bloogs blowing by

made my day

after a workish cold winter day, i went go pick up tae at her school.

up on the bulletin board, all the kids had drawn pictures of things that make them happy.  the teachers had written little phrases on the bottom of each picture.

tae's said: reading books with mommy makes me happy.

mine would have said: connecting with tae over books and poetry makes me happy.

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speaking of which, tae has been really in to rhymes lately.  sometimes she gets things that actually rhyme, sometimes she does alliteration, and sometimes she matches vowel sounds.  "cat, snack, that's a rhyme!"  "toe, tae, that's a rhyme!"  "night, light, that's a rhyme!"  "poop, poop, that's a rhyme!"

in trying to engage her in this, i'm trying to expose her to more poetry.  she likes to pick up anything from dr. seuss to sylvia plath.  i decided to try something new - shel silverstein.  for some reason, i forgot how wacky some of his poems are. 

one that seems to perplex tae the most is about how "people from mars have clothes just like ours..." it goes on to talk about how everything is the same, except for the faces are not in the same places.  and there's a picture of a guy with his head attached to his butt. 

bookish and slowish

i read a book this weekend, and i feel great.  well, actually, i'm trying my hardest not to be sick.  the next week is going to be a rough one.

i just finished adrian tomine's shortcomings.  sure it's a graphic novel, but it is so thought-provoking and so good.  just go read it, and then come talk to me about what you thought.  i'm happy to have eeked out the time to read, even if wasn't a long or word-long book.

in a funny coincidence, daddy in a strange land just tagged me with a book meme, so here it goes:

1.Hardcover or paperback, and why?

paperback - because i don't like toting around heavy books, and reading a hardcover in bed never seems cozy enough.                

2.If I were to own a book shop I would call it…

well, since ibook is already taken... hello books.  why?  well, i was going to say "hell books" (i love bell hooks) but that doesn't sound right.               

3.My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

"without justice there is no love."  bell hooks, all about love.

4.The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…

bell hooks.  because she rocks.  and every time i read one of her books, she rocks my world again.           

5.If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be…

umm, harry potter 7?  because it's been years and i haven't gotten through  book 5 yet?  or may be i would bring this non-linear story book black and white by david macaulay that my sister bought tae?

6.I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

make book reading as effortless as watching tv - so i could just lie in bed and the book would levitate in that just-perfect position over my face.  holding the books there always gives me a weird crick in my neck or my shoulder or puts my arm to sleep.

7.The smell of an old book reminds me of…

the old library in the town that i grew up in.  the libraries in new england are historic.  you can imagine louisa may alcott stopping in.  seriously.

8.If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…

sleeping beauty.  i want to sleep.  a lot more.  or rumplestiltskin.

9.The most overestimated book of all time is…

i don't know.  part of me wants to say the joy luck club.  but i liked it the first time i read it. 

10. I hate it when a book…

has too many characters to keep track of.  and takes place in too many places.  in too many different eras.  it's too confusing for me.

i'm tired... but now i'm itching to read another book...

harry potter

in my infinite wisdom, i decided to introduce tae to harry potter.  i think i got a little over-excited - friday was my first trip to the movies in about a year (to see order of the phoenix) - and with the impending release of the final volume, i was getting harry potter on the brain.

so, i moved my collection of harry potter books to a shelf that tae could reach.  what was i thinking?  she can barely carry the last three volumes, and of course my two-year-old would then insist that i read from them to her.  and of course she would ask me what all the different new words means.

