A.K.A. Don Bonus (literacy)

Last Saturday I went to SEAM, Southeast Asian Mentorship. Its a tutoring/mentoring program that I've been helping out for the past year or so, and its something that is closer to my heart than the site I am at, because not only does it allow the empowerment of the youth I work with and myself, but also doing that in the context of issues that revolve around Southeast Asian. Anyway, I went to mentorship. For the first half, we tutored the mentees. If they had homework from summer school, we helped them on that, but for the most part we helped them prep for the SAT, the ACT, or the CAHSEE.
After tutoring, we watched a documentary called A.K.A. Don Bonus. If you haven't seen it, I strongly suggest you do. Even though it gave me a headache watching it, it is a powerful and compelling glimpse into the life of a Cambodian American. Don Bonus, was a high school student graduating in 1993. During his senior year, he had a camcorder and had the project of videotaping his everyday life. I found it interesting that it is something similar to what we do at Kidnet... teach youth about digital storytelling.


Anyway there are many issues that are addressed in this documentary, many issues which I strongly identified with, being that I am also a Cambodian trying to learn how to live in America coming from a refugee family. However, I was lucky.
My first home was in the heart of Cleveland, Ohio. When I was a small child, I could hear sirens or cop cars, firetrucks, and ambulances passing my house frequently. I was almost part of what I thought to be standard ambient noise. When I stepped out of my house, walking with my older family and family friends to park along Lake Erie, I could see my city adorned with graffiti and litter. And being the early nineties, my older cousins would be part the nineties fashion, which is preserved in the documentary. I know some of my cousins and others in the Khmer community were involved in gangs, so that was part of my childhood. I remember gang fights breaking out in the parking lot of Khmer parties, where the Khmer gangsters who are part of our families, stood outside to smoke and drink and chill. Someone gets too drunk. Someone throws a punch. A swarm of people rush into the brawl, like water flowing into the central point... the drain. I could hear Khmer curse words along with English curse words said with Khmer accents. I could hear the Khmer slurs coming out from drunkards. I could hear ladies and elderly, yelling at the men to stop fighting. The ladies had sharp tongues and a tone that could kill eardrums of those who are not accustom to the wrath of Southeast Asian women. Anyway, my point was that I onced lived in a world like Don Bonus'. But I was lucky. My mother moved the family to the west side of Cleveland, where there were safer neighborhoods and better schools.

Anyway, I want to bring up A.K.A Don Bonus because I saw the effect of proficiency tests and exit exams had on refugees and first generation Americans. I found myself frustrated. Here is my drift... much of what I say doesn't just come from the documentary, but also the voices of my friends, those around me, and perhaps myself... for this is our generation... our stories...

There are many refugees and children of refugees who live in homes where English is NOT the spoken language, the main language, or the mother language.
The youths of these homes go to school and have to take a proficiency test to graduate, but these tests are evaluated on the proficiency of English.
Grammar... Syntax... Lexicon...
English is quite different from Khmer... and Vietnamese... and Mandarin... and Tagalog... and Spanish. Khmer is written in a different script. It has a completely different grammar system. It is very difficult to literally translate Khmer into English, and vice versa.
Imagine this... being uprooted from your motherland by war and tragedy only to come to a land that claimed to offer you opportunity, but placed you in a low-income community, where life is made harder to survive in due to language boundaries, discrimination, gang violence, and a youth so conflicted from the differing customs of the traditional motherland and the customs of America.
Imagine a home where you often cannot ask your parents for help, because they do not understand the ways of America or understand English. Or they are working all day and all night, two shifts, just to support they family with low end jobs... the only jobs they can find as a non-English speaker.
Instead it is often the child supporting the parents... functioning as translators, dealing with the police, paying the bills, doing the paperwork... because the old generation is unable to understand.
Life is hard for a child who knows not a childhood, but instead, laid upon them is the responsibility to that care of the entire family while their non-refugee peers are carefree and with greater luxury. Upon them is the strife of trauma from a violence that scarred their parents' hearts thirty some years ago and the strife of a violence that scarred them today in these communities that are not conducive of learning.
So there is a test... testing you to perform proficiently with a language that is not your mother tongue. A test that determines if you will be able to graduate or not...
Many of these children drop out of school. Many are just unable to pass.
They join gangs. Get low end jobs. Speak improper English.
And take part in this endless cycle of poverty.
Stuck in these communities... underprivileged, under-resourced, and misunderstood...
Dealing with problems that has perpetuated a cycle
Damn these tests...
What makes you think that my friends can't write an English essay without freaking out...
worrying if they will graduate?
Damn these tests...
That forces us to assimilate to a English-speaking world and live under white supremacy.
Damn these tests...
That fail to see that my people struggle and know sooo much more, more than that which can be taught in a classroom.
A test... judges the literacy of youths... and decides to either elevate them or keep them down, trapped.
A test... Imagine that.

