It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about “So Far From the Bamboo Grove,” Yoko Kawashima’s controversial children’s novel about a little Japanese girl running away from those mean, mean Korean commies as Japanese colonial rule in Korea approached its end.
Today, however, reports say that thanks to the efforts of Korean-Americans — and the Korean Education Center in San Francisco and Korean Schools Association
of Northern California in particular — the state of California has removed the book from its list of recommended Language Arts literature for grades 6—8.
This is the first time a state government has ruled to exclude the book from classrooms. Previously, only a few counties had ruled against it.
{ 96 comments… read them below or add one }
Just out of curiosity, are there any children’s books about the plight of German occupiers getting thrown out of the countries Germany took over at the end of WW2?
I don’t know. Probably — at least in German — given the number of people involved. And just a semantic note: the ethnic Germans that got the boot from places like Poland and Czechoslovakia after the war were not “occupiers,” but ethnic Germans that had lived in those regions for centuries.
This book (quite famous) has a chapter abount fleeing East Prussia (became part of Poland and Russia, but was part of Germany before the war)
http://www.geschichte-im-roman.de/ostpreussen_doenhoff.htm
This book, looks like a kids book, about similar.
http://www.amazon.de/Flucht-aus-Ostpreussen-Erinnerungen-Kindheit/dp/3928187988/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225957087&sr=1-4
This book about a girl learning to love horses while fleeing East Prussia (says it’s a “youth” book and more about horses than history.)
http://www.antikbuch24.de/buchdetails_2913272.html
This book about a girl getting thrown out of Sudetenland (now Czech Republic and was part of Czechoslovakia before the war)
http://www.amazon.de/Gewitterblumen-Isolde-Heyne/dp/3831125619
This one, also looks like a kids book, about getting thrown out of Lithuania.
http://www.amazon.de/Ich-war-ein-Wolfskind-K%C3%B6nigsberg/dp/3902647094/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225957087&sr=1-9
Longfellow’s Evangeline would be a fitting replacement.
euljin, are those text books in schools or just regular kids books?
So Far from the Bamboo Groves is not a textbook. It is youth fiction that appears on some secondary school reading lists.
I’ve no idea. Do they have government recommended textbooks in Germany? I don’t even know. I certainly didn’t get them from any school recommended reading list, just Amazon and Google.
Insecure assholes. Only idiots and fools would suppress an alternative perspective.
I for one didn’t mind that the book was included in the curriculum as long as things were put in the right context. My view is similar to Carter Eckert’s in this case.
At the end of the day, in the state of California, there are more of us (Korean Americans) than there are of them (JA’s) and given that, overall, we are more connected to our roots because we are more recent immigrants, I think our reaction is understandable. Plus, we didn’t like the fact that our kids were going to school, reading this book, and coming home crying because we were so “mean” to the Japanese without hearing that the Japanese were pretty darn mean also. (This, by the way, actually happened a few times, hence the reason why some KA parents became mobilized).
WangKon936 (#9)
You do not put things “in the right context” by trying to hide the fact that Koreans committed atrocities against Japanese in Korea at the end of World War II.
Watkins was not a historian, nor did she claim to be one, so why should she be expected to know or tell the history of that time. She simply told of her experience as a young girl in Korea at the end of World War II.
The fact that Koreans are trying to prevent Walkin’s story from being read shows that Koreans have few qualms about trying to hide history that is unflattering to Korea and suggests that other unflattering truths about Korea’s colonial period may also be hidden.
It is hypocrisy to be demanding that the Japanese come clean about their unflattering history while also trying to hide your own.
I’m sure that gbevers would also agree, then, that elementary and middle school children in America should be also be exposed to more stories about how white slaveowners used to rape black female slaves, or how the Native Americans were robbed of their lands, or how Japanese-Americans were forcibly put into concentration camps during WW2. At least, that is more pertinent to US history.
Only idiots and fools would suppress an alternative perspective.
A book like this is an “alternative perspective” in Korea, not in the US. The average student in the US is ignorant of modern East Asian history.
Introducing a book like this, in a US school curriculum is example of compounding ignorance with subtle revisionism and reverse-victimization.
Though I’m not too keen on the thought of having this book read to children, I don’t find anything wrong with it since it is listed as fiction. Plus, many of those events happened, as it would have happened almost anywhere that was subjected and occupied.
But sadly, some ahjummahs at my church sorta forced me to sign the petition so I could shut them up. And get this, they were trying to get me to force this upon high school students and forge my parents’ signature. I obviously denied them that, but I feel used for signing it. Perhaps I should take this up up the state education board on how legit some of these signatures may be…
# 10,
Here this whole time I thought I was just being balanced. KA parents have weighted their voice in saying they feel that it’s inappropriate that an unbalanced view of Japan’s colonization of Korea be taught in U.S. schools. No one’s asking for the book to be banned, just dropped from official reading lists and curriculums. I’d love to see the book continue to be in school libraries, etc.
How about a book about a poor 11 year old Japanese kid trying to dodge incendiary bombs dropped by armadas of B-29s? Let’s put that on the recommended reading lists in U.S. elementary schools! Who’s with me!!!
GB… you have a deep seated, irrational japanophilic psychosis. Seek help before it affects your career! Oh wait, that’s already happened, huh?
Censorship, political chicanery/fraud, retrograde anti-Japanese nationalism — I’d prefer these Korea staples be kept back in Korea.
Censorship, political chicanery/fraud, retrograde anti-Japanese nationalism — I’d prefer these Korea staples be kept back in Korea.
Humm… would taking a book off a school’s recommended reading list be considered censorship?
I think it is far more ignorant to infringe on others’ first amendment rights, however despicable their ideas may be. Why are people so afraid of lunatics who claim for instance that the Holocaust didnt happen? I welcome that sort of free speech bc it shows that we fought WWII for those rights to say anything crazy.
Isnt school there to decide which history is right and which is wrong? Shouldnt everyone hear both sides to determine which side is right/wrong or both right/wrong? WTF is wrong with everyone trying to gag people just bc you dont like what they say?
It woulda been better for these Korean groups to recommend other books that talk about the Japanese atrocities in Korea as a companion piece.
If you censor one book, we as a society have the right to censor all books including Winnie the Pooh because I dont want my kids to see the word “pooh.’ Or ban Tom Saywer bc of the word ‘nigger.’ Or ban Looney Tunes bc they go bottomless. Or,…fuck it, it’s like trying to a wall.
I heard one book got banned bc it contained the word “niggardly.” Niggardly! WTF? We cant even use words bc it sounds like another? Ridiculous.
OK, let me get this straight.