"mommy, what's nonsense mean?"
"mommy, are you a muggle?"
"mommy, what's a house elf?"
"mommy, find dobby!"
"mommy, what's kreacher?"

so far, harry potter and the chamber of secrets is her favorite.  except that we've really only read two pages, the two where harry first meets dobby.  and of course tae would insist that i read those two pages over and over again until she fell asleep. 

and of course, once she's asleep, i get to read my harry potter books.  i'm horribly behind because i got annoyed with petulant harry in book 5, so i have a good 1500 pages to read before i reach the end.  sigh. 

covering

the only good thing about waiting is that it gives me time to catch up on my reading.

i just started covering: the hidden assault on our civil rights by kenji yoshino.  this guy is brilliant.  i couldn't put the book down (and i was waiting for a while).

his basic premise is that while usually we talk about "passing," covering is equally rampant in our society, just as damaging, and just  as indicative of -isms. (read more here.)

i skimmed forward a little bit, and i saw some of his discussion of mothers in the workforce... i think the exact quote was that mothers are the queers of the workplace.  says one woman yoshino spoke to:

"I love my husband, but he can make decisions to privilege work over our son in a way I can't... I don't experience that as a choice.  Then I go into work and a colleague who brings his infant son to a meeting is praised for being a good dad.  This makes me crazy - if I did that, it would be career suicide.  Women do more child-care at home, then have to hide it more at work.  men can do less, and can hide it less."

i'm really looking forward to reading the rest of this book....

the zoo

thanks to the rice daddies blogaversary book "contest," we received a new book in the mail last week.  tae now fully believes that any package that arrives must be for her - she picked up the package and exclaimed, "tae's!! inside!!" before i could even unlock the door.

anyway, the zoo is currently in heavy rotation, as is the kane/miller book catalog that accompanied the book.  go figure.  marketing does work.

the zoo has been translated from korean and is about a little girl and her trip to the zoo with her parents.  in a dorothy-esque kind of way, parts of the book are in shades of gray, and parts are in a vibrant palate of colors - rainbow sherbert meets baby gap kind of colors.

in the book, the parents' story is in gray and the little girl's story is in color.  tae has picked up on the fun little nuances of the book - missing animals and a missing pink boot.  the little girl's hair is a bunch of squiggles, which i just love.  the animals come alive in colors, and actions - purples and greens and oranges create a unique look.  and, the fact that there aren't a lot of words to the book makes for easy reading and opens the book up to a hundred and one creative interpretations.

so here's a big shout out to the rice daddies for reaching on year old, and for sharing their love and books with the rest of us.  thanks!!  \m/

my own damn fault

so, being the open-minded mother that i am, i sat down with tae the other night to read american born chinese.  it's a comic book graphic novel and tae has taken a particular interest in the monkey king story that's woven through the book.

we got through the first two chapters, and then got to a chapter featuring "cousin chin-kee."  i felt a little sick to my stomach when i saw the images of cousin chin-kee, and read to myself some of his lines.  on one page, he shouts out in big capital letters: "HERRO AMELICA!"  and while i intellectually can understand how this is part of a bigger dialogue about race and the asian american experience, i'm pretty sure that these nuances are lost on tae.

in fact, i had to close the book immediately because i felt like tae would see the hurtful nature, even of the words (being so big and capitalized, and yes, i know she can't read.  but still).

i put down the book to distract tae and try to skip to a new chapter.  when i came back to the book, i picked up and said, "hmmm, now where were we?  oh, right here!"  and i found a new page without cousin chin-kee.  unfortunately, tae has a mind like a steel trap, and shook her head at me and found exactly where i had left off and cried out gleefully, "right here!"  and there again, was chin-kee smiling his buck-tooth-smile right back at us.

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the whole cousin chin-kee thing though is still difficult for me to stomach.  i will admit that i haven't read the entire book yet, so i don't know what happens at the end of the book - though i have a feeling that in the end, the monkey king story, the cousin chin-kee story, and the other story come together in a way.  clearly, if someone other than yang (who is chinese american) drew a comic with this character, they would be in deep trouble.  but here, serving some literary purpose, reflecting some internalized racism, it is ok.

it's ok, but it's a slippery slope.  clearly, tae can't grasp how overall, this negative negative image can be used in a context to promote good.  and as such, i don't want her to see the image.  but then, what about other people?  how do you make sure that they're fully grasping the entire situation?  i'm starting to have serious doubts about how culturally aware people in this country are, you know, with the whole rosie o'donnell thing and all.

but then, would it really be productive to take the opposite approach and advocate for a nation-wide ban and fine on anyone (asian or not) who uses a chin-kee like image? 

i don't know.  in the mean time, i'll read this book by myself, and leave tae to read more age approprite books, you know like the butter battle book. =)

books

this is hard.  not only because i read a lot, but also because i have the long-term memory of a sieve and i can't remember half of what i've read any more.  it's rather sad.  plus, i can't just copy daddy in a strange land's answers, so i feel a little bit of pressure to be original.

