What I Made When the Class Surprised Me (And the case of the missing Poetry)

Written in May 2022 for LTCS 130 — Transnational Feminisms — during my junior year. I signed up for the course to fulfill a graduation requirement. I made a poetry book for the final project instead of writing a paper, drawing from Grace Cho's memoir Tastes Like War and from my own life as a first-generation Indian-American. The "book" has three poems — one about familial pressure and the cost of questioning your own history, one about emotional residue and hidden bruises, and one about three mothers, two of them mine, all three layered on top of each other on the page so their voices would compete the way they do in real life. The book is embedded below. I couldn't find it when I started writing this -- and then it magically resurfaced a week later!

View Poetry Book

I never planned to take a class on transnational feminisms. In fact, if you had asked me as a freshman if I was willing to take this class, I would have scoffed and said I didn’t have time to learn about something I already knew on a personal level. I ended up signing up for this class as a way to just fulfill some basic graduation requirements, and I didn’t give much thought to the class content itself. I’m glad to say that my views have changed -- perhaps not as drastically as the protagonist of a romcom might've, but enough to make a difference in my outlook. This is in part due to Professor Kim, who ended up being one of the most supportive and friendly professors I’ve had the pleasure of learning from, and also due to the wonderful variety of materials we were provided with -- from peer reviewed articles to compelling memoirs, this class covered it all. 

I will say that my initial disinterest in the course was not from a place of contempt for the path of study, but more so a belief that I had experienced my fair share of opposing cultures, races, and feminist outlooks given my upbringing as a first generation Indian-American. My story is both the standard and uniquely difficult, creating a tremendous amount of pressure on my shoulders as I attempt to take on the world. Many of my peers create comedic videos about the Indian-American or South Asian experience, mimicking aunties and uncles who talk about having to “walk to school uphill both ways,” or who stress the importance of that perfect GPA and somehow expect us to have masters degrees in 5 different fields because “their friend’s kid did it, so why can’t we?” Yet these jovial reflections on our culture hide a deeper truth that many immigrant children forget -- our families have a history tied inextricably to both their lives and the legacy of the country from which they originate. Years of history, oppression, and classing viewpoints have created a net in which each of us is unavoidably ensnared. These truths are often hidden in a world that attempts to find “fast fixes” for everything, claiming that simply allowing for “independence” is akin to resolution. While I understood that these perpetrated falsehoods that covered up not only the struggles of my country but also made a mockery of my beliefs in the public school setting stemmed from a place of unfortunate ignorance, it was by taking this class that I was exposed to a more nuanced understanding of the commonalities and complexities of immigrant children and their familial relationships. 

The reason why I chose to present a creative project rather than an academic paper -- which would have been a simpler task in terms of source material -- was because I wanted to let my brain process the information presented in the class and translate it into a language I could communicate with. As such, I struggled with choosing a specific mode of creativity. I originally intended to present a video of my spoken-word poetry, and then played with the idea of a political cartoon or painting. I eventually settled on making a small poetry book which would allow me to work with page design and colors, as well as the typography of the entire project. Once I decided on the format, I became completely stuck on the wording of my poetry. Although I have experience drawing on my personal life in order to write short stories and poetry, I wanted to try and utilize more of the concepts provided in class instead of creating something in my image. 

Therefore, I chose to go with the Tastes Like War memoir as the foundation, pulling from certain quotes and then building on those with elements mentioned in class discussions. An example of this can be found in my first poem “tied, tired, tried,” in which I utilize the idea of being tied by a rope of familial pressure and expectations. The very first line indicates that we need not question “where it began,” ie the race/community or even who specifically is creating these pressures. Instead, it is important to look at “why” -- the cause of the actions or cultures created -- in a world where youth are no longer content with being forced down a path created for them. Yet, by questioning the validity of our histories, or “unraveling” our “han,” as eloquently (and oppositely) stated by Grace Cho, we might end up severing the connection itself (Cho). The remaining poetry is based on such revelations provided in class, which was an unexpectedly taxing process that made me continuously think about our various discussions as well as my own personal experiences. The second poem is tied to the idea of collecting “emotional residue,” again from Cho’s work, and is also layered with the idea of having hidden “bruises” or trauma that become linked to our journeys. The last poem is about the idea of 3 mothers -- directly based on the memoir, but also from my own experiences as a first generation Indian-American -- 2 out of the 3 mothers exist in my life (the right-most is based on cho’s work) and create a unique pressure on my life. I layered 3 poems on top of each other to demonstrate this idea of having not only 3 mothers, but opposing viewpoints and ideas that are fighting to take control of the narrative. 

I cannot state that this class was life-changing, but I will admit that my initial disinterest has been replaced with a more nuanced understanding of the historical (and other) precedents that created the world we live in today. This, layered with the discussions and readings regarding gender norms, class values, and feminism in all its different shapes has definitely left me with a “revelation” of sorts that, culminating in the final project, allowed some of my “emotional connections” to be addressed. While my final project relies on the abstract, the concepts were first based on all the readings we’ve done, from the study of Mexican diaspora communities and masculinity to the failures of the American education system in mitigating some of the tensions between our real histories and the filtered product delivered to our youth. As such, I believe my work ties into class on account of its personal as well as how it’s foundationally linked to the course readings (although I did focus on one in particular).