Doing things you don’t want to do

Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. That’s life.

When you’re a foreigner you have to do more things you don’t want to do that you probably will not have done otherwise. That’s my life.

Spite

Sometimes I wonder if I don’t have too much resentment in me. If I stick around, a big part of why would be to spite them.

Sisterly talk

I talked with my sister on the phone. It’s been a while since we talked. I’ve told her in my email that I take it as a sign that her relationship is going well:) She denies she’s been inattentive to me, but we all know that’s not true. She likes her boyfriend, and I’m happy for her.

The only thing is mom doesn’t like him one bit. As of now. I’ve tried to tell her that it’s not her who’s going to live with him (yes, my sister’s talking marriage here) and that it’s not her business to judge him. My mom knows. It’s just that she has pretty fixed ideas of who she wants her daughters to be with. I’m embarrassed to say my mom’s criteria are very, um, keyed into social expectations, for lack of a better expression. She thinks my sister’s boyfriend (whom I’ve never met) is too unambitious, has a job that is not very well paying and not very prestigious (i.e. he’s not a doctor, lawyer, financier, professor, or the like), and is not that well off economically. She’s saying that she can’t imagine my sister living with a guy like that.

But that’s for her to work out with her boyfriend.

I understand my mom and love her. But this is one of those things that make me wish that she’d just take it easy and provide emotional support instead of trying to get her own way. If her daughter wants to be with a bum and is happy with a bum, why can’t she just accept the bum as he is? Maybe easier said than done. Not having been a mother, I don’t know what it’s like to be one. Though I have a tiny, just a tiny, suspicion that Korean mothers may be a bit, just a bit, more interfering in their children’s affairs than, say, American mothers.

Maybe she’ll like him more as she gets to know him better. I hope things work out well and that my sister marries the guy if she likes him well enough. It’d be encouraging to see one of us in a successful marriage. I’m beginnig to think if we’re not doomed to failure in our relationships with men given our relationship, or lack of relationship, with our dad and being tough and independent (not a feminine virtue in Korea). So, it’ll be good to see her happily married.

I have this vague desire to go home this winter even if I’ve been pretty recently. I don’t know why. My sister’s saying I should come. I think my mom wants me to come too. Maybe I’ll go. A friend asked if I’m interested in doing a four-week language program in a language school in Guatemala. It’d be good to have some Spanish under the belt. I need it. I’ll have to talk to the friend a bit more, see how serious he is about it, and then decide.

There’s a party I’ll be going to in about half an hour. I’m not sure if I want to go, but I’m going anyway, because, as a friend put it in his blog post, that’s what well-adjusted young people do. I’m not sure if I’m “young people” any more, but 60% of why I’m going is to appear social. Why do I live like this . . .

Wheesung

휘성(フィソン) – 다쳐도 좋아

I think Wheesung is the king of Korean R&B right now. What a voice.
Even if I’m not a great fan of sentimentality, I like the mellowness in some Korean male singers’ voices. It’s really sweet.

I’m going to stop drinking for the next few months. I really thought I was going to die of alcohol poisoning this morning. It was so not my fault, though. The cup, the cup, the oversized cup fooled me into drinking way more than I could take.

A Room of One’s Own

I went to Coco Fusco’s A Room of One’s Own. It was great!!! Coco Fusco was everything I expected and more. I had watched her famous documentary Couple In a Cage she did with Gomez-Pena and read Broken English and I’m really happy to have had this chance to see her perform in person. She’s one of the leading performers in political theater right now.

I liked the conception of the piece which was to show what it means for women, a gender minority, to have become perpetrators of violence in the Iraq war, something she explores through the active presence of female interrogators in Guantanamo. I liked the execution of the piece which consciously avoided any kind of sensationalization of the use of sexuality in torture. There was a post-show discussion with Coco Fusco and she told us that she had gone to a school for interrogation, something run by retired interrogation officers who go by Team Delta. Fascinating. She went to this school with a group to learn about torture, and she says that she’s been to academic conferences with the interrogators from Team Delta (with whom she was open about what she was doing).

She took to task second-wave feminism and its uncritical embrace of female empowerment. For second-wave feminists sexual liberation was a form of female empowerment and the only way in which women could be thought of in relation to violence was as victims. (yeah, women were that oppressed in the U.S. too) But what she’s discoverd as she started on this project is that despite the misogynist and homophobic sexual culture of the military, women interrogators do it to advance their careers. Marginalized in the army as they may be, women still choose to do this.

Thing is, second-wave feminism didn’t think thoroughly enough about what “empowerment” is. And its consequences. Which is probably true of many similar movements that seek to give voice and autonomy to formerly oppressed and abjected persons. Empowerment means that you will get power. It doesn’t exactly tell you what you’re supposed to do when you finally have it. It more or less assumes that you’ll know what to do since you’ve *personally* experienced subjection yourself. It assumes you won’t do the same thing as your oppressors. Well, so much for wishful thinking.