We have a book about Koreans committing atrocities against Japanese. This book is made available to junior high schools where students of Korean and Japanese descent share the same classes. What lofty goal is this supposed to accomplish?
Censorship, political chicanery/fraud, retrograde anti-Japanese nationalism — I’d prefer these Korea staples be kept back in Korea.
How about we get a book about, say, No Gun Ri, into the American International Schools in Korea? You guys will be totally OK with that, right?
Hypocrites.
Isnt school there to decide which history is right and which is wrong? Shouldnt everyone hear both sides to determine which side is right/wrong or both right/wrong? WTF is wrong with everyone trying to gag people just bc you dont like what they say?
There are 2 flaws in your argument.
First, we’re talking about 10 year olds here not graduate school dissertators.
Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in your argument that non-Eurocentric world history, specifically Korean in this case, is treated adequately to begin with in American schools.
Let’s say you’re student of an impressionable age attending a school in the US. You don’t know anything about a people X. The school curriculum doesn’t teach the history or background of people X in any meaningful level. Your first exposure to people X is that they committed atrocities against another people Y.
This is defamation and the Korean-American parents are completely justified in their protest since it is their own children who are being affected.
Wangkon – Yes, I’d call the activists’ intent pure censorship and the result a mild version of that. Unless of course it backfires and makes kids WANT to read Yoko’s book.
Bluejives – Sadly, you only post coherently when you are cutting and pasting (i.e. plagiarizing) others. Cogency in a post of yours is a usually dead giveaway that you stole it somewhere.
Now, to properly use the widely misused term “hypocrite”, you need: 1) to come to understand what the term means and 2) point to positions I’ve taken — in this case, on the treatment of Nogunri or comparable controversies — that run contrary to what I’m advocating. On 1, the jury’s still out; on 2, you didn’t and you won’t and you can’t.
It will be funny and perhaps telling to some here, though, that you are implicitly equating that Japanese lady’s work of fiction with purportedly historic accounts of Nogunri.
My broader point here is a lament that the two major examples of the exertion of Korean-American political clout in the US to date have been negative, narrow-minded, backward-looking moves aimed at settling scores with Japan. That has been the main job of KOREAN politicians and media for decades, and I don’t see any need for the US system to be hijacked by this.
The problem is that most middle school students lack sufficient exposure to the mainstream perspective of Japan’s occupation of Asia.
As one of the very few commenters here who has actually read the book and as a teacher who selects and explores works of literature with students, I would not put So Far from the Bamboo Groves on any recommended reading list, but I wouldn’t ban it either. Prose-wise, it’s not great literature, and background knowledge of Japan’s annexation of Korea is needed to understand the semi-autobiographical story of Yoko’s family in context. Earlier in the thread, Eujin listed several books dealing with Germans fleeing formerly occupied lands after WWII. European students know their own history, so they can appreciate seeing individual Germans as victims within the context of German aggression. So Far from the Bamboo Groves isn’t anti-Korean, but it’s not the best choice for US middle schoolers. Korean students, however, would find much to think about while reading Yoko’s Story
Removing the book from a recommended list isn’t censorship. Books are included or excluded for a variety of reasons. The book is still available for anyone to read. If books existing on library shelves get pulled, THAT is censorship.
How about To the Enterprise: Bum Suk the Kamikaze Pilot? Surely that’s on the reading list.
Elementary school students don’t read about rape, period, but they do read fiction and non-fiction dealing with slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, and the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans. When I was teaching at a foreign school in China, I used to joke with the social studies teachers that 9th grade US history should be expunged from the curriculum because any Korean kid who wasn’t already anti-American would be after wading through three centuries of atrocities against people of color.
Sadly, you only post coherently when you are cutting and pasting (i.e. plagiarizing) others. Cogency in a post of yours is a usually dead giveaway that you stole it somewhere.
Ah yes. I believe this is what would qualify as an ad hominem attack, which is always useful in lieu of an effective counter-argument in a debate.
But you and many other expats here are still hypocrites, quite self-righteous at that, but what’s more disingenuous as well.
I had said “a book about No Gun Ri” which can also mean to be a work of fiction based upon that atrocity just as Kawashima’s book is based upon real historical events. If such a book were to be introduced into schools in Korea, there would surely be quite an uproar in American expat circles and here at Marmots Hole.
Given your own reaction and that of many others to FICTIONAL Korean movies such as THE HOST (especially the part about the US military dumping chemicals into the Han River) or better yet, WELCOME TO DONGMAK-GOL, I can quite extrapolate what your reaction may be to the little hypothetical scenario which I posited above. You’re all quite predictable in this manner.
My broader point here is a lament that the two major examples of the exertion of Korean-American political clout in the US to date have been negative, narrow-minded, backward-looking moves aimed at settling scores with Japan. That has been the main job of KOREAN politicians and media for decades, and I don’t see any need for the US system to be hijacked by this.
BTW, in America, immigrants are supposed forget their Old World hatreds, whether they be Irish vs Brits, Italians vs WASPs, Jews vs Everybody, or Koreans vs Japanese, and learn to forge a new identity as Americans. Well, that’s supposed to be the idea, I think. Korean-Americans are not forcing this book on anyone. What business do grown-ups have exposing Old World hatreds to impressionable 10 year olds within the school system? THAT is what I call negative, narrowminded, and backward-looking.
Netizen Kim,
There are many flaws in your argument.
First, I was schooled in SK for elementary school so I had my share of brainwashing that everything Japan is evil. As I learned more and aged, I had the brains to determine that not everything about Japan is bad.
You’re assuming that all students are dumbshits who will have a myopic view and will never be able to balance and see for themselves what they learned in school is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.
Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in your argument that non-Eurocentric has a place in American schooling system. As if Korea teaches every single detail about US history? Korean history is generally not taught in American schools bc they dont give a shit about it. Why do you make an arrogant assumption that Korean history is so important that it should be taught first of all in the US. And secondly, if it is taught at all, it is taught the way you want it?
“OK, let me get this straight.
We have a book about Koreans committing atrocities against Japanese. This book is made available to junior high schools where students of Korean and Japanese descent share the same classes. What lofty goal is this supposed to accomplish?”
So you’re assuming that no atrocities took place after all those years of colonization and brutality? Whether justified or not, I am 100% certain there was some retribution on all levels as the Japanese were leaving the peninsula. Should we bury that piece of history forever just because the Japanese caused more pain to Koreans than vice versa? That to me, is ridiculous.
