Before the documentary:
Last week, I began Yang's first nonfiction book: Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father's Shoulder. I got to about 17 pages but I didn't get immersed in the book as I hoped to. I decided to take a break.
I thought that researching Belle Yang beforehand would give me more footing before jumping back into the book. Also, we've been doing so much reading and annotating that I decided to watch a documentary.
After the documentary:
Wow...the documentary is exactly what I needed. It tells the story of Belle Yang by mimicking one of her children book: My Name is Hannah. Notice the similarity in the title.
The documentary has a little narration by some random guy in the beginning to give us background details. From there onward, the narration is either quotes from Yang's book or her own voice.
I found a connection with Belle Yang. I understand her story of difficulties in America. By hearing her words spoken through her fluent-but-accented English makes them mean so much more than just me reading the words for myself. I am excited to continue on where she left on in her quotes from Baba.
The documentary also touched upon China's history. I was enlightened. In all of the history classes I have taken so far, none goes deep into China's (or Asia's for that matter) history. Last April, I took a trip to China and visited Tiananmen Square. I just regarded it as some historical place to take a picture of. Now I whack myself on the head for not knowing better, for not knowing the blood bath that had taken place there.
The documentary left me with a lot to think about because of what Yang said. One of which about how illegal immigrants deserve to stay in the United States. Formerlly, I had no opinion on the matter but now, that might change (I am easily persuaded, can't you tell?).
In hearing her struggles in being an immigrants, I recall my own family's struggle. In hearing her father's story of the past, I hear my own parents and grandfather's story of their life, the difficulties that they faced.
5 comments:
I'm glad you are starting to connect to the book.
Where did you find the documentary?
I borrowed it from the library.
I like your blog Ngoc. It's really cool! Thats good that your author has documentaries on herself so you can get to know a little more about her before you jump into her books. That's actually a really good idea. I want to look up some documentaries on Malcolm X and maybe watch some of his speeches if any were recorded. For some reason the way you described your author in your blog it just reminded me of Me Talk Pretty one Day. Random I know but yes so far so good !!
Hey Ngoc I am so glad that you like your author. It is especially exciting to see where this will lead because knowing your love of art, the similarities are so obvious, I just wonder what will turn out from this. Great job so far in managing your time. Knowing that reading seems a little dull, you didn't stop but instead took another route. Great Job.
Well, there is a love of art, and a love of making art.
See, I like to create art. But when it comes to analyzing it, I'm stumped.
This maybe completely irrelevant, but yeah...
And, thanks for the positivity!
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