speach tree

I'm really into Lupe at the moment. So much in fact, that I even designed one of my main manga characters off of him. Avery takes a page from many of my former students (mostly black male high school students) but he is supposed to look like Lupe. OK, so given the dearth of realistic black characters in the manga of my youth, i have to disclaim the unnatural look of my black characters... Hopefully I'll be able to throw up some samples so you can judge for yourselves. But yeah, with practice, hopefully...

I keep landing on this woman's blog when I try to look something up related to Japan. decided to check her out, and on first glance she seems to be another japanese woman performing (not insincerely) japanese femininity in a subtle and inoccuous way. i have nightmares of becoming like her, but i have to admit, her posts are quite poetic. part of me almost believes that there is a team of writers who are writing under the name "Namiko Abe" with a picture of a random japanese model on the header. i should explain what i have just written, but this is my blog and i don't feel like it. just check out the other posts tagged "Fu Manchu" i guess...

DW found me an article by Michio Kaku (famous physicist on string theory and - apparently - sometime anti-racist cultural critic) anayzing the history of racist Asian imagery/stereotypes in U.S. comics! Amazing! and I am also reading a feature article in the Japanese magazine, PEN with New Attitude, about the history of world comics and its impact on Japanese manga! The analysis, to come.

This is turning into a weekly installment brought to you from Wall Street... J-Class! ...I need to think of a more catchy name for it... Operation Asian Sabotage... hmmm, too Fu Manchu. After this Tuesday's class, I decided to try to write a post about performing/entertaining for my students in after-school. Basically, my supervisor keeps telling me that I can't expect to turn out fluent speakers by June. We meet for basically an hour once a week to learn whatever we can while eating pizza or mochi after being in school since 8am. What can we possibly do in such little time? (The answer, of course, is a lot, but first...) I am worried that in the absence of real material, I am basically performing a racialized culture of "Japaneseness" for the entertainment of my students and for the agency that employs me, instead of being a facilitator/educator. There are a few reasons why I feel this way: My students see me as Japanese. And I am. But that's not the only thing t...