You’re also assuming that the Americans put this in the school system specifically to teach the kids that the Japanese were right and Koreans were wrong. How about, they put this in the school sytem just for literary sake? I recently read an old novel by Greg Iles called the “Spandau Phoenix” which was an excellent read btw. It is a fictional account of what the world would have been like had the Axis survived WWII. Did I come out a Nazi after the read? No. It was just very well written and I read it for what it is: fiction.
I also read the “Turner Diaries” recently. It was out of curiousity. Does that make me a KKK sympathizer? Hell no. Shouldnt we make kids read this kind of shit as well so that they can decide for themselves what is right and wrong?
If they choose to become a KKK member after reading that type of literature, the kid’s fucked up anyway, dont you think?
How can you know a sirloin tastes good if you never had a chuck roast?
“Removing the book from a recommended list isn’t censorship. Books are included or excluded for a variety of reasons. The book is still available for anyone to read. If books existing on library shelves get pulled, THAT is censorship.”
The same people who propose to take a book out of the curriculum are usually the same people who try to burn it.
Removing a book from a recommended list is a form of censorship.
If you dont like your kids to learn the way the school (public or private) wants to teach it, then home school them.
I have 2 versions on No Gun Ri in my classroom for anyone to read, and Yes, I have read both accounts, one written by Korean authors, one by US authors. I also have a copy of So Far From The Bamboo Grove on my shelf in my classroom for anyone to read, and it is currently checked out by one of my students. And, again, Yes, I have read it. I teach at a public high school, in Korea.
I anyone in Korea can’t handle the books I have on my shelves, bought with my money, and available to my students, well, that’s their problem, not mine.
Sorry for the ad hominem attack, but the rest of my post WAS a counterargument that you miss, then, weirdly, restate out of proper context: “BTW, in America, immigrants are supposed (sic) forget their Old World hatreds, whether they be Irish vs Brits, Italians vs WASPs, Jews vs Everybody, or Koreans vs Japanese, and learn to forge a new identity as Americans.”
This supports MY point about KA activism stirring old hatreds. It would only apply in your sense if there was a movement of JAPANESE immigrants to promote the use of that work on school library lists. (I must admit, I don’t know for sure if that is the case one way or another. I doubt it though.) NYTom points out your other fallacies here.
I still don’t see evidence that you understand proper use of the word hypocrite. Maybe it’s just an expletive you like to throw around. At the very least, you’re misapplying it here. Oh, I get it. You were EXTRAPOLATING what I might think, based on what an unidentified but predictable “you all” said about The Host or Welcome to Dongmakgol — two films I’ve never seen and thus have never commented on.
Surely you must understand how shoddy this line of thinking is.
If I’m allowed to “extrapolate” based on past observations, I’m going to have to repeat my offending ad hominem attack: If Netizen Kim starts to make sense on any issue, run don’t walk to http://www.copyscape.com/
Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in your argument that non-Eurocentric has a place in American schooling system. As if Korea teaches every single detail about US history? Korean history is generally not taught in American schools bc they dont give a shit about it. Why do you make an arrogant assumption that Korean history is so important that it should be taught first of all in the US. And secondly, if it is taught at all, it is taught the way you want it?
I am definitely NOT saying that Korean history should be taught more thoroughly in the US schools. If that’s the case, then the same should be done for the history of every single country in the world and that would be totally absurd and unpractical. I am simply questioning why people are insisting for a book that supposedly expresses an alternative viewpoint of Korean-Japanese interaction when very little of that history is being taught in the first place?
First, I was schooled in SK for elementary school so I had my share of brainwashing that everything Japan is evil. As I learned more and aged, I had the brains to determine that not everything about Japan is bad.
That’s why a book like this would do more justice in the schools in Korea. What exactly does this have to do with the schools in San Francisco?
For what it’s worth, I would be equally opposed to a similar book featuring Japanese atrocity against Koreans in an AMERICAN school setting that teaches AMERICAN students in AMERICA. What purpose does that serve? Why not have a book about the Asian-American experience?
I get annoyed about people who push Kawashima’s book for the same reason I get annoyed when I see a large Dokto ad in the NYTimes. There are stupid, idiotic agendas behind both that are completely irrelevant to the audience that they seek.
# 23,
Slim, that’s ridiculous. First of all, you don’t know what’s the intent of these KA parents. Have you talked to any of them? Maybe they want Yoko’s book burned and buried in the Mariana Trench? Maybe they just don’t want it taught to their kids without a say so in the matter? Neither of us know…
Furthermore, I guess by your definition if “Mein Kampf” was on the recommended reading list for, ah say a high school curriculum and a Jewish group tried to take it off the list, you’d consider THAT censorship?
No, it isn’t because by nature, a recommended reading list includes some books and excludes others. Moreover, exclusion from a recommended reading list does not stop librarians and teachers from selecting the book nor does it stop students from buying or reading it.
While I do acknowledge that the experience of colonialism for the Koreans was a painful one, this reaction is completely out of order as the book is merely trying to show the horrible effects of war on children. Wangkon with all his bluster about finding a book about a Japanese kid dodging B29s would do well to take a look at this book, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_and_the_Thousand_Paper_Cranes , which was widely read when I was at school.
aaronm,
Although I didn’t read that book, my sister did. I brought up the fire bombing of Japanese cities because it actually killed more Japanese than the a-bombs and Robert McNamara himself said that had Japan won the war, the fire bombings should of been considered a war crime and he should of been hanged as a war criminal… but anyways.
Just for accuracies sake, I think McNamara was referring to himself and Curtis LeMay.
As for the book, well, I’m sure there were quite a few ugly incidents as Japanese rule came to a close. Such is often the case when colonialism ends — see massacres of French in the Algerian civil war, the shooting down of Rhodesian civilian airliners, attacks on white settlers in Kenya, etc. Not excusing them, of course — just saying they happen.
That said, it seems a strange thing to teach American kids who have no idea of the historical context — it would be like having Korean kids read a children’s book about a German family from East Prussia fleeing the raping and pillaging Red Army without a proper understanding of the context in which that happened. I think the book would best be taught in Korean schools (and likewise, books about atrocities/abuses committed by the colonial regime taught in Japanese schools), where there’s more awareness of the historical background. At any rate, at least its relevant.
dayamn, sucka. yous ganksta! commiting the above mistake (highlighted in bold) not only once but twice in the same sentence is surely some kind of new extreme, even on this blog, even with wjk around.
anyway, i agree with wangkon, netkim, and sonagi on this issue.
as for my two, or three, bla bla bla….
i don’t care either way. the book, ultimately, doesn’t seem very troublesome. but i also think the justification for having the book removed from a recommended list is clear cut and not complicated. there’s no need for all the damn whining.
