My American Digital Story - Open Minds, Open Hearts

My digital story, which I hope will be allowed in the ebook collection. Enjoy :)

The Cats of Mirikatani

The Cats of Mirikatani was a very moving documentary. It began with Jimmy Mirikatani, an Eighty-year-old Japanese man so fixated upon America’s injustices in WWII that he chooses to be homeless rather than take assistance from the government: “No need help social security. No need American passport.” I have always felt that it is unhealthy to fixate on any one event and allow it to define you. Somehow, Mirikatani made it work. Although he was homeless, he was content to draw in the streets, through heat, rain, and snow. He never begged, just sold his paintings every now and again. It was clear that he did not paint for the sake of selling his art, even though it was his only means of sustenance. He drew what he felt strongly about: cats, Japanese internment camps, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That people were interested in his art was just a secondary benefit. This really speaks to his character. At the same time, one could only imagine what he endured to become so against support. Even so early on in the film, I could that he was a strong man with strong principles.

The story really began to delve into the most significant parts of Mirikatani after 9/11. On that fateful day, Linda Hattendorf found him in the deserted streets of Manhattan and brought him to her home. It took a toxic fog to make Mirikatani willing to accept help. However, when he took it, he seemed to be perfectly at home with the idea. He answered many of the questions Linda asked him, and was very vocal about his opinion. His statements brought to light many eerie parallels between the events following the collapse of the World Trade Center and those following America’s war with Japan in WWII. As he watched news on the attack he said, “Can’t make war. Five seconds, ashes.” When he saw the words “Nuke-em” written on a car he told Linda, “They don’t know nothing. People in Japan all warm hearted people. Not evil.” Mirikatani really identified with the discrimination that anyone who “looked” Muslim had to face. He knew that a majority had no connection to the actions of the few. As the story unfolded, more evidence of his deep resentment towards America unfurls: “Stupid American government…crook government.”

Japanese internment- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mr97qyKA2s

                              versus

Discrimination against Muslims - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMFF-EwiVpw

The more Linda talked to Mirikatani, the more she came to understand his feelings. Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani was born in Sacramento California in 1920. However, he was raised in Hiroshima, Japan. When he was 18, he returned to the United States to pursue a career in art. He lived with his sister and her family, in Seattle. Before the war broke out, he had been promised a position as a professor of art in a college. Instead he was sent to an internment camp and separated from his sister. There, he was forced into being a renunciant, which stripped him of a social security number, passport, and citizenship. Even after the war ended, Jimmy was imprisoned.  He was forced to work in a frozen food manufacturing plant for long hours. Finally, he was released. He was never notified that his citizenship was restored. It was only thanks to Linda that he found out. From then on Jimmy made his own way. Again, it was only thanks to Linda that he was able to get in contact with his cousin’s daughter and his sister. Linda also helped him to apply for a Social Security number, and to movie into his own apartment, even though he was initially against the idea. As the film progressed, it was plain to see that the two had begun to care for each other. However, Jimmy needed to find stability, once again, on his own.

For a man of his age and experience, that kind of change needed to begin from within. That is why the reunion at the internment  camp came at the most opportune time. 

Jimmy said that he would go back to Tule Lake to pray for a young man who died at the camp. He was the boy that inspired his cat drawings. The reunion was therapeutic for Jimmy. On the bus back home he told Linda of a dream he had in which he saw the boy, and the boy said, “Goodbye.” Jimmy was at peace, “Not mad anymore. Passing through memory. People know now. I tell everything… Memory. Ghost people. Very kind to me. Ghost people sleeping In the Tule Desert.” He had finally forgiven America. He had lain to rest the ghosts of the past, the ones who likely haunted him for most of his life, reminding him of the persecution his people had endured. I am very happy that the story ended in redemption and transcendence, and that when Jimmy died, he left in good terms with the country he was born in, the country that owed him a better life than he had.

References:

http://www.thecatsofmirikitani.com/aboutFilm.htm

My Name by Sandra Cisneros and adapted by Mark Ravinsky

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, song like sobbing.

In English my first name can mean anything from war-like and manly to gentle and soft. In translation, my last name means rabbi, teacher. To everyone else it means Russian, Polish, Yugoslavian, anything with Slavic descent, really. It is like the number four. But also like the number eight. It is muddy color on one side. Clear on the other. It is like the Russian and Hebrew songs I hear my father play upstairs in his room. I can understand some of them, but others are muffled by distance and closed doors.

It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse – which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexican, don’t like their women strong.

