rights movement in the 60s erased that horrible thing from this world, and now we live in a state of blissful colorblindness. The film that we watched for class "Who Killed Vincent Chin", and the racism and injustice of the matter, seems ridiculous by today's standards, an impossibility almost. But I don't see a big difference between the racial injustice behind the Vincent Chin case and why we see so many black males in prisons. Racism is not a thing of the past, and it has become so insidious that it is now invisible. I think that the real power that racism, sexism, and homophobia really has is the power to make things not matter anymore. I think yes, as we discussed in class, some of the cultural references made in the story are dated, but as to the issues, no, they are still present, and if anything, even more problematic because of the invisibility of oppressed people and the subversion of their voices by normalization of oppression.

One thought I had while writing this story was how it was made more acceptable for Virginia and Meghan to acculturate Indian culture because of their genuiness. I feel that in most cases, what ends up happening is that all the desirable and positive aspects are adopted, while people retain aspects of their original identity which grant them power. It is clear that this is the case not only through the example of Indian women being taken away from the sermon to help cook while the White women, who are closer to the kitchen, are allowed to remain, but I feel that there are small hints as to the author's intent towards these two characters. In describing Meghan's necklace, she links the sound "trinnng" with the necklace and her English lessons. The protaganist taking English lessons are due to a colonial project, and I feel like this was deliberately linked to Meghan's adoption of the Indian culture because regardless of intent, her actions were a colonial project. Meghan and Virginia have the financial means to take trips to India, while they are able to maintain their whiteness and superiority as clear "others" within Indian society. Wishing everyone "peace and happiness," Meghan and Virginia do this by adopting a different culture, rather than confronting whiteness as a deterrent to these ideals.

-Min