NetizenKim (#11)
You silly attempt at sarcasm assumes that Americans, including me, are just as interested as Koreans are in hiding unflattering facts about their country’s history. However, you are wrong because many Americans, including me, have no problem with having our kids also learn the less flattering aspects of American history. In fact, American history classes do talk about American slavery, injustices done to Native Americans, and Japanese-American’s being put in “internment camps.”
NetizenKim wrote (#12),
Korean students are also ignorant of many aspects of East Asian and Korean history because Korean history books are essentially nationalist, anti-Japanese propaganda.
WangKon936 (#15),
If the book about the 11-year-old Japanese kid dodging incendiary bombs is a good book, then it should go on the “recommended reading” list. You are assuming, just like NetizenKim does, that Americans have the same nationalistic desire to censure unflattering history as Koreans do. We do not.
Sonagi wrote (#24):
School Library Journal wrote:
Gerry Writes: Again, the book was not meant to be a history book. It is a book about a little girl’s experience at the end of World War II. Why can’t the author just be allowed to tell the story of her experience without being forced to choose between different biased versions of Korea’s colonial period?
School Library Journal rarely meets a K-12 book it doesn’t like. Nearly every review I’ve seen published on Amazon.com has been glowing. Middle school teachers who defended the book in Massachusetts cited its powerful narrative of survival. Yoko’s story is riveting, but her prose is not an outstanding language model for young teens, except as a high interest book for students reading below grade level.
all books should be read.
books can be rediscovered decades later.
this is a unnecesary witch hunt.
Kimsoft claims that the Chinese and Koreans were raping Jap girls and eating Jap babies.
Yoko in her youth may not have been able to tell who’s who, but probably did see some atrocities.
It’s common knowledge German women got raped from all ages by Polish, Russian, etc, after the war on the road to East Germany.
How is it even possible that post war retribution did not take place in Korea?
Are Koreans saints?
It’s amazing how gbevers directly misses the key points of the arguments he addresses, points which in fact already encompass and void his recent post.
Examples:
“In fact, American history classes do talk about American slavery, injustices done to Native Americans, and Japanese-American’s being put in “internment camps.””
– Would that be history classes taught to 11 year olds? You don’t make any distinctions above when you write about history classes.
“Korean students are also ignorant of many aspects of East Asian and Korean history because Korean history books are essentially nationalist, anti-Japanese propaganda.”
– Didn’t Netkim already say that he wouldn’t mind the novel being recommended to kids in Korea? But we are not talking about Korean students.
“Why can’t the author just be allowed to tell the story of her experience without [Americans] being forced to choose between different biased versions of Korea’s colonial period?”
— The point, as already made, is that Americans don’t have a choice. They are not given any exposure to mainstream history regarding Japan and its occupation of Korea and other parts of Asiian. Also, the removal of this book espousing a fringe point of view would not neccearily entail that anti-Japanese propaganda be installed in its place.
“You are assuming, just like NetizenKim does, that Americans have the same nationalistic desire to censure unflattering history as Koreans do.”
– This is fallacious. The motive for removing Yoko’s book is not concealmeant of “unflattering history” as you strictly interpret it to be. I understand that it’s not even about the veracity of such things as potrayed in the book. There’s a much broader education issue involved.
Wangkon is quite right. You, gbevers, are sick in the head. First, you argue that Palin is a genius and Bush is a saint, and now this!
@Gerry:
I’ll give the book to our school janitor tomorrow and ask him to read it and evaluate its literary qualities.
Sonagi wrote (#42):
So a book with a riveting story, as you admit, should not be put on a recommended reading list simply because it does not meet your high standards for prose? What is wrong with reading it simply because it is a “riveting story”?
I hope that people will go HERE and click on the cover of the book to read an excerpt from the book, so that they can judge for themselves about the quality of its prose.
The first real book that I ever remember reading was the “The Boxcar Children,” which I found quite riveting. I do not know how school teachers judge the prose of “The Boxcar Children,” but the book helped to develop my interest in reading. In fact, I enjoyed “The Boxcar Children” more than I enjoyed “The Old Man and the Sea,” which I read later in life.
You silly attempt at sarcasm assumes that Americans, including me, are just as interested as Koreans are in hiding unflattering facts about their country’s history. However, you are wrong because many Americans, including me, have no problem with having our kids also learn the less flattering aspects of American history. In fact, American history classes do talk about American slavery, injustices done to Native Americans, and Japanese-American’s being put in “internment camps.”
Riiiiiight. Uh huh. I believe that.
Stick to what you do best, gbevers, which is being a pseudo-scholarly hack for right-wing Japanese nationalism and anti-Korean bigotry.
NetizenKim (#47),
How can I be a “pseudo-scholarly hack” when I have never claimed to be scholarly? And why do you think I am a bigot?
Gerry, how do you have the time to write all this, something that doesn’t directly appear to relate to your profession? Anyways I actually think that teaching Yoko’s book in a Korean classroom might be a good idea. It would certainly balance the current education that they get.
However, one must remember that in an American schools no one knows anything about the Japanese colonization of Korea. They don’t know the good things, they don’t know the bad things, etc., etc. So an American middle school kid reads So Far From the Bamboo Groove and what do they think? That it was the Japanese who were the victims? Maybe, but they certainly don’t get any context into why Korean communist guerillas would perhaps have an axe to grind.
Colonization is a messy affair and it’s seldom liked by the people and nation that is being colonized. Putting So Far From the Bamboo Grove on a reading list without putting equal recommendation to a book like “When My Name Was Keoko” or “Year of Impossible Goodbyes” or a similar book from the Korean side would actually be a disservice to educating these kids. It would be like including Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” without balancing it out with something like Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”
First of all, you don’t know what’s the intent of these KA parents.
THEY GOT THEIR WISH AND HAD THE BOOK REMOVED FROM THE PROGRAM. If I were in the censorship business, I’d call that a smashing success. What other intent can you imagine they had? (Human nature being what it is, though, you have to wonder how many kids will be keen to find out just what it is their parents don’t want them to read.)
Wangkon and Netizen Kim
1)You start out by saying that because there are more KA’s than JAs and that because you’re more connected to your ‘roots’ that you can justify hiding or rejecting bad things that were done by Koreans in the past. Because it hurts you or your kids to confront the reality of those wrongs that were committed.
2)You suggest that white noses be rubbed in the wrongs of our past.
How would we like it?
In reponse:
1) Your beginning point for arguing for censorship is race. It is not to be censored because of the violence it deals with; it is not to be censored because of the fragile nature of young minds; it is to censored and hidden away because it deals with vile acts committed by KOREANS and other KOREANS might suffer from confronting that reality.