My first name is my great-grandfather’s on my mother’s side, and now it is mine. He was born, unlike me, in the Chinese year of the Ox. But, like me, he was not a superstitious man. He was a lucky man. Kind, loyal, educated and family-oriented. He loved his wife.

My great-grandmother. I would’ve liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn’t marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s the way he did it.

My great-grandmother. I would’ve liked to have known her. Everything she did, she did for her husband. Not because she was subservient, but because she loved him. She was educated and hardworking. My great-grandfather appreciated her.

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but don’t want to inherit her place by the window.

And the story goes she loved him to her death. After he went away to fight in World War II I can imagine her looking out the window, the way so many women back then sat, their longing and worry on an elbow. I wonder if she became ill so soon after news of his death by chance, or was she worried she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be without him.

At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister’s name-Magdalena-which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.

At school they say my name in a questioning manner, as if the syllables were supposed to match up with the red in my hair. I proudly tell them I am Russian. No offense to the Irish. But I will always be Mark Ravinsky, Russian and Jewish.

I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

I am lucky to have my name. It is made of history. My name is the real me. When I have children I would like to name them after my grandparents.My children as Mikhael Ravinsky or Tanya Ravinsky. Yes. Mikhael and Tanya will do. 

"I Would Remember": A Lesson in Living with Death

                Carlos Bulosan was a Filipino immigrant who came to the United States in the 1930’s. He arrived at a time when being an immigrant guaranteed struggle. He slaved as a manual laborer, dealt with discrimination and prejudice, and traveled up and down the west coast with no permanent home. During that time, he took up writing. His works reflect his experiences as a displaced laborer trying to survive in the new world. “I Would Remember”, for example, threads the concept of death through a journey from the Philippines to America.

The story begins with a vivid description of a cool summer night in a village in the Philippines.

 As the narrator gazes out of a window and observes the sights and sound of the countryside, he hears his mother crying out. She died while giving birth to his little brother. The narrator was devastated. “I could not understand why my mother had to die. I could not understand why my brother had to live,” (p.g. 28). However, as the boy grows up, we see that the he learns to accept death. He, along with the reader, realizes that death is a natural part of life. 

Bulosan does an amazing job of using nature as a vital backdrop to every death. We see this in two ways:  Mother Nature, and the character and nature of each individual who expires. The death of his mother in labor, for example, shows him that life begets death and death begets life. Next, the carabao that was murdered by his father was symbolic of the working man’s toils. At the time, if a farmer stopped working, they and their family would likely die.

His father was spurred by anger at his own predicament, and that of the Philippines (which had been occupied by the Spanish, then the Americans). When the narrator embarked on his voyage to America, he met an uneducated peasant boy by the name of Marco. Marco was honest; emotions would flash across his face, never hiding a thing. All he wanted was an opportunity to make money in America, and go back to his home country. His simplicity was representative of the hope that all immigrants have. His death was a lesson in the realistic roughness of immigration. Next was Crispin. The narrator met him in Seattle’s cold winter. The two were homeless, stripped of everything and exposed to the elements. The harsh weather and the starkness of their environment highlighted the luminosity of Crispin’s poetic soul: “…when they are gone no moon in the sky is lucid enough to compare with the light they shed when they are among the living,” (p.g. 31). Last was Leroy, who the reader can assume was African American. He was a man who believed in the power and security of work. He also believed in unity. However, due to his physical make-up, he was viciously murdered, as easily as the carabao.

So, as the story ends we see that the narrator comes to term with death. But, if we look closely at the reading, we also see that each death teaches him about living. The death of his mother was the greatest lesson in mortality. It was the first to teach him of cyclical replacement. Marco's death taught him that one cannot escape misfortune by crossing an ocean. Marco was honest, and his intentions were pure, but he  represented naivety. As a result, the world was quick to impose its severity upon him. Crispin taught a similar lesson. The world has no place for the poetic; it requires action and hard work. Leroy was a hard worker. He believed in all that the narrator had learned thus far. However, who he was thwarted his wisdom. The story Came around full circle with his murder: “When I saw his cruelly tortured body, I thought of my father and the decapitated carabao and the warm blood flowing under our bare feet,” (p.g. 32). It was a horrible way to die, but it taught the narrator that pushing through life leaves you better off giving up like the carabao. Unlike the carabao, who died alone in a ditch, Leroy died above ground, surrounded by people. The carabao would decompose and be absorbed into the same ground he worked on, soon forgotten. Leroy had the same fate, except his death would not be forgotten. The narrator found meaning in it. He would use it to live on.

