AS AM 158 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Asian Americans, Stick Figure, Clive Bell
As Am 158
5/3/18
• No-No Boy starts with a broken Ichiro; he lacks a sense of
manhood, community, family, nation- no ego bc no way to
understand himself
• Ichiro interacts with Mother → Kenji → Freddie → Emi → Mr.
Carrick → Gary
• Bull has been reborn & Ichiro has been reborn- second chance is
the nature of rebirth
• Nation: idea of identities
• Hope: faint and elusive, unclear
• Forgiveness: Ichiro forgives himself, others forgive Ichiro
• Community: Ichiro put his hand on Bull’s shoulder, returns back
to his father whom he thought of as distasteful- wholeness
comes with reconstituting a relationship with those around us
who have constantly rejected us
• Space clearing gesture- Okada has erased the broken stick
figure to a solid baby
• Last paragraph is inconclusive; language- unsure of what the
future holds for Asian Americans
• Okada questions Habermas’ idea by looking to the past instead
of the future to reconcile the present
• Bull and Ichiro are both victims of this war but it’s more than
“love your brother”
• Ichiro reconstitutes traditional notions of masculinity; able to walk
down alley on his own and reflect on what he wants to do-
freedom, agency
• Manhood is fragile and constructed
Midterm Review
• Reference scenes in the book
• Bring blank blue book for midterm
• Responsible for things we discussed in class not the whole
article
Reference
Theory
• Elliott
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