You show us with this logic that you care not that HUMANS did terrible things to other HUMANS and that there is a lesson for children to learn in how horrific it was.
It’s all about protecting your self image as Koreans,and protecting teh family name of the DAE HAN MIN GUK.
Newsflash: if you don’t confront the past it will return and haunt you.
Newsflash: members of every race, from every corner of the globe, have, at one time or another, committed atrocities.
You have never been aware of or raised a PEEP about stories of other humans who have done this. You are concerned only with hiding away the awful truth that KOREANS have done horrible things.
As such you are blatantly racist and highly UnAmerican. If you are American citizens, you are not getting the message about who we are. You don’t get who we can be, and what the HOPE and PROMISE of America is.
America is one of a handful of countries that seeks to confront racism head on and defeat it and the evils attendant to it.
If you’re Americans, get with it, man. Don’t be so narrow minded in your idea of who you are. Who WE are.
If we all play this game of “I will take care of my little group in my little box” then we have a bleak future.
Get out of the box. Open your eyes.
2) Hardly worth responding to in view of its blindness to the content of American history as it is taught today. Whites have been forced to confront the wrongs of our past over the past several decades, and it is painful. It’s not over. But, bit by bit, a healing is taking place. There is a sense of an accountability that we have faced and are facing.
And what about you? Are you willing to take any accountability for any wrongs committed by Koreans in the past? Or is it always some one elses’ fault?
The difference is that we’re resigned to it and are trying to work through it. You’re not even at the STARTING point with the blinders you’ve got on.
Don’t bullshit me, and don’t bullshit yourselves. Be MEN, not MICE, and you’ll finally get the respect you’re going around the world alternately begging for and demanding.
“”For what it’s worth, I would be equally opposed to a similar book featuring Japanese atrocity against Koreans in an AMERICAN school setting that teaches AMERICAN students in AMERICA. What purpose does that serve?”"
Indeed, what purpose, dumb ass?
To show that anyone committing violent acts against others, is a bad thing. You’re so blinded by your race filter that you really don’t get this, do you?
I apologize for my first comment. Clearly the book offers distortions of history since all Japanese are evil earthly incarnations of the devil and that the sweet, kind, peaceloving Koreans are all the epitome of virtue – not to mention eternal victims of all things.
Therefore, the stories must be nothing but lies carefully engineered by those dirty Japanese (specifically the diabolical wench who wrote it) to gain public favor among the Children of America.
Good job Korean School Association of Northern California – you have prevented this insidious plan from moving forward. The cultivation of pro-Japanese/anti-Korean future leaders has been halted.
I have already answered that question earlier in the thread. US students do not have sufficient background knowledge to put Yoko’s experiences in context.
What program? The book was removed from a recommended reading list, not from any particular school curriculum. Removing the book from the list does not prevent schools from including it in their literature classes.
This is reminiscent of how most Koreans used to think (still think?) that the Native Americans were evil for attacking and massacring settlers and cowboys because the only exposure to the history of the Westward Expansion they got came from the western movies. Without providing any historical contexts or pertinent education (which has been the case here), “just a riveting story” becomes a substitute for a history textbook.
The criticism that this is ‘burying history’ is moot given the (haha) context of the issue here. “It’s important to know the Japanese experience during the occupation too” would be relevant, if the public education had already included the Occupation in the first place. Had this occurred in a Korean or a Japanese public school, the criticism would be very valid. But in an American public school, where there aren’t any information provided in regards to the history of Northeast Asia in any way, providing that one particular set of view while ignoring the myriad of historical contexts is, for the lack of better words, fucked up.
Sonagi wrote:
I did not get death consulting before I read “The Boxcar Children,” which is a story about of group of orphaned children.
Claiming that American children do not have enough background information on Korea’s colonial period to read a story about a young Japanese girl’s experience in Korea at the end of World War II is just a stupid excuse to keep kids from reading the book. Do all the other books on the “Recommended Books” list also come with background information?
Children enjoy Walkin’s book without it being put “in context.” Why not give them the choice to read the book and let them ask questions afterwards if they have any? Isn’t that how children learn?
Also, whose version of Korea’s colonial period are we going to use for your background knowledge? The Korean version or the Japanese?
Why do kids have to be indoctrinated in nationalistic Korean propaganda before they can read a book about a young Japanese girl’s experience in post-war Korea? It is just a stupid excuse to try to prevent kids from reading it.
Sonagi, I suggest you stop hanging out with that janitor.
Correction: death counseling
You appear not to understand the purpose of a recommended reading list. It is a list of books recommended for children to read or teachers to teach. It is not a rule or regulation. If the book is on library shelves, and it probably is since it was a recommended book, then kids are free to read it. Likewise, there may be schools in California where the book is part of the literature curriculum, and those schools are free to continue teaching it.
Ironically, efforts by ethnic Koreans to get So Far from the Bamboo Grove out of classrooms are backfiring as free speechers are championing the book after it was removed from the Dover school curriculum.
Sonagi,
I know what a “recommend reading list” is, but it is still a form of censorship to take a book off a reading list and hide it on some shelf in a library just because you are embarrassed by its content.
gbevers — Just out of curiosity, how would you feel about Korean schools using a book about a German family fleeing the Red Army at the close of WWII?
Robert,
I would not care, as long as the story is true?
Robert, do you think we should remove all books with stories not directly related to the United States from the reading lists of American students? Just curious.
The issue here should not be whether the content of the book is justified, or whether it is in “context” (context in this sense obviously meaning that Koreans are always justified in whatever they want to do), but the way narrow ethnic minority interests are pressuring organs of state and other public interests to reflect their viewpoint.
The Korean Americans that are pushing this and the successful comfort women resolution are basically acting as agents of foreign interests, and are in every respect a 5th column. “Americans” of this sort should alarm “vanilla” Americans that do not have any particular foreign attachments.
Shakuhachi,
I agree. America has come under the influence of far too many foreign interests that try to dictate US domestic policy.
First it is Israel equating the criticism of zionism with anti-semitism thereby alienating the entire Arab world. Then it is Armenian-Americans trying to get the US to act against Turkey damaging our relations with that critical NATO ally. Now it is Korean-Americans trying to manipulate our schools reading lists. Next thing you know they will demand that US students chant “Dokdo is Korean land which lies in the middle of the East Sea.”
Enough is enough. Americans of all flavors, not just “Vanilla” must agree to stand up to this. Hopefully our new “Chocolate” President will have the courage to protect American sovereignty from the meddling hands of foreign intrests on American soil.
