Hapa Girl - My 4th Reading Post

     For the past few weeks I have been really struggling with the excerpts from Hokum.  As reading is already difficult for me, trying to sort through the unusual dialect of the authors challenged me even more.  On top of that, the bitter grudge embedded within the reading (although understandable) made it difficult for me to find the stories truly laughable.  This week, some of the readings have really touched me though. Both for humorous reasons and for how relatable they are.

    The story that touched me the most was Ellison's "Invisible Man," about the yams. I am not sure if the overall absurdity of the yams and the revelation about freedom through food was supposed to be funny but I actually found it comically inspiring.  Yes, perhaps discovering a sense of empowerment and liberation through food is over the top and ridiculous, but I enjoyed the "message" of this story. The rich imagery of the yams and setting helped contribute to the impact of the story on me.  I found myself lifted up with the narrator as he expressed his joy for not being ashamed of what he liked and creating opinions for himself, instead of what society deemed correct.  I grew up very sculpted by the media and world around me.  Television and books taught me I wasn't supposed to like vegetables and that all men are not to be trusted.  Although the narrator's experience with the yams was a bit comical, I actual felt a strong connection to the meaning because I was so affected by society growing up.

    The story that really made me laugh was Senna's "The Mulatto Millennium." The whole first half of the story about identifying as black did not really interest me but I found myself laughing out loud throughout the list of mulatto classifications the narrator invented. A lot of the descriptions had huge amounts of stereotyping and silly names that had their own tone of racism within them. However, as the narrator made jabs as California (my home state) I couldn't help but laugh.  I nearly died during the part about the "Tomatto" as the first black president, especially in light of Obama and this year's election. 

    As a child of mixed decent (half asian and half white) who has struggled with identity, this descriptive stereotyping definitely felt like something I could relate to.  Many times I have had people ask me what I am or just label me as "that asian girl," which I always was offended by.  I took pride in my mixed decent and in being "hapa." More often then not, I too wanted to relate more closely to my "white side," because in America and much of the world, that just seemed to be the "better" thing to be. Growing up I even had a shirt that said "hapa girl." I thought that was the coolest thing to identify with. As I have stated in the past, how closely I can relate to a subject really affects how funny or important it is to me.  The sassy nature of this piece and my background as a "mixed" person really made this piece stand out to me, as it did not relate strictly to African American culture and history.