6/1 "Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice"

6/1 Angel Truong Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice Journal

            What I found most interesting in the story was the debate between the narrator and his girlfriend and father. First, the narrator’s girlfriend criticized the narrator’s choice in writing about his father and Vietnam because she felt that he was exploiting them. This really engaged me because as an Asian American Studies major, I have full support on oral history and autobiographical novels. However, this criticism really changed my perspective by allowing me to see another side of this action in a more objective, but cynical and capitalistic way. I remember reading novels for my ASA01 class and I was very interested by them since they brought out strong emotions that I never felt in most academic writings. In other words, the strong emotion brought from these stories gave me a positive attitude towards them. So, this debate made me realize it is best to look at things with a more objective lens. Moreover, the narrator’s father also made another point about forgetting the past because as a Psychology major, I learned that it is best to live life without the burden of the past. However, by the end of the novel, the narrator defends himself by highlighting that people need to know and remember their stories. These stories are what made him and his family so it is significant. Looking in both arguments one can see that maybe he is using his unique story to make money knowing Ethnic writing is popular or genuinely, he wants people to remember the lives of Asian Americans who are just like him, dealing with hardship to get where they are today. In the end, going back to Psychology, what is very interesting is that behaviors that are emotional-affected tend to overcome logical thinking since emotion cannot be explained with logic itself. So, from this we can ignore the negative opinions about the narrator’s story and instead put oneself in his shoe and see the emotional effects that has driven him to write this novel. By doing so, one can see why ethnic writing will not only bring knowledge but also awareness of why prejudice and discrimination is still happening today which in turn can lead to objective studies. 

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