P.S. there was this unforgettable moment during Fusco’s performance when Fusco, in the character of the female interrogator officer who completely believes that what she is doing is in the service of the public and the nation, said “but we are doing this so that you can sleep at night in peace.” I froze as our eyes locked for a second. Tears welled up.

Hell of a semester ahead

all because of this totally unnecessary tug-of-war over the committee. such bs. I’ve cried my eyes over it for a bit. Now I’m over it. I’ve talked with my godsend advisor. And I’m good with whatever at this point. What’s happening is not in my hands. My advisor, god bless her, if there is one, has told me with confidence that this is not about me; that it’s about where the institution is. The department may not be quite ready for an Asian Americanist. That I’d be the first Asian Americanist the dept. is going to put out. Not quite true. There was one before me. But that was before the dept. started building an AsAm core.

Whatever. I’m good as long as my advisor roots for me. She believes in what I do. And I’m in good hands. Furthermore, frankly, I really don’t care if the other professors fight their heads off over whatever. I’m not worried that I’ll end up with no job later. If I do, then that’s that. Even though there are moments of extreme anxiety as a grad student, I also kind of feel like I’ve been through enough to not care about what I have no control over. I’ve not much to lose. And I’m really not all that worried about how I’m going to appear in the eyes of some high-profile professor. Worst comes to worst, I can just take off. Or, I might choose to take off, who knows. I’m going to do my best within my means; but I’m not going to stress over what’s not. It’s so not worth it.

Still I watched Sad Movie tonight. To decompress a bit. It’s a Korean melodrama. A typical melodrama. Four strands of love stories–three romantic relationships and one mother-son relationship. Yes, that’s right. The Korean cultural imaginary will put the mother-son relationship right next to a very heteronormative erotic relationship and not have any problem with it. It’s all beautiful, pure love, no?

I scoff at these melodramas, but I do have a pang of nostalgia now and then of what I see. Such raw emotions. So immature. So irrational. So stupid. There’s simply too much romantic relationships in Korean movies and dramas. Almost everything is about falling in or out of love with the right guy/girl. Or now that and affairs. It’s like all the social unrest and anxiety get displaced onto romantic relationships. There’s no other way out except through romantic fantasies.

I’m so not like these pale, skinny, girly Korean women in the movies. The one who needs to be protected. I’m just too tough and strong to play such a role. And I don’t want to be weak and dependent. I’ll never be able to marry in Korea as long as the ideal female remains the ethereal, good and giving princess. Whatever. I’ve stopped caring about that too.

Relieved

I’ve been pretty stressed out for the past few days. I’m about a week behind in my period, and while I’ve had irregularity of this sort before, it was freaking me out because I’ve been pretty regular for the past year or so. Reasonably, it didn’t make much sense that I’d think about the possibility of pregnancy, but, then again, you never know. So I kept going back and forth between “there is no way I could be p– remember the time you thought you might be x-? you’re being neurotic” and “but what if? you can’t take any chances.” It was totally nerve wrecking. I finally bought a test kit. I’m not pregnant.

Last night, watching You Can Count On Me (because I was too tired and distracted to do anything else), I kept having these visions of single motherhood I’ve been on TV and in movies. It was horrifying. And word really falls short of the feeling in this case.

Another thing this has made me rethink is the guy that I’m seeing now. I think I’ll stop seeing him. I know I said I’d stop seeing him before. But this time I think it’s for real. When you think you might be pregnant, and you think about the guy as the father of your child, then things that you didn’t consider before enter the horizon. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But that’s happened in this case. And he is going out of my life.

She loved all beautiful things . . .

I’ve watched two Woody Allen movies over the weekend, Hannah and Her Sisters and Another Woman. Is it really true that talented women in the humanities are immediately courted by male professors once they come into their view? In which case, why do I still not have any old male professor at my heels? Heh heh, just kidding. But you have to admit that a lot of women in Woody Allen’s movies have affairs or fall in love with their professors. I actually like old men. I don’t know why I always end up dating guys either my age or younger.

I’m kind of tense these days. I think it’s because the semester’s starting, and I’m a little concerned about a new professor who I have to court onto my committee. I’ll be sitting in on his class, but it’s not that which makes me a bit nervous. It’s more that I’d be evaluated based on my performance in that class. Which means that I’ll have to do all the readings with extra care and be alert for most of the time. It’s pressure, although it’s the kind of pressure I’ve been handling all along.

I’m also slightly dumbfounded by my date. We’ve been dating for about three months now, not including the two-month hiatus in between, and I still feel distant from him when I’m not with him. Is this a bad sign? It probably is, right?

There was a free concert at the World Cafe last night, Courtney Fairchild’s album release party. I went with A.
It was fun overall, although the opening was really lame. Coco Fusco’s performing at the Live Arts in a couple of weeks, and I’m planning to go with a few friends. Should be fun . . . These are the moments I’m glad that I live in Philadelphia.