Gerry — No, I don’t think we should remove all books with stories not directly related to the United States. That said, I don’t think I’d recommend a story dealing with Korean reprisals against Japanese colonialists to American students grades 6—8. I’m sure it’s a great book and all, but there are a lot of great books I wouldn’t recommend as classroom reading for American kids. I think Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer’s “July’s People,” a survival story telling the tale of white people running away from Johannesburg in a hypothetical civil war in South Africa (it was written in the early 80s), is an outstanding book, but there’s no way in hell I’d recommend it to American students unless it was preceded by something like “Cry, The Beloved Country” first.
Shakuhachi,
I couldn’t agree more. I can just imagine how the pressure groups involved pressured (mainly white) administrators into changing the policy.
It is another fine example of Korean discrimination at the core of the issue, and as I’ve said many times we need to fight it. As long as white Americans remain vulnerable to the white guilt mindphork, we’ll see lots more of this kind of calculated manipulation of it. Ironically, it will be to serve the cause of discrimination.
Robert,
I think that you are actually falling into the same trap that Netizen Kim and Wangkon are. I don’t think you’re nearly as deep into it.
But by insisting that cautionary tales and stories that have moral lessons shouldn’t be taught unless they are tied to the realities of recent history, you’re slipping down the slope to the idea that blame for those recent wrongs must be assigned, and held to.
And that perhaps the element of blame (you might say accountability to counter me) is to be held up over the idea that violence, to achieve political goals, is wrong. That violence, out of an impulse for revenge, is wrong. And that violence gets you into a slot on a Karmic wheel that really does go in circles in the end.
The point of the Yoko book, of the theoretical ‘white African flees’ book, of a theoretical ‘Russians whipping up on fleeing WWII Germans’ book, is that the concept of human rights is central to a brighter future, and should be maintained and strengthened.
If the focus shifts from that central idea to, ‘the Germans were assholes and we should never forgive them’ or “The Japanese were worse than the Koreans have ever been and MUST be the bad guys in any story in which violence is committed by one against the other group” , then we are endlessly stuck in a hit and hit back cycle of thinking.
I think the only chance we’ve got is to get past that.
Redneck,
You are in your own trap here. We are talking about teaching 10 to 13 year olds, not the fate of free speech and the universe.
Plus, you completely misunderstand my position. It appears that you are forward projecting your prejudices INTO my viewpoint, which is technically worse than simply misunderstanding me.
To clarify. My mentioning that there are more KA parents than JA parents in California is merely stating fact and describing how things have progressed to this state. It’s not to advance a rationale.
However, I do believe that KA parents have the right to express their view of what their kids are taught. I mean the last time I checked CA is still a part of the Union and the U.S. is still a democracy and it’s tax paying citizens can raise such objections since that is also a form of freedom of speech, is it not? And I hope that this same right be extended to states/areas where there are a lot of Jewish, black or latino families attending school so when there is literature being taught in their communities that they find objectionable to their 10-13 year olds I hope they have the same right to freely assemble and raise a protest without being called a nationalist or “protecting the family name,” etc. as you do. Some people here protest about how KAs or other so called “foreigners” are influencing America too much. But on the flimp side, aren’t you guys getting into their business as well? You don’t live in the state of CA or live anywhere near these schools or have your kids attend these schools and now you are telling them what THEIR kids should learn and shouldn’t learn? Isn’t that just a tad bit hypocritical?
For the record, I disagree with taking this book off a reading list. I believe it should stay on and I believe that other books be added to compliment this book and to tell a fuller story of the situation if the kids chooses to go that route. Nothing should be mandatory. If a kid reads Bamboo then they have to read “When My Name Was Keoko.” Nope, it should just be recommended, in my opinion.
To me it is most positively certain that some Japanese living in Korea (as well as other parts of the former Japanese empire) had a difficult journey going back to Japan in 1945. However, wouldn’t it be only fair to provide some context as to why many Japanese had such a hard time? The fact that some of you don’t seem open to this idea only tells me that fairness and education isn’t your goal for you but instead it seems that you have your own axes to grind, which is unfortunate if true.
Showing just one version of history serves no one’s purposes… other than perhaps a dictator’s or someone who wants to smear another group for lord knows what reason.
Because I believe this, I also believe that a book like Bamboo should be taught in schools in Korea because it will help balance what the kids have learned about that time period.
However, American kids don’t have the advantage of immediate historical exposure to Japanese colonialism so that was my point all long. If the kids want, we should certainly give them the guidance to look at evidence from BOTH sides so they can come to a conclusion on their own. This is how people learn to be critical thinkers, right?
Shakuhachi, I find what you said in comment # 64 highly offensive, inflammatory and irresponsible, in addition to being grossly untrue.
You said:
“The Korean Americans that are pushing this and the successful comfort women resolution are basically acting as agents of foreign interests, and are in every respect a 5th column.”
I know Korean Americans who supported the comfort ammendment resolution. I supported the comfort woman resolution. I’m I acting as an “agent of foreign interests” or “a 5th column?” Regardless of what you think, I know I am neither of these. However, basically saying we are tratiors ready to “turn against” or country for supporting something like this. Well, that isn’t just spewing off your opinion anymore. They are fighting words. You should seriously reconsider what you wrote.
Back in 2001 I had the opportunity to teach “So Far From the Bamboo Grove” in my high school English class. It was a freshman class which contained about 80% ESL learners, and while my story may not be representative, I think it is instructive as to how this book is appropriate and why I am so disappointed in the California decision.
I was teaching in an urban school district in the northeast at the time, and my small city had a large population of immigrants, including many who had fled from some unsavory regimes around the world. In addition to weak language skills, many of my students had economic and social problems as well, and trying to encourage them to read anything was a challenge. It was difficult to find appropriate texts for them, because while, for many of them, their reading was elementary, their experiences were far more sophisticated.
That said, when we started SFRTBG, I found a lot more of my students were engaged with this book than they had been with other books. The boys were drawn in by the adventure aspects of the story, and the girls were intrigued by the idea of a female protagonist. In addition many of the students were able to easily relate to Yoko’s experience having to flee from her home (I believe it was Manchuria… but it has been a long time since I read it myself). The writing was lively, the language was relatively simple, and the book was an excellent teaching tool– strong narrative arc, distinctive character traits, an evolving protagonist.
As with any book, there are many, many different ways to “teach” it. Certainly it could be twisted by a teacher with an anti-Korean agenda to read as a “poor Japanese victim” book… but honestly, it is hard to imagine a put-upon teacher, with all the other challenges he or she faces in the classroom, to even bother. Frankly speaking, it is a non-issue. Korea barely registers in the American consciousness at all, and outside of M*A*S*H reruns there is little exposure in the real world. If these Korean-American groups really see a threat, they ought to respond in a positive way, perhaps with an education campaign.
