One of the most important lessons that I learned was South
East Asian history. Unfortunately, most of my knowledge from this part of the
war came from US veteran war stories. Although they did not hide that the war
was terrible, they still said that they acted on orders in service of their
country. It was really eye opening to read and watch films about the affects of
the wars after they had “finished” as well as to hear how they had a history
before the Americans tried to dictate how they should behave. In many of these,
I’ve been mentally comparing this to my grandma’s stories of her experience in
Taiwan when it was bombed by the United States.
Another aspect that really impacted me was seeing those
affected by agent orange. It was hard to see that so many people still suffer
from the side effects of chemicals polluting the water, plants and air. When hearing
about the children had deformities due to the chemical exposure of their
mothers it was heartbreaking to see what these chemicals had done to them in
their lives. Not only are the deformities something that they did not receive because
they participate in the war that occurred years ago but because the side
effects of the substances dropped to kill anti American groups did not disappear
after the fight had been called off. There is so much that we don’t know about
violence during war however since there has been so many problems with agent
orange I wish they did not use something that caused needles violence for generations.
A final aspect of this course that I enjoyed was the chance
to see how art was vocal. In this class, there are a few examples that show how
the artist involved made statements with the works that they had created.
Seeing the nail salon wash bins with their bright colors did not seem too
different from the classic tendency to elevate the mundane objects in life. Yet
quite a few felt that it was a move that disrespected the community in which
they protested to get their way of viewing the piece recognized. This was
something we had to discuss in creating our group project in how people would respond
to the questions we asked them during the interviews to how the actual
presentation would turn out.
This was an eye opening course for me in regards to South
East Asian American history that needs
to be preserved so that others can begin to understand the background of the
cultures of those involved
No comments:
Post a Comment