Blog #9: Sandman

This Sandman Graphic Novel is a DC comic book. I believe I just read the intro to the character of Sandman, who just has been trapped and is just now released. The storyline is confusing and full of images and symbols that I cannot relate; why would i have any knowledge of demonic symbols. I felt the intended audience probably feel the same way. The overall comic is just confusing, which is most likely why its not as popular as Batman and Superman. I've watched pretty much all American super hero films and this intro doesn't make any sense. So a guy who's been trapped in a dream is about to get released. He's also being cast as a hero/protagonist of the comic.

The art work is a bit too straining for the eye in my opinion; the comic is not very pleasant to look at. Also the text size on some of the pictures are too small; I'm viewing it at 150% and it felt small. The pictures don't feel dark, scary, or realistic. The artists does seem to try pretty hard on drawing if the comparison is made between this comic and batman comics, just that I feel that my eyes have to work really hard to enjoy the comic.

Blog #8

I really enjoy Ilan Stavans's work; I agree with majority of the points he is making in the text Latino USA. Ilan Stavan's writing style is very interesting, informative, and also easy to read. Compared to the text I've read for this class in the early parts of the semester, Stavans's work is far superior.

Stavans points out that comic books and graphic novels are looked down upon in America. I find that to be disappointing also. Graphic Novels are far superior than text novels when it comes to entertainment value; it is more interesting and can show people that reading is very fun. I like that Stavans is using graphic novels to teach history to the readers. History for majority of the population, is entertainment; graphic novels should definitely be used as a teaching tool to get readers engaged and love history. I'm a very big fan of world history myself. I never knew graphic novels existed as history books; both China and America does not look highly upon graphic novels. I would definitely read the book if it posted on the class website.

Actual Blog #7

I agree with the author's purpose of the article being that graphic novels should be classified as great works of literature among with texts that have no pictures. I don't see any reason not to classify them as such. These different forms of writing are just for entertainment purposes; I can not recall any classics from 2500 years ago having any impact on the world.

I think graphic novels are superior to text only literature. Graphic novels are much easier to read and the pictures help readers remember concepts in the long term. If graphic novels were much more prominent during middle to high school, we would mostly likely have much more of our population to be regular readers.

Imagine reading the Iliad (Trojan War epic poem) or the Odyssey in a graphic novel as opposed to translated Greek texts that requires deciphering. I believe most readers would begin to love Greek classics. Graphic novels are just superior to text only literature for entertainment purposes. For academic writing and technical non-fiction, I definitely would not recommend graphic novels as a form of expression.

Blog #7

The graphic novel American Born Chinese is very fun to read. In fact it is the most enjoyable read I've had this semester. It is the story of Journey to the West featuring Sun Wu Kong or Son Goku or the Monkey King. It's a common television series watched by native Chinese people. To be very honest, this is just a fun myth featuring adventures. I don't think it's going to offer any moral stories or guidelines. Well, other than don't get tricked by evil spirits (which are non-existent).

The episode shown here is about the Monkey King disrupting the heavens. Then he get caught and then put under a rock. That's really the entire story shown in the graphic novel pdf file. Since no one will probably watch this I'll just summarize the entire series. So Monkey King gets put under a rock. Later he gets to redeem himself by going on a quest with a monk. Later they meet up with a pig/man hybrid and a fighting monk (looks exactly like the monk from Diablo 3). Together they go on a quest together to get holy scriptures. The location of the holy scriptures is in Tibet so it's a long journey. During the journey they encounter lots of evil people / spirits / monsters. I won't give a spoiler for the ending; the end.

Blog #6

White Tiger tells the story of Fa Mu Lan. I believe most people are familiar with this story because there's a Disney Movie named Mulan. Interesting story and Mulan in White tigers actually did a lot more than what he did in the Disney movie. She led a rebellion and overthrew the corrupt government. Later the story transitions into Chinese Emigrants; how the women are still oppressed and everything. Well, that was back in the days so it's most likely true.

Empowerment through mythological imaginings is basically a summary and an analysis of Women's Warriors. I check the date of the article and it's 1993. Women's rights have improved tremendously since Kingston's days. Well, the story of Mulan of course is empowering to women. The other parts about how women are treated and viewed in Chinese society is very outdated. As far as I know, even Mao Zedong promoted Women's rights hugely. Since Kingston is most associated with the USA, I don't think she can find much inequality today in America. China is pretty much like USA these days, except that you need to pass extremely hard exams to attend college (also no financial aid at all). Great story overall.

Blog #5

I feel in this article, the author is trying to complicate things way too much. The author is trying to turn folktales and myths into a science, referring the sentences in folktales as "cognitive chunks" (Watson 245). In my opinion, I think the author's intention is trying to make this article into a hard science and to gain academic credibility. I feel that this is the wrong way to approach folktales and myths. Folktales and Myths are passed down orally majority of the time and is sung by bards or performers to entertain people. They are not science or anything close to it.

The author also uses mathematical notations such as

to describe the statement "I was very brave". Whereas he can just said in plain English that the evaluation of the statement "I was very brave" has minimal narrative.

Overall the author made this article hard to read for no reason. She could've written a much more interesting article with easy to read English, as how books and articles are written today. But looking at the first page of the article, it is written in 1973 so maybe it's the tradition back then. If the article was written anything in the past 20 years or so, I'd clearly say that the author's only intention is to give her own work more credibility by turning folklore and myths into a science and writing the article in a way that makes it very hard to read for no reason.

Out of topic, now days linguistics are analyzed by computers, and also one of the reason why Google is digitizing almost all literature. Also I think we should read more modern academic articles, because to me it feels like these older works are way too outdated in terms of writing style, content, and relevance.

Blog #4

This is the first time I've read anything related to Native Americans. I learned a lot from this article. The writing style is pretty similar to past reads, an academic article and several Native American folktales. My personal experience with native American related lore is the Disney movie Pocahontas, and the box office hit Avatar, which is based on Pocahontas. I learned that they carry around and worship pebbles. The are in tune with nature, rivers, lakes, mountains, and other geographic features often come alive in there folktales. This is very much like what I remember from Avatar, they are just very in tune with the nature around them.

Most of the stories feature Nature coming alive such as the Sky spirit and mountain spirit in the first few long folktales. They have geographical spirit and animals in Native American culture instead of Eurasia's dragons and vampires. I find it pretty interesting how they don't have dragons, since dragons play an important role in the art of the coat of arms in Europe and Asia. The stories are a bit confusing and I don't think they really have any lessons to offer except for the first folktale. I reread the shorter folktales in this reading and I can't really find any lessons. An example would be that in the tale How people got Arrowheads, I don't get the roles of the characters and the plot changed from Obsidian Old Man killing the grizzly and Squirrel Camp looking for a new leader. I just don't see any connection at all. I guess the Folktales in EU and China were made to control society and the Native American tales are basically campfire stories. Conspiracy theories aside, good read and learned a lot about Native American culture.