I haven't been able to do e-mail for some time but I do miss the
electronic community here. At least here, I feel that we can try to
explore difficult issues with sincerity and to argue, agree and disagree
without "being charged as being guided by one's feelings" (Sigh... this is
Hong Kong; when people cannot think of better arguments to speak against
you, they just charge you of being guided by your feelings even though
everything you say is based on solid grounds).
But yesterday I attended a very interesting and provocative presentation:
it's Allan Luke's plenary session in the Knowledge and Discourse
Conference in Hong Kong, in which he gave kind of an autobiography. He
did it in 2 parts--the first part a theorizing, an analysis of the
different genres of narratives of ethnic minorities in America,
the second part, his autobiography, his family history--his father and
uncle's acting careers in Hollywood, and how the industry constructs images of
Asian Americans... he talked of "looking back" (as parallel to "answering
back", "talking back")... later he told us that he did that in two parts
because he would be able to do theorizing only in that manner; it's too
difficult to do his autobiography in a so-called "unemotional" way. This
may be a good strategy.
More later, I'm just too exhausted now...
Cheers,
Angel