This is a little late in the making.

From our discussion in class last week about "The Upside-Downness of the World" and from some of the blog posts I've read about the text, I wish to discuss the idea of multiculturalism and how it plays out in our society. I feel that Shelly brought up a very interesting point about how appropriation of a culture, whether with or without genuinely good intentions, is not justified. To me, her sentiments echo the voice of Dictee and how it is incredibly difficult to disintguish and identify the boundaries and methods of identifying one's onwn culture. Just as it seems slightly ridiculous to see Meghan and Virginia parading around in Saris and attemtping to speak Hindi, when I see first generation Asian immigrants or FOBs (fresh off the boat) trying to assimilate into American culture, I can't help but be amused at their sometimes seemingly futile attempts. Now, please do not take that in an offense way. What I am trying to say is that there will always be an awkwardness when people of one culture try to learn about, assimilate, appropriate, etc. another culture.

An example would be myself. As a Korean, I have the Korean culture as my heritage but my attempts often display my Korean-AMERICAN identity; whether it is in the American accent in my Korean pronunciation, or how Koreans can almost instinctively and forever tell that I am American in my mannerisms, clothes, etc.

So how should we go about addressing this issue of crossing cultural boundaries where there might be people like me that are part of a culture (basically by default) who can not really speak the language, living with others, who do not originally belong to the culture yet stake a vested interest and can speak the language with ease. (I've seen some non-Koreans speak fluent and incredibly Korean-sounding Korean... if that makes any sense). Where do you draw the line? Where can you draw the line? Who is better representing and living the culture? Can that question be answered? Should it? And this could be applied to all aspects of a culture, not just the language.

Another way to direct my thoughts would be to see this from the other side. Just as immigrants with different cultural backgrounds are attempting, in their own ways, to assimilate to American culture while keeping intact their own, everyone here (ideally) is also assimilating and understanding the interactions and tensions between their own cultures with everyone else's cultures. (I'm going to use the term "white" just to make explaining this easier, but you can replace "white" with any other race/ethnicity/gender etc and I think it would still make sense. I think....)

For a white person, especially living in the Los Angeles area, their culture is defined by surrounding cultures, just as much as the Asian community to mainstream culture. In fact, would it be to idealist for me to say that mainstream culture is continually being defined by all the other cultures that attempt and succeed in voicing their issues? Culture then becomes this fluid motion of identifying, remembering, honoring the past and moving forward, progressing and changing with current events and people, in and around one's own culture.

** Culture is defined by the people that it encompasses. And in our current society, the people are not homogeneous and therefore, the culture cannot be this static, clear-cut idea that excludes and isolates dfferent groups of people. That is not to say that culture is one huge shade of grey, but that the space in between the distinctions of different cultures is a growing space where many find themselves in and we need to recognize that space as an equally legitimate space as the clearly defined spaces.

Please help me to clarify these ideas... I feel like this is an important discussion in terms of why we feel so unsettled with Meghan and Virgnia's attempts of cultural immersion as well as the protagonist's feelings of guilt for not "knowing" her culture.