I-HOTEL Posts 1&2 (for second readings)

POST 1
In class last week we discussed the theme of invisibility and I found it really interesting how "races" were blended together so that only two categories exist: white and not-white.  We saw this in the beginning of that section when the Japanese characters hid the sole "Indian" among them, and later when the manager couldn't tell if Ria was Chinese or Japanese, and simply gave her the job because he thought she could act as a translator...

In this reading, I found that "race" seemed to matter more, but that invisibility was more of unattainable goal than anything else.  For instance, "Ben San Pablo Jr.,  spent his teenage years running with a white crowd.  After all, was not his mother, the second wife of Bienvenido Senior, a whit woman, whose marriage to a Filipino man had cast her from her family?  By his senior year in high school, Ben realized that no manner of assimilation or integration would erase his dark features, which were smuggled in with those of his mother.  He began to see himself mirrored in disinterest..." (338).  It seems that Ben wanted to blend in, that he wanted the invisibility that was seen in the other section of the book... He would drink or smoke pot in order to rid himself of feelings of rejection and his inability to blend in.  It seems that the judgement of others had a profound effect up on... However his attempts to blend in and hide from others ultimately failed and he realized that  "It is impossible to destroy or avoid all mirrors, but only the blinding of one's own vision may destroy the seeing reflection of another" (338).

My personal thoughts:  I don't think that I will ever understand why "race" is an issue.  It is my opinion that people ought to accept that there is only one race, the human race.  That doesn't mean everyone has to be the same, different cultures, religions, ideas, and backgrounds are what make the world an interesting place... but why does it cause so much conflict and unease when people are around others who are different from them in some way?  ... ... and that is my personal ramble for this post...

POST 2
In Chapter 7 during the part with "the people who cut the cane" I could not help but think of the scene from Breath, Eyes, Memory where Sophie beats the cane stalk not caring that she hurt her hands and shoulder... The quote that brought that to mind was:  "Achieve a technique so that you body creates a rhythm, so that your body becomes as a machine.  Forget that your hands and wrists will swell and blister; that you all soon be covered in tiny cuts..." (360).

This also reminded me of the women laboring in the sweatshop in the first part of the I-Hotel that we read... because the women had to forget about the pain and the conditions under which they worked and focus on their task in order to complete it.  They had to forget that they were working for minuscule wages and that others made a large prophet off of their backs...  The terms are of course different, but I felt that the idea of harsh labor appeared in both sections.