"Monkey Dance" and Shah

Sandra Vivian-Calderon
April 25th, 2017

“Monkey Dance” is a documentary about Cambodian youths in a low income community which resist through everyday actions. These youths were brought into an environment full of violence, drugs, and gangs. It would be easy for a refugee to fall into easy money when there are financial struggles. Sam, shared that his older brothers did not graduate from high school and that motivates him to finish high school and find a good job. He also shows resistance by practicing gymnastics which is usually white male dominated. Linda’s story really shocked me, she is expected to fail. I can relate to that, growing up in East Oakland, I was always expected to fail and even getting out of high school alive was a milestone. Not only that, but I remember my grandmother telling me going to a university was pointless, that I should just settle down and have kids. To this day, I am still proving her wrong, just like these Cambodian youths.

The article “The Political of Race: Political Identity and the Struggle for Social Rights” by Shah is about Laotian second-generation environmental justice activists in Richmond, California. At a Chevron gas station in Contra Costa County, there was an explosion and warnings were going off to radio and TV in English. There were Laotians living in the city that did not understand what was going on because they did not understand English. Therefore, the elderly stayed inside their homes wondering what was going on and students were exposed to toxic air. After this incident, the city council came to a realization that there should be multilingual warning systems. Reading about the English-only warnings reminded me of my parents. They do not speak much English and if there were no Spanish warning they would just be confused and worried about me or my sister. This goes to show that just because a person has all the power, it does not mean it will serve everyone in the community.





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