1.  One book that changed your life:

bell hooks' all about love.  i have always admired bell hooks' writing.  her connections between the personal and the political continue to astound me, to give me hope.  this book continues to be an inspiration to me.

2.  One book you have read more than once:

shawn wong's american knees.  i love this book.  i love that this book blows away what typcially falls in the category of asian american literature.  this book is light, but full of substance.  and, it was just made into a movie called americanese!  (too bad i don't do the movies any more.)

3.  One book you would want on a desert island:

jostein gaarder's sophie's world.  because there's nothing like some good philosophy to keep you entertained on a desert island.  and because i'm convinved that the secrets of lost will be revealed to me if i remember more about this book.

4.  One book that made you laugh:

nick hornby's a long way down.  any writer who can take on suicide and make me laugh is pretty darn talented.

5.  One book that made you cry:

lawrence yep's child of the owl.  this is the only book that i can explicitly remember crying over.  it was the first book that i ever read that had a paw-paw in it. 

6.  One book you wish had been written:

yell-oh girls.  i wish a) i had written something in here and b) that my age group was still the target of anthologies.  who's going to edit the asian american mama anthology?  anyone?

7.  One book you wish had never been written:

top of the class.  the nice version of what i don't like about this book is posted here.

8.  One book you are currently reading:

tom wolfe's i am charlotte simmons.  i caved - my goal was not to read anything written by a white man this year, but i had this book, and well, i guess i justified it because it's about college and all these stereotypes of different kinds of students - the small town girl, the frat boy, the college athlete.

9.  One book you have been meaning to read:

iris chang's the chinese in america.  i've started this several times, but i don't ever get to far.

the little engine that could

before i do the book meme from daddy in a strange land, i have some book-related comments on what tae's been reading recently.

i brought home the little engine that could from the library last week.  i had the same version when i was growing up, and i remember all the things i imagined about the pictures in this book.  i remember imagining what it'd be like to ride on each of the trains and engines, and where i would sit on each.

when i read the book out loud to tae, i was surprised to learn that all of the engines in the book have genders.  not only do they all have genders, but all the engines that refuse to help are MALE, and the engine that broke down, and the little blue engine are both FEMALE (that is, going by the pronouns used in the book).

on one hand, it's great that the little blue engine moves beyond her boundaries and what's expected of her.  but on the other hand, what's with all the male engines being big and strong and mean?  does this mean that all the female engines a weaker than the male engines?  why is it that the female engine was the only one who volunteered to help?  why do all the male engines have such big egos about how big and important they are?

am i reading in to this too much or is this children's classic perpetuating sexist stereotypes (in, ahem, gendered trains)?

makibaka means struggle

today, tae and i went to the local library in the town next-door.  it's a mini-sociology lesson seeing libraries that are fancy, exciting, and engaging in neighborhoods that are higher in social and economic status.  this library had a mini auditorium for story time, and a separate pre-school room. 

i was impressed by the collection of picture books, specifically the books that were about people of color.  one book that i happened upon was lakas and the makibaka hotel (the book is both in english and tagalog, and is based on a true story).  after i checked it out and brought it home, tae and i read it a couple of times.  and now, she's learned a new word: makibaka.  in the book, the author, anthony robles says:

the spirit of makibaka lives on here and all over the world.  the spirit of makibaka is the spirit of struggle, of love, and of laughter too.

like any parent, i don't want my child to struggle in the world.  but at the same time, i want her to be aware of struggle, of the struggles of her family, and the ways that we word to overcome any of these struggles.

at the end of the day, tae's response to all of this is a new favorite book, a new word, and a smile.  she doesn't know it, but she's changing the world already.