In my experience in the American classroom, I came upon two types of students. The first, the small minority of students with a burning desire for knowledge (and the only ones who might detect a pro-Japanese or anti-Korean bias in the book) were motivated by their own curiosity, and would hardly adopt this as the final word on Japanese-Korean relations. They would ask questions, and read further, and would discover their own truth. The second group, the large, large majority, could not care less about the intricacies of east Asian relations, and were just there because they were there. Lessons were something to be endured, and the best way to do that was to stare blankly at the teacher. In neither case is a student going to walk out of the class with a deeply held view of Koreans.
In my classes, the discussion of the politics took about five minutes. I explained at the beginning that the Japanese, during World War II, had controlled much of China and Korea, and that after they lost the war, the Japanese in these countries had to return to Japan. End of discussion. It was all that was needed to provide perspective.
I ask, in all sincerity and ignorance, are there any YA books written by Koreans or Korean-Americans that could be used in a classroom? I cannot think of any great (or even good) works written in English by Koreans, which is a terrible pity. If you want to control the way you are portrayed in the culture, you need to first engage the culture. Watkins’ book was not chosen for reading lists because she was Japanese; it was chosen because it provides an alternative (i.e. not white) view of the world, and because it is a quality book. You can argue about the notion of using work from non traditional groups in the classroom (and I suspect that many here don’t agree with it) but since that is the prevailing trend at the moment, why not engage it instead of fighting an outdated, and laughable, “ban the book” crusade?
Finally, for all of those who see the removal of the book from a recommended reading list as a trivial matter, keep in mind that almost no school districts or teachers will select work that is not on these lists. Districts will not spend money on these books, and the internal politics of schools all but guarantees that these books will not be taught. Don’t be fooled by the benign “recommended” label; for all intents and purposes, this book has been banned.
So would it be OK for me as a “British-Australian” (passport-holding, have lived there a long time and have deep familial ties to the motherland) to pester my local PTA about the inclusion of a book in Queensland school curriculum that told the story of a German kid suffering under the fire bombings of Dresden?
I was drinking in my local last night with another Aussie mate, he of Italian heritage, whose father was around during WWII just as mine was. Incidentally, both our old men were almost killed by bombings (mine by the Germans and his by the Allies). The upshot is that kids are innocent victims in war. Maybe, just maybe the story in question here is merely trying to point that out.
“So would it be OK for me as a “British-Australian” (passport-holding, have lived there a long time and have deep familial ties to the motherland) to pester my local PTA about the inclusion of a book in Queensland school curriculum that told the story of a German kid suffering under the fire bombings of Dresden?”
Yep, it’s absolutely okay for you to pester your local school about a book you’d like included or excluded from a recommended reading list. Go for it, knock yourself out!..
Robert,
If you think Kids should read a book about colonial Korea before reading “So Far from the Bamboo Grove,” then shouldn’t they also read about the poverty, disease, ignorance, prejudice, and corruption that existed in pre-colonial Korea before reading a book about colonial Korea? How much background reading must children do before you feel they sufficiently prepared to read a “riveting” survival story of a young Japanese girl?
Can’t you see the silliness of it all? Children can appreciate and learn from Watkin’s book without prerequisites. In fact, the book would probably motivate many to learn even more about Korea’s colonial period.
It is not like jumping to intermediate algebra before studying basic algebra. It is more like reading the “Lord of the Rings” before reading “The Hobbit.” Would that really be so bad?
Were these conditions unique to Korea in the 1800s? Too bad Japan didn’t annex the US and put a stop to lynchings, exploited child and immigrant labor, and oligopolistic trusts.
“I ask, in all sincerity and ignorance, are there any YA books written by Koreans or Korean-Americans that could be used in a classroom? I cannot think of any great (or even good) works written in English by Koreans, which is a terrible pity.”
Laughing Bear,
Here are a few very good ones for YA:
When My Name was Keoko
Year of Impossible Goodbyes
A Single Shard
A Step From Heaven
I realize you’re being sarcastic, Sonagi, but you should consider your audience
He just might actually say “Yeah, that was too bad.”
Allowing both (or all) sides a voice is great; too bad that’s not the case here – there’s only one side being presented, and that’s what I find objectionable. Claiming that “it’s just a story” is either hopelessly naive/shallow understanding of the controversy or a flat-out disingenuous argument that just spikes everyone’s cynicism towards each other.
Laughing Bear,
Your perspective as one who has taught the book is valuable although I must say I am astonished that you are unfamiliar with the works of acclaimed author Linda Sue Park.
So you have no problem with the efforts of the brainwashed to ban teaching of evolution?
Where does it end? What limitations are there on special interest groups dictating the terms for the masses? How much power should the (in some cases) extremely vocal minority have? How much more can we pussify western society?
I don’t recall anybody saying it would not be fair to provide context. In fact, that would be a great idea. There is one rather gargantuan problem – some (the special interest groups) are strictly concerned with the elimination of this material rather than supplementing it to be used as a tool to teach context and perspective.
It would appear that to these groups there is only one acceptable perspective – Japanese people at the time regardless of age or involvement are all directly responsible and should be portrayed as the aggressor.
Perhaps you are the one with the axe.
My apologies. I should not have said brainwashed. I should have used religious extremists.
Sonagi (#75),
Lynchings and child exploitation continued in the United States into the 1900s, and immigrant labor and oligopoly continue even today. Are you suggesting that American students first get “background knowledge” on these things before reading a book about an American child’s experience? If not, then why should student’s first be required to get “background knowledge” on Korea’s colonial period before reading Watkin’s book?
Weren’t you the one who said things should be put in context? If you want American students to learn about Korea’s colonial period before reading Watkin’s book, then shouldn’t they also learn about the conditions in Korea before reading about the colonial period, so that they could put it “in context”?
Moreover, wouldn’t learning about earlier American and European colonies also help put Japan’s colonization of Korea in context? For example, shouldn’t Americans students be required to first read about America’s colonization of the Philippines or Europe’s colonization of Africa before reading about Japan’s colonization of Korea since it would help put it “in context”?
Give my regards to your janitor.
Geez, so now I am being offensive for pointing out that some ethnic minorities are pushing for things that are not in the interests of the majority of Americans? If you can explain why something like the comfort women resolution is in the interests of the American people and state and not just Korean Americans bearing a grudge against Japan, then I will reconsider what I wrote.
BTW, I would love it if “when my name was Keoko” was used in US schools. “Keoko” or her parents must have been very special chinilpa, because people that wanted to change their given name as well had to pay an extra fee for it.
