|
buria
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Interests: precollege: martial arts, composing + listening to music, artistic endeavors, philosophical ponderings, DoRkDanCinG, being absolutely ludicrous.
college: mocking faux progressive racists, judgement, spite, elitism, deconstructing your casual conversations
Expertise: Going Buckwild
Occupation: Artist
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/3/2002
|
|
| It's one of those times when I realize how long it's been, and how I am in a different world now. | | |
| Life skills that I don't have:
- not getting wound up
- persistence
| | |
| http://thatgirlhasissues.blogspot.com/2008/01/reprieve.html
http://thatgirlhasissues.blogspot.com/2007/12/existential-crisis-part-two-insanity.html
"...she's right in that I am a bit invested in my own madness.I keep thinking
that the moment I get "sane" will be the moment that someone has
tricked me into drinking the koolaid. I am so concerned that I will be
stepford-wifed, that someone will undo my critical eye, that I am
invested in staying on the margin of what gets to be called sane and
notsane in order to not comply with what I perceive as the world's
madness. I am invested in being noncompliant. And I see my depression
(there I go again) as an unintentional exercise of my noncompliance.
But, of course, being depressed sucks mostly. And I don't want to be
depressed. When I am not depressed, I enjoy not being depressed, but I
also feel very suspicious, like I'm missing something. Oppression does
that. Higher sensitivities to the living subtext breathing around you."
| | |
| Excerpt from Sula:
“…for it was in dreams that the two girls had met. Long before Edna Finch’s Mellow House opened, even before they marched through the chocolate halls of Garfield Primary School…they had already made each other’s acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a some one who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream. When Nel, an only child, sat on the steps of her back porch surrounded by the high silence of her mother’s incredible orderly house, feeling the neatness pointing at her back, she studied the poplars and fell easily into a picture of herself lying on a flower bed, tangled in her own hair, waiting for some fiery prince. He approached but never quite arrived. But always, watching the dream along with her, were some smiling sympathetic eyes. Someone as interested as she herself in the flow of her imagined hair, the thickness of the mattress of flowers, the voile sleeves that closed below her elbows in gold-threaded cuffs. Similarly, Sula, also an only child, but wedged into a household of throbbing disorder constantly awry with things, people, voices, and the slamming of doors, spent hours in the attic behind a roll of linoleum galloping through her own mind on a gray-and-white horse tasting sugar and smelling roses in full view of someone who shared both the taste and the speed. So when they met, first in those chocolate halls and next through the ropes of the swing, they felt the ease and comfort of old friends. Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be. Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other to grow on. Daughters of distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers (Sula’s because he was dead; Nel’s because he wasn’t), they found in each other’s eyes the intimacy they were looking for (51-52).
| | |
| This is pretty hilarious.
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004387.html
Marriage And Food Are So 2002, Indian Artists Say
Convene to Discuss Problem
NEW YORK — Indian filmmakers, authors, dancers and other artists
gathered Monday at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop to discuss the
community’s ongoing obsession with arranged marriage and food.
The idea for the meeting, which attracted the who’s who of artists in
the Indian diaspora, was borne out of the anger and frustration author
Lara Mookhey-Schmid felt after thumbing through Sonia Prasad’s newly
released The Exotic Arranged Marriage Spices Club at Barnes and Noble.
“Arranged, Re-Arranged, Aloo Gobi and Me, My Vegan Arranged Marriage,
Mistress of Spices, I could go on,” Mookhey-Schmid said. “I noticed
that desi artists are using food and marriage as culture symbols over
and over again. It’s a cop out, and it’s getting old.”
Mookhey-Schmid’s recent book, This Book is Not About Indian Food and
Does Not Involve Arranged Marriages, was shortlisted for the American
Book Award. The award instead went to Farha Mirza’s book, My Chicken
Tikka Masala Marriage: It Was Arranged!
Meeting attendees were not shy about expressing their views on the food and marriage issue.
“The Exotic Arranged Marriage Spices Club is an intertextual study of
how arranged marriage is enacted in non-Indian, non-Hindu spaces,” said
NYU English professor Manorama Chugh. “Unfortunately, that’s all it is.”
Others are not so diplomatic.
“I’ve read this crap twenty times before,” said UCLA history professor Vinay Pal. “Enough!”
Participants acknowledged the growing problem, and decided to place a moratorium on weddings and certain foods.
“Arranged marriages are definitely out,” said Laila Ranveer, a
filmmaker and meeting facilitator. Foods that made the list included
tamarind, rice, dal, spices, the word “masala,” and fish (only for
Bengalis). Participants also agreed that characters in their works
could no longer longingly remember their
mother’s/aunty’s/grandma’s/maid’s homemade cooking.
Sonia Prasad, however, was unfazed by criticism that she is focusing on
arranged marriage because it’s a safe topic in ethnic literature.
“Perhaps my focus on arranged marriage is a bit too much for you, but
that’s probably because of your Eurocentric way of perceiving my
culture,” she said. “Shit, all Indians talk about is marriage. What’s
wrong with making a few extra bucks off of it?”
South Asian audiences so far have negative reactions to her book. The
most ardent fans, for some reason, are unanimously American females who
are not of Indian origin.
“Wow, it’s so fascinating to learn about the exploitative and
repressive means which the Indians use to control women,” said Lynn
Babcock, a publishing editor. “Oh, and I really do love Indian food –
so spicy!”
| | |
|
