I vaguely recall wanting to post over Spring Break about M. Butterfly, but you know what they say about the best laid plans.

So!

I just wanted to post some personal responses to "The Upside-Downnes of the World as it Unfolds," in particular some of the issues raised in Part 3.

There is the introduction of Meghan and Virginia, who, as the narrator puts it, "want to be brown and sugary like me." She emphasizes that "they didn't mean to mock or be malicious."

I remember that when I first came to Pomona I was faced with something I had never had to deal with before: the assumption that I spoke Japanese fluently, that I knew all about Japanese customs, that I was, essentially, Japanese. Which is about the farthest thing from the truth, really. No one in my family speaks Japanese, just me and my brother; we speak poor, broken Japanese, and there's no reason for us to use a language we aren't fluent in when we can just as easily use English without the embarrassment. In a lot of ways, being Japanese-American means that I have Japanese influences in my life. I was given a set of Girl's Day dolls when I was born, I collect maneki nekos (those good luck cats, with one or two paws in the air), we have sushi for New Years, etc.

So to have someone say, "Oh, you're Japanese!" and start speaking in rapid Japanese was disorienting. Add in the fact that most people like that were white, and I was completely lost. I suppose I should note that in general, Asian/Asian-American students always asked, "Are you from Japan?" Given all this, I was able to relate very strongly when the narrator says, "[Meghan] often exclaimed in longer Hindi sentences, catching me off guard, making me feel ignorant and like a charlatan."

What the narrator felt, "shame that [Meghan and Virginia] were better Indians" than her, more culturally aware of her culture than she was herself, was something I felt too. I've come to think of this as a sort of "commodification of culture," for lack of a better way of classifying it. Isn't it strange, that white people are "better" Indians or Japanese than those of us born into the tradition? Most of the white students who put me on the spot by speaking Japanese or assuming that I was well-versed in traditional Japanese culture told me that they'd "picked it all up" while traveling or living abroad in Japan. They learned culture through privilege. Likewise, the narrator of the story emphasizes how "white" those practicing her "culture" are.

This raised a lot of questions for me. First of all, what is culture? Is it being born into it, and creating our own unique experience from it? Is there a set of prescribed norms that everyone of a certain culture understands and accepts?

Second, who "writes" culture? Who determines what makes one a "good" Indian or a "good" Japanese? To what extent to "Japanese" and "Indian" people write it, and to what extent to "white" people determine it?

And third, why do white people go looking for another culture to become part of? I think this is particularly important. Yes, they are exoticizing different cultures, but isn't it telling that they don't, as the narrator says, "go check out [their] own ancestry!"? Does that imply that they don't have an ancestry worthy of incorporating, that it doesn't matter, that whiteness obscures those kinds of differences, or something else?

Just wanted to comment on those things because I felt like those were the issues that made it possible for me to relate to the story, and they were the things that elicited the most emotional response out of me. Chances are that I will wake up in a few hours and realize that I've written complete nonsense.