Fictive Fragments of Father and Son

The history of the world has shown how traumatic events spurred by war, slavery, and prejudice can impact entire countries, cultures, and generations.  World War II was such an event. It devastated a variety of groups, one of which was the Japanese living in America during the war.

Fictive Fragments of a Father and Son demonstrates the effects of this fateful war on one Japanese father and son pair.

The story begins with the author, David Mura, describing how his father masked the struggles in his life. Mura listened to his father’s amended accounts, and believed them. He readily accepted that internment camps were a relief from work, a chance to play basketball after school. That discrimination and prejudice was non-existent, unless you were looking for it.

 Then, Mura speaks of a turning point, a year-long trip to Hiroshima. The trip in itself implies a life lacking in strength of identity. Mura quickly points the reader to the cause of this weakness, his father, born Katsuji Uyemura. He assumes that Katsuji had stories, many of them, that had been hidden from him. It was evident that Mura believed that these unsaid experiences defined his father's true nature. The author warns the reader that his father would call these stories fiction, “completely untrue.” 

As I read on, I began to understand the title of the story. There is a section in the piece where Mura either imagines or explains how his father learned of America's victory in the war, which came with an understanding of Japan's loss.  His father is unsettled by the news. He was placed in a difficult predicament, forced to choose between his ancestor’s country and the country he would likely live in for the rest of his life. “I am American he says to himself. I am glad we won. The light through the leaves is bright, blinding. The heat immense, oppressive. The sounds all over town joyous. He repeats his mantra over and over. He learns to believe it,” (p.g 352). He surrendered himself to America, just as his country had. But, unlike his country, he gave himself over completely. The pressure and his choice ultimately shattered his cultural identity. The rest of his life becomes a struggle to build another, one that allows him to not only survive, but thrive in his new homeland. The most powerful expression of this reconstruction is his name, a common symbol of identity: Katsuji Uyemura soon gave way to Tom Katsuji Uyemura, then Tom Katsuji Mura, then Tom K. Mura (p.g 357).

Despite the considerable transformation he had undergone so early on in life, Tom Mura painted an uncomplicated version of his life for his son. He told him that he had always lived a life equal to any white man in America. All he had to do to succeed was, “work his ass off,” a piece of information that he drilled into his son more than anything else. As a result, Mura did not know much about his father's identity as a Japanese-American. He only really saw one side of him, a sturdy, over-compensating American side.

So, Mura was forced to fill in the gaps himself. He did so in “fictive fragments” by imagined the tension his father must have felt all his life. He felt his father's (1) glorification of, and self-restriction from, white women, (2) need to prove himself as an outsider, and (3) underlying, powerful want to belong in this country. Through all of this, he came to understand how his father's past affected their relationship. The fragments explained the time he found a Playboy magazine stashed away by his father; a picture of a white woman inside of the magazine awakened Mura’s own sexuality. It illuminated his father’s fixation on success, and why he expected nothing short of perfection from Mura. It clarified Tom Mura’s eager acceptance of Christianity, as well as a timely renouncement when he became successful. Lastly, it made him realize that his father’s actions were a product of the pressure his felt growing up as an outsider in America. Tom Mura had taken his professor’s advice to, “…try and be not one, but two hundred percent American,” to heart. Everything that ensued was an attempt to escape his Japanese culture and embrace the American way. The journey was difficult, and that is why he had so much rage. However, in the end, he describes his father as content, with no problems with identity, past or race, and freed from history (p.g 357). It seemed as if, by succeeding in America, Tom Mura was no longer weighed down by his ties to Japan. The only thing still left unanswered is Mura's own identity/role: "What is the job of the son of K.? To forgive his crime? To try him again?"

Open Minds, Open Hearts

This is the transcript of my digital story, which engages the question of what it means to be American. I wanted to share it in case anyone is interested!

*WALKING TO HOUSE*. 

Everyone has an ethnicity, a culture they have roots in. Many people follow in the footsteps set by their forefathers, barely skirting the edges of the beaten path before them. They let history and tradition define who they associate with, how they live their lives, and who they will become. These individuals’ perspectives and definitions become so rigid that it isolates them from the people that are walking by their very side. We create these barriers on our own, and persuade each other that “like attracts like” and that “we are better off with our own kind.” But, what if culture and ethnicity were more than just a part of a linear, or some would say, circular journey. What if…they were open doors? 

