Pusod House

So yeah,

Today i went to the Pusod house with Claire. It was intereseting first off because i realized how useless my AC transit sticker is, cuz that was the first time i rode the bus in over 3 months. Then when we got to the house, we got there as it opened. From the presentation, i thought we were going to walk into some big, darkly lit room, like at a club or museum or something. But yeah i found out it was a small room below a house. When we arrived we came in between exibits but what they had were pictures of this yellow aquatic like guy in what looked like a ran-sacked land. The garden was also very pretty with all the bird houses and stuff. Yeah, i just looked at the layout of the room and it was cool to think of the open mic nights and other activities that would go on there. Like a basement hang out for everyone!

Riko

1 paragraph and thesis

yeah right. Having a tough time trying to figure out what to write. So yeah, I have another blog on xanga, and I was trying to figure out how it's so easy for me to blog there and not here. So then I realized it was because I try to write all fancy-like rather that just free write and be comfortable with my misspellings and poor grammar. So I will just experiment with blogging here and free writing until i can get a subject down.

What I originally thought would be a lot of fun would be to go in depth of the subject of Kali.It was shown in it's dance form in The Debut so I thought I could relate it to how its a part of filipino culture that is becoming less prevalent in america. The children are becoming americanized I guess you can say. But really i cant find a way to incorporate my thesis. So i then thought about The Debut. There are three main characters that get the story going and whom the director uses to explain three types of filipinos. Annabell *i think that's her name* who maintains the culture and the dance, Augosto *spellin?* who denies his heritage while dealing with the complexities of a white stepfather, and Ben who is on the fence of which side is safer to be a part of.

So yeah, that seems something more worth writing about cuz then i can go and incorporate certain scenes from the movie like their friends *the surounding characters*, and family. Also, the food, the objects in Ben's house, and of course, Kali dance!

I am so proud of maself. :-P

Pinay Poetry

I read "Essay 2356 on Poems" by Sarah Gambito and I honestly don't know what the title is supposed to mean. Gambito has three poems listed, one that talks about the land and work, the second about a love? and the third about a woman being happy. If i misinterpret these three it must be because the subject jumps back and forth. Is this typical of Pinay Poetry? Do they make things complicated to set themselve apart from pinoy?

The Debut

So yeah, I read some interesting reviews on this movie. Some were nice, others not so nice. There was one review that made me interested in watching this movie however because of the way the writer described some of the scenes. The review said that in the movie there are two party scenes that flip flop. One scene is Ben (the main character) at his sister Rose's birthday, the other is a party with his friends. The odd thing is, that review said that Ben feels more comfortable with his "white" friends, but I didn't see and white people in the preview off the official website. So that was a bit confusing. I guess the main point is that Ben struggles with his philippino identity.

Tomas

Tomas is portrayed differently in part 3 compared to parts 1 and 2. Is he good or bad?

Part 2

So yeah, I have a question. It seems as though Gabe is fallowing into Tomas's footsteps by ignoring his philippino heritage. Is that still common today? I ask this because this book seems to be set in modern times.

American Son Part One

I like the way that the author structured his book. Not only does he divide things with main sections, but also creates sections for each chapter. This made the book seem faster to read and held my attention best. Also, I noticed that when the author uses narative and other people are speaking, no proper punctuation is used. That may get confusing later on, I'm not sure, but for now it seems pretty easy to fallow.

The story so far is told from the perspective of Gabe, who lives in a suburb with his mother Ika and brother Tomas. Tomas is quite violent in behavior and seems to take on a mexican/gangster identity while denying his philippino heritage. He is angry at Gabe, who seems to be impartial somewhat like how Bulosan was in "America is in the Heart".

I feel sorry for the mother Ika. She was left by her husband who used to abuse her and now she has to raise these two boys by herself. It seems as though she contemplates in returning to the Philippines, but she refuses the thought.

I think that there is only so much that either brother, Tomas or Gabe, that can take of his current lifestyle because Tomas seems angry the majority of the time and Gabe takes all of Tomas's aggression.

Riko