Saturday, September 27, 2008
Understanding Far
On Wednesday class, some people expressed that they would've understood Far's nature and intention better if they had read her "biography" piece before reading the book. In that case, would we have raised so many questions on her views and credibility? And looking back, the readers should consider if they had reminded themselves where and when it was written before criticizing or judging.
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5 comments:
While Far's autobiographical pieces helped put her short stories into perspective, I never questioned her nature and intention. I always thought she was a credible source because of her race. SHE WROTE ABOUT WHAT SHE WAS EXPERIENCING. I've said it before, sure she was half white, but she still LOOKED Asian and dealt with racism every day.
By reading Far's autobiographical piece, we were able to gain a better insight into her writing style because we saw the reasons behind her view of the differences between Asian, white, and half-Asian. I believe that if we had read the piece before her other stories, we would not have been quick to question her credibility because we would have seen that she was reflecting on what she had experienced. That being said, we could not accept her stories without any doubt just by considering the time and place it was written because we do not fully know what was occurring at that time and place. Therefore, merely by considering the time and place, we would not have gained such an insight into her writings.
It wasn't that hard to question her credibility as any writer can go back into any time frame and recreate a story according to its time frame, and not having lived through the time, may not be 100 percent accurate. Even though Far wrote during her own time, her work is still fiction, had it been classified as non-fiction, the reader would not question its credibility despite not knowing Far's background.
I thought reading her autobiography helped me alot. It gave her alot of credit, because some authors just pull stuff out of thin air.
I think reading her autobiographical pieces put some of her non fictional pieces into perspective for me because that is the only real time I had any doubt about her intentions and credibility. I accepted all of her fictional pieces because she was Asian-American. But when it can to non-fiction she should have only written about what she herself lived, or at least wrote as an outsider because she was talking about someone else's perspective when talking about other people's lives. No one can be an insider of someone else's life, especially based on race.
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