The Land of Conjurors

Part I: Is That You H enjoys watching her loose. Camouflage, his best trick in seeing, a way he takes snapshots as noose cut in the facets of her in peeling. His heart, frozen by the stone, flutters without his visible lens, caught in a picture that keeps his eyes moving along ─

The sense of anxiety never fades when I become happy. One achieves something and then begins to worry about the next thing that has not done yet. Anxiety loves to tickle me, and I believe I am not the only one, especially in the aspect of society. Thinking about the age, the social experiences and the future, one's lifetime is such a blink as one keeps dealing with trouble made by others or self. Busy or not, the question that always flickers in my mind is the place where I can go. Still have no clue though. To have a high-paying job, to get married and to have a child...etc. Are these really the ultimate goals in my life? Having these can be happier than having none. However, it's like one turns out a sinner if he or she does not get married and furthermore has a family. It's also like one becomes wrong if having a sense of confusion along the way, not to mention one's anxiety. Society is hardly the one to be blamed, for it only pushes people to go forward by enteri...

We are others, we are the others. There is no way out as we strenuously seek it out. None of them can easily be found. We call it out, now we call the way that may give us sounds ─ An echo of the lingered inhale, exhale hardly can be spewed by the telltale as we are forced to fail, to expel from the world of yours, hell ─ Some say we've been changed, "the ones better or worse?" Perhaps better, otherwise neither. Is there a way out? ─ One strenuously seeks it out ─ You, the others, without making any noise, taken from the loop of our mind whomping in every circle of its swerves ─ beating against the sill ─ you call it out, now you call ─ But none of them can be heard. You, the others, or others become in you?

Woman’s Room, an oil painting of her dressing room by P. K. Page In P. K. Page’s painting, Woman’s Room , a viewer may find it hard to situate his or her eyes when concentrating on a certain image. Instead of merely portraying what the room is, the room in the painting is displayed by the three-way mirror. It arouses the question of where the painter stands inside or outside the room interrelated when she is painting, which characterizes the speaker’s dilemma of her location with the tapestry in Page’s poem “Arras.” In the poem “Arras,” for example, the peacock-image is a process created by  complicating the self of speaker from the personal self to the impersonal self. In this poem, the speaker claims that she is not only the “observer” who sees things surrounding her but also the “other” by whom is seen (Page, “Arras” 12). A reader may further notice  that  the tapestry in this poem  w ill not be treated as the subject matter but turn out to be  the par...

In Gish Jen’s   The Love Wife , Bailey, who is the biological child from Blondie and Carnegie, refracts Blondie and Carnegie’s racial senses of identification. Both Carnegie and Blondie gain their sense of identification as they see the appearance of their son Bailey. Though Bailey is a half-breed child, he does not look like “soup du jour” (156), suggesting the multiethnic heritage. Since Bailey, who resembles his mother as embodied with blue eyes and blond hair, is much more like the white, Blondie not only sees her son whose appearance is similar to her but also takes him as a sense of belonging which she can wholeheartedly devote herself to Bailey. As Blondie mentions that the more she looks at Bailey, she sees more bits of the image of her white family (156), which Bailey becomes their inheritance henceforth. Although Blondie considers that Bailey has “Carnegie’s tilt eyes, and bridgeless nose, and perfect ears” (156), she constantly claims her dominance by saying t...

In Part One of Gish Jen’s   The Love Wife , the difference between Lan and Blondie is quite subtle. Blondie, who is the white as well as the Carnegie’s wife, is earnestly about getting involved in the Chinese family. Blondie knows some of Chinese. Besides, as Blondie mentions the two types of visitors, forks and chopsticks, she used to be a fork but now attempts to prove that she will finally and truly be the chopsticks (Jen 112). Blondie considers that she had undergone the process from the Western culture to the Chinese culture after getting married in the Wong’s family by bravely making a great effort to try such as eating snake, eel or rabbit’s ears that the eating habit mostly seen in Chinese culture. When Mama Wong is needed to be looked after in the nursing home, Blondie constantly ripples as to Mama Wong’s capricious temper with her Alzheimer’s disease. As Mama Wong nods for having some wontons, Blondie feels surprisingly elated (Jen 170). But, as...

In “Reclaiming the Southwest,” the term southwest is more than what we imagine. The southwest is not merely confined to the concept of space since the significance of the term southwest can break away from the linear time of Japanese American Interment narrative as it reconfigures the Southwest as a traumatic place. For instance, the sign is a way to broach the metaphorical meaning as a fixed concept. When we think of a sign, the idea of signifier is often to direct us a certain metaphorical significance or symbol derived from the cultural context or historical background. Accordingly, the term Southwest may conventionally signifies an isolated space from other traumatic events for some ethnic groups. Or the Southwest is limitedly viewed through the gazes from the tourists as well as under the gaze of hegemonic power. However, the article mentions that “arrowhead,” the ancient object remained by the Indian warrior, can be a portal of the association with the Indian groups. In Yosh...