*DOOR OPENS*

What if everything that made us who we are, that which we treasure most, that which some of us work so hard to keep, we simply give to others. I think that we will find that it is less a relinquishment of identity than an opportunity to grow and learn as an individual, a stairway leading to enlightenment and a diverse knowledge set built upon acculturation and sharing. This can only occur if we WAKE UP and understand that this diversity will only strengthen our individual cultures, as well as our world. How do I know? Well…let me tell you a story. *Door closes and we see a picture of mama and papa*

My mother was born in a large city in Russia called Bryansk. My father was born in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev. But really, they were born under the same communist regime: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR. The USSR stifled religious freedom and expression, especially Judaism. So, my father, whose family is Jewish, grew up with almost no religious experience. My mother, on the other hand, is Christian, and grew up with much more religion in her life. The two of them married under one condition set by my father: “We will raise the children to be Jewish.” My father had never expected to marry anyone other than a Russian Jewish girl, but in May, 1991, the two were married. They arrived in America on December 5^th. 1 month later, I was born in Coney Island Hospital, in Brooklyn, NY. Because my parents barely knew any English, my first language was Russian. I went to a Russian-run Yeshivah for my first two years in school. A Yeshivah is a private educational institution that focuses on Judaic texts, mine was taught by Russian speaking teachers. As a result, when I transferred to a public school in the 1^st grade I was put in ESL. As the years passed, my English got better and better. To preserve my cultural identity I was mostly encouraged to play with kids of the same kind as me, kids who were Russian, Jewish, or both. But, even from an early age, I did not share their apprehension. I understood that my family was guarded around cultures and colors they had not seen in Russia, but I wanted so badly to befriend every person I laid my eyes on. Despite my best intentions, though, I still found that I identified best with my Russian friends.

Things began to change when we made the move from Brooklyn to New Jersey. I was 12 years old and entering my awkward phase. And oh how awkward it was… and quiet. With my grandparents far away, and my parents now intent on improving their English, I was using less and less Russian. In fact, I didn't say much in any language at that time. I think I was confused. The Russians at my middle school were scattered. I did not know where I belonged. I was still always smiling of course. That is forever a part of me. But I will tell you something people may not have known back then. At that point, I didn't mean it.

              

           You know, I actually remember the exact week I found my reason to smile. It was the week of October 6th, 2008, and I had just found dance. Or…dance had found me. It’s hard to say for sure which one is correct. Whichever it was, I could not be happier. My every moment, whether awake or asleep, was filled with dance. I hungered for knowledge and expertise. I found my opportunities for both within the abundance of people that were quickly filling my life. Although my shyness remained, this thriving sub-culture overpowered it, and I became, not exactly talkative, but never afraid to ask a question. The response was overwhelming. In my years in the dance scene I have met people from all over the world. Although, we could not always find a common language, I found that, amazingly, we did not need one. Believe it or not, a person’s story is as much in their movement as in the back of their minds.  And almost every single dancer I have ever met has welcomed me with open arms and a giving heart. I have learned about, and been inspired by so many things over the past few years:  In the beginning, I fell in love with Asian Culture. The people I danced with in New Jersey were mostly Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Taiwanese. From them I developed an intense love for Korean movies, certain Korean music, Japanese Anime, and lots of Asian Cuisines. I share these interests with another friend of mine, Tanz, who is Bengali. As most Muslims and Jews do, we text each other saying: “Happy Hannukah” and, “Eid Mubarak.” Actually, I think my favorite part of our friendship was the day he invited me to his family’s Eid party. The food was amazing, and his accepting family was even better! As I currently venture into New York I am exposed to so much more than just Asian cultures. Recently I have been really interested in learning Latin and African dance. I cannot wait to learn more about each style, and the stories behind them. I know that these experiences will help me grow by leaps and bounds as a dancer. After almost 6 years of dance, I have realized three things:

1. You do not know the person beside you without first turning in their direction, and meeting them halfway 2. You cannot understand a way of being without first opening the door obscuring your view and peering inside. And last, you cannot hope to achieve individual growth without taking the hand of whoever is on the other side of that door, and simply….trusting.

              Finding myself wasn't easy. There were times when I thought I was losing more than I was I ever thought I should.  I ended up having to explore so many different avenues to arrive at my current route, but it was all worth it. And this journey of mine would not have been possible without America. Remember how I said that dance gives people a way to share without any verbal interaction? In that same sense I see dance as a microcosm of America.  America has given people a common ground on which they can stand and interact on. Why should we segregate ourselves when most of us have purposely left behind our borders oceans and generation away? There is too much knowledge for the knowing, and it can be found in the person by your side. I feel so blessed to live in a country of such opportunity. And I have to say, learning has never been so much fun.