I really enjoyed the readings and movie for this week. The movie Mississippi Masala by Mira Mair was really relatable for me. I relate to the character Mina in small ways. My grandparents came to America in the 1980s because of the Vietnam War, and for them, that relocation was difficult because they had to leave their home and other family members behind. Even though my own parents are more open-minded about the culture here in the United States, my grandparents held their own traditions and beliefs. Growing up, I had a lot of friends from different backgrounds and ethnic groups. It wasn’t until later when I began to notice the subtle difference in how my grandparents would treat my friends whenever they come over to my house. Toward my Asian friends, my grandparents were more open when interacting with them. However, my grandparents would often be more reserved, or careful, around my friends of other ethnicities. It wasn’t until when my uncle married my aunt-in-law, who is caucasian, that my grandparents began to be more accepting and open. After watching this movie and thinking back about this, I think that even though assimilation is difficult to me being accepting is even harder, especially when such a deep history is being involved. For the character Jay, Mina’s father, the relocation to him wasn’t just a political inequality but a personal injustice. Throughout the movie, he thought of Uganda as his true home and dreamed of going back, similarly to a lot of immigrants who had to relocate because of warfare or the oppressive government of their country. Because of this, I think it had prevented Jay from assimilating into the new culture and from being more accepting toward the black community because to him, it was “them” who had driven him away from his home.

The reading and video about Kareem Khubchandani really captured my attention because of the mention of “auntie.” It was said that an auntie is someone who is the repository of culture and who tells us whether we are doing it right or wrong. However, through this, the space for inclusiveness towards queerness can be open. I think that even though in cultures that are not openly accepting towards queerness, the concept of an auntie can, in a way, tolerant, if not accepting, towards it. In my own experience of the Vietnamese culture, women often get together in large groups in order to spread awareness and does charity events to help other women who suffer from domestic abuse or poverty. A lot of them doesn’t even know the definition of feminism and what it stands for, and yet, what they’re doing can be consider as feminism. Another point that was brought up was that an auntie doesn’t have to be a cis woman. I think that this is very important because not all feminists are women.

After reading Chandra Mohanty’s article Under Western’s Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, I find myself agreeing with many of her points that she’d emphasized throughout the article. The most important one for me was that feminism should not be universalized because not all feminism is the same. As each country progressed, they all face different problems and one should not assume that every country all faced that problem. In the article, Mohanty stated that “the assumption of women as an already constituted, coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic, or racial location or contradictions, implies a notion of gender or sexual difference or even patriarchy which can be applied universally and cross-culturally,” which had left a strong impression on me. I think that such assumption should exist because, in a way, it does place a limit on what we labeled as “third world women.” Western feminists looked to women from “third world countries” as the subjects of oppression and needing help without fully understand their culture, background, and where they came from.