Interviews, Ideas, and Autoethnographies
What I did this week:
Started reading Boys will be Boys by Sarah Suleri Goodyear
Created the first version of my interview guide
Interviewed one person about their relationship with Chinese New Year
Continued Arena board of illustrations having to do with Chinese New Year and Chinese festivals
Finished creating an outline of what I remembered about the typical Thai-Chinese New Year and sent it to my mom and aunts to fill in the details
Getting more books
Boys will be Boys by Sara Suleri Goodyear
I started reading this autoethnography, which was recommended to me by Professor Ansari. The book is about the author’s childhood and young adult life in Pakistan, with an emphasis on her relationship with her father. While reading this book, instead of focusing on the story, I focused instead on what things she was focusing on in her writing/telling of the story. Since I’m only reading this as a reference to how I want to write my own autoethnography, I thought that this was the best use of my time. So far, I have written down the following observations I made about her writing.
Internal thoughts and feelings and making sure to tell us why she was feeling this way
Rich description of the events happening around her
Using metaphors to explain abstract things
Explaining jargon or common rituals to you that might seem foreign to someone else
Putting in native words and not always explaining it
Hinting at cultural sensitivities, ie. The practice of preferring boys to girls and gender roles
Using family nicknames
The barrier of language and what that did to impede on cultural transmission
The small quirks within each family and their dynamics
How seemingly inconsequential things had a great emotional effect. "it was not the bars that broke his heart but the sight of his zinnias, his photolax, being trampled into the ground with an indifferent trudge" (7)
A lot of stream of consciousness prose
Familial roasting one-liners
Questions of identity that emerge from being immigrants and living across multiple continents
How to feel connected to where you came from, no matter how far you are
Reflecting back on things that happened and what you think of it now
Interview Guide
This week, I also created the first version of the interview guide that I will use for my interviews. I plan for the interviews to be fairly conversational and let different topics come up organically. I also realize that this interview guide will probably change quite a bit as I learn more about the topic and add/take out questions as needed. Currently, it includes the following questions:
What is your relationship with the festival? Did your family celebrate it?
What were some things your family did to celebrate Chinese New Year?
Do you have a favorite memory about Chinese New Year?
Is there something you remember that you didn't like about Chinese New Year?
Do you celebrate Chinese New Year?
If you don't celebrate it, why not?
What things would make it more likely for you to celebrate Chinese New Year?
First Interview
I had my first interview this week with a classmate. It was pretty short, only 20 minutes. But I still learned quite a lot. They grew up in the United States and had a very different experience celebrating Chinese New Year than I did. What stood out to me the most is how they mentioned the realization why their family didn’t really celebrate it was because they suspected that their parents wanted them to assimilate more. They recalled how the festival wasn’t really given importance and Chinese wasn’t really spoken at home. The effort by their parents was most likely done with good intentions as they suspected that it was difficult for their parents to assimilate and their parents wanted it to be easier for them. However, it made them feel disconnected from their heritage and had a sense of lost identity since they never felt white enough to be comfortable in the United States anyways. They mentioned that because of these reasons, the main obstacle they face in trying to celebrate Chinese New Year is that they don’t know much about it at all. They don’t know the food, the practices, and the rituals that went along with the festivals as they never really celebrated. Thus for them to even start to celebrate it, they would first need to know what those rituals and traditions are and understand them.
This interview really solidified my conviction to continue the majority of my research via interviews. I learned so much more than I had about my topic in those 20 minutes than through all the readings I have done so far. I will continue to find people to talk to and iterate on my interview guide.
Arena Board
Throughout the week, I have built up a more comprehensive collection of illustrations/designs that revolve around Chinese festivals. You can view it here. I will definitely be adding more to it going forward. One block that is particularly inspiring to me was a design for a Chinese food website. It was designed specifically for North American Chinese to feel more connected to their heritage through food. While the design was visually appealing, I was most impressed by how the website incorporated celebration planning and education features. The designs of those features were seamless and made it fun to use. I will definitely keep this design in mind when I make my tool next semester.
Thai-Chinese New Year Outline
I finished making my outline of a typical Thai-Chinese New Year celebration. It’s quite short because unfortunately, I don’t remember very much about the whole thing other than red pockets and burning paper. I have sent it to my mom and aunts for their help to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Hopefully, after they add what I’m missing I will be able to garner some memories involving them.
More books and resources
Lastly, I am still on the hunt for more resources on Chinese New Year, illustration, the Chinese diaspora experience, and risograph. Following an email exchange with the librarians, I have received the following recommendations:
Risomania : the new spirit of printing
Exploriso : low-tech fine art : Risography as an artistic process
Looking for specific graphic novels and children literature on Chinese diaspora experience on Amazon, Google, and etc. and then looking for those titles on the library site
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner (Korean-American experience, but from the reviews it has similar cultural experience as other East-Asian-American experience which I might find helpful)