Shakuhachi (Matt) wrote:
Good point, Matt.
Goat,
Ban kids from learning evolution? Where did that come from? We are talking about adding or taking away things from a reading list! Where did banning come from? As I said before, it appears that some of you are looking at this So Far From the Bamboo Grove situation as a do or die battle to save freedom of speech and expression from an alien Korean American population. I think those of you that may have framed this situation in that manner have done so wrongly.
And where does it end? Well, in this particular case, it ends when you go through the proper channels and the powers that by deny your request. The Calfornia KA community made a request to I guess the California School Board (I may be wrong) and I guess made a good case. I’m sure there are times where others have made similar request via the right channels and their request was denied. I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about public education school history in the state of CA.
My request to have both views available (on the recommended reading list, or whatever you want to call it), is fair. How is it wanting to have an axe to grind on my end?
If we’re rejecting a book for “not showing both sides of the story” then I guess we’d better pull the Diary of Anne Frank of the shelves until we get a Nazi version of the events, right?
It’s disappointing to me that the course of action taken in this situation was to pull the book from a list of RECOMMENDED reading, not MANDATED reading. There were multiple avenues to take, not the least of which would be to use it as a starting point to teaching American students something of the history of East Asia. I think I generally got a good American education, but I didn’t know anything about Asia except… Ghandi, Pearl Harbor, Australia was where the British sent prisoners…. yeah. That’s about all I knew.
GB and Shakuhachi,
Honest question. You said that Koreans had to pay an extra fee to change their family name, correct? Did Japanese people in Japan have to pay a fee to change their family name?
Shakuhachi,
Regarding people who supported the comfort woman resolution, I can understand if someone questions their priorities. However, it’s entirely none of your business to question their loyalty and patriotism and essentially call them potential traitors to the country of their citizenship. You crossed a line.
In anycase, you might as well question the loyalty and patriotism of all the Jews who ask their congressmen to sponsor resolutions condeming Palestinian “terrorists” or Black Americans asking for the same regarding Apartheid.
I believe they said that the extra fee was for changing the given name, not the family name…
“I guess we’d better pull the Diary of Anne Frank of the shelves until we get a Nazi version of the events, right?”
Well, if there is a sizable population of people going through the right channels that would advocate that a Nazi book to balance Anne Frank be included in a recommended reading list, maybe the school board should consider it (and promptly deny it!).
However, I very much doubt, in any foreseeable future, that there would be any population that would make that kind of request. However we should, by principle and living in a free and democratic society, leave that avenue open if anyone dares to take it.
If we can take Laughing Bear’s experience at face value:
That’s where it came from.
Secondly, the axe comment was in reference to you claiming that there was opposition to adding context where there was none.
Finally, they may have gone through the proper channels or they may have just VANK’d them.
Not family name. Given name. I wrote ” “Keoko” or her parents must have been very special chinilpa, because people that wanted to change their given name as well had to pay an extra fee for it”.
There was no requirement for a change in given name. Only chinilpa would have bothered doing it.
Any person with particularly strong ethnocentrism could be a “potential traitor”. While I think that stuff like the comfort women resolution is damaging to America, I am not sure it quite constitutes treason. On the other hand, should Korean and US interests significantly diverge in the future, it will be put to the test.
Both are or were current issues at the time of the demands. And in the case of Palestinian terrorists, some Americans have died. At least they have put forth convincing arguments about why it is the business of the USA. It does not really compare to a historical issue more than 60 years old.
Shakuhachi,
Thanks for clarifying the name thing. I don’t agree with your (or GB’s) conclusion though.
If the U.S. and Korea did diverge, wouldn’t the comfort resolution had no chance of passing anyways?
Besides, not everyone who supported that resolution had “particularly strong ethnocentrism” being that the major proponent of it wasn’t even ethnically Korean. He was ethnically Japanese.
Of course you don’t. It casts the whole theme of “when my name was Keoko” into doubt. The fact is no one had to have a Japanese given name, and to get one you had to buy it.
I mean at a time if and when Korea and the US find themselves as enemies or near enemies.
The major proponent is an American with no ties to Japan, and his nominal ethnicity has nothing to do with his vote. He is a politician with a major Korean American constituency and they had successfully lobbied him. It was ethnocentric Korean Americans belonging to Korean American lobby groups that successfully pushed the resolution.
Anyway, you seem to think America should be a battle ground for various ethnic minorities. So one book should be “balanced” by another, you say. Why should Americans care about this kind of racialism? Face it, it could only be important to someone that identifies with some country other than the USA.
WangKon936: Thank you for the suggested titles. I will certainly check them out.
Sonagi: Thank you to you as well for the recommendation, although you ought not be astonished. The breadth of my ignorance is only surpassed by my desire to eliminate it.
It is my dream that someday American schools will be good enough that a debate over whether one work of fiction is providing an inaccurate or one sided view of history. For now I would be satisfied just to get students reading at grade level.
Perhaps we ought to revisit this debate at a time when California (49th in the nation) is churning out enough sophisticated critical readers for this to even matter.
Shakuhachi wrote -
Why should Americans care about this kind of racialism? Face it, it could only be important to someone that identifies with some country other than the USA.
I am quite worried about you. Why this obsession? The only people that seem to be taking an extreme position are yourself and MrBevers. Why should you care about this kind of racialism. Face it, it could only be important to someone that identifies with some country other than Australia.
“He is a politician with a major Korean American constituency and they had successfully lobbied him.”
shakuhachi,
As you may know, Mike Honda is a democratic congressman in San Jose, a heavily democratic district. True there is a sizable Korean American population in his district (as there are just a lot of Asian Americans there) and I’m sure there was some lobbying by KA’s to Honda, however your explanation is too simple. Isn’t it a bit presumptuous to say that he was on board simply because of “lobbying”? Maybe he really believed that comfort women was a huge injustice. Besides, having a lot of KA constituency didn’t exactly sway Daniel Inouye, did it?
And no, I DON’T believe America is a “battle ground for various ethnic minorities.” I went through the L.A. riots for crying out loud and I saw what a REAL “battle ground for various ethnic minorities” is and it ain’t pretty (nor desirable).
However, America certainly IS a democratic and increasingly multi-ethnic country. Hell, America’s president elect is multi-ethnic. In order for a multi-ethnic nation to work it has to be sensitive to a balance of viewpoints, right?
Well if we’re talking about being sensitive to a balance of viewpoints, then we should allow people to have their point of view, even if we disagree with it.
Yet another reason why the book shouldn’t have been pulled. Again, this was from a list of recommended, NOT mandated reading.
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