Now lets bring it back to where I am at... SEAM. As I said, we help tutor youths, and prepare them to take the CAHSEE tests and the SATs and ACTs. Funny that I didn't realize it before until the film, that our Southeast Asian youth are still struggling with these test and the impact it has. These tests are still posing a difficult challenge in life, that may either make them or break them. I tutor them. I feel for them. This is our story.




P.S.
The film is not about proficiency tests but it does show its effect on child from refugee families. If you get the chance, please what A.K.A. Don Bonus. There are so many more issues that are explored in the example of just one person's life.

The Setting Sun

Sorry I haven't blogged much. Writing about other things is so hard when I got something else bothering the crap out of me, so I'm going to write about this thing that has been on my mind first so I can finally let go of it. If your expecting something about literacy... this isn't the right blog. This is just something personal, a daymare, so don't waste your time reading it.

I have this image in my head that been haunting me.
An epic dance...
Surrounded by celestial bodies, stars glowing all around, like colorful fireflies

There was a beautiful angel
Robed in white, trimmed with gold, along with an accent cloth of blue-gray.
This angel had a face of perfection, soft skin, kind eyes.
Despite the angel's greatness, pearl white wings spreading out like massive sails
Yet there was a humbleness, a shyness, no one can compare.

And there was a demon
Bare and naked with some red flesh exposed where skin was torn off
He could not hide his awful self behind anything
Scale-covered skin that felt like sandpaper, a sharp tongue that can cut, and a temper of fire
And wings of broken bones, scabs and dried blood, flying with the pain of his past sufferings

They locked eyes. A desire grew.
The sun over takes the setting, rising and burning a brilliant yellow
Angel and demon, flapped their wings, circling each other
Like a courtship dance of butterflies
The sun was moving up as the dance proceeded, growing brighter and brighter
And the two would flutter up along with the warm sun
Then the demon convinced that their hearts have connected through this epic dance
He reached out and grabbed the angel into his arms.
The angel kissed the demon. Then the demon took the angel.
But then a voice trembled throughout the universe and consciousness, of treachery and betrayal,
The sun fell glowing red and purple, like a dieing heart, pulsating with synchronized flares
The demon was afraid of the sunset
The angel was more afraid of the voice, and quickly took the angelic heart back from the demon
As the demon scurried in awkward flight towards the falling star
The demon, in a panic and a frenzy, knew that his hands were bare,
Yet he still flew under the sun and pushed against it with all his might,
Trying to stop the sun from setting
In his efforts to keep the sun high and bright, his body burned into a crisp
He endured more pain and suffer than in all of his awful life
Just so he can dance with his beautiful angel still

The angel was terrified, flew off, leaving the demon behind
And in hand were both the hearts of the demon and the angel
As the angel was guided home by another angel... the demon died
His body turned into ash, and then his heart exploded in the hands of the angel
Hurting the dear angel and tainting the angel with blood splatters
The angel took the broken pieces of the heart and tossed it aside
A bad memory that the angel did not want to keep
And the angels flew away into the heavens together

The angel and demon were no more
A love that was divided by stark differences
But a beautiful love nonetheless
If only the other angels could see past their preconceived lines
And see that within the body of a demon was a heart of gold
A heart driven passionately and feverishly by love and goodwill.
But even in the heavens... everybody has their place.
The demon paid a high price for not seeing that

The dance is done
Now will the sun ever rise again?

Significance of Play

On 9 July 2009, an amazing lady named Aysdele Nzinga came to speak to my class. She spoke quite powerfully, with the command over words like Zeus wielding lightning bolts, about the work she does in Oakland, teaching youths literacy through performance. It seemed like all her words were super charged, but none electrified me like the word "play"... especial how she used it. It was interesting to call the "work" she does as "play". And one of her two rules is that everyone at the facility must all play.

This got me thinking about a video game I used to play in middle school called Zeus, a computer city building game. I could click the people walking through my virtual city streets and they would say such interesting things. Travellers would ask for the safe guidance of Aeolus to go back home. Market sellers would praise the fine goods in the agoras. And the philosophers said many things, but one that really suck with me was "One hour of play can tell more about a person than a year of conversation."

I guess its weird to think about till quotes from a video game, but I found them witty and inspiring. Is there any truth in the philosophers statement? I don't think the scenario would play out logically true, but there is a point that can be derived. The act of "playing" is much more powerful than just talking.

Given the circumstances, a year of conversation is not very likely to happen between me as a volunteer and the kids I will be working with. It would be awkward if I asked a bunch of questions anyways... trying to keep a long conversation going. Lol I just imagined myself putting a student through some mini inquisition or the kid giving me a sour face and saying that I was a weird creeper stalker. That would be bad bad. I think the best way to create a bond between myself and the kids would be through the power of play. And after that bridge connects the two sides, a growth on both sides may ensue. Hopefully, "play" can create the trust and connection for me to be seen as a role model and a fellow person to learn from.