The 9/11 post
Mon, Sep. 11th, 2006 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterSo, I've been procrastinating so much on this post that I've actually done some book blogging, wow.
I am going to be wimpy and default and blog about the personal; I have been keeping my head in the sand and not following any of the political ruckus, particularly that concerning ABC's "docudrama." Suffice to say, I don't want to get in any sort of political arguments, and I am tired.
Pictures under the cuts.
When 9/11 happened, I was still in college. I had been in New York City from around the 8th through the 10th; my dad had just flown back to Taiwan the night of the 10th, and my mom and I had taken the train to New Jersey. Despite only being an hour away, I didn't go see Ground Zero while I was in New Jersey.
I saw it for the first time this Labor Day weekend; my sister, her friend and I were trying to find our way to the subway to get to Chinatown for dinner, and there it was:
I've been to the Two Towers before, the most memorable time being during freshman year of college. I don't really remember the landscape around there, but it's so odd to see such a large flat space in New York.
The odd thing is that it's incredibly beautiful:
It was the setting sun reflecting off the buildings, or something.
I hadn't seen the gallery of pictures before:
I really liked how multicultural they were; black and Asian and white and Latino (I don't remember if I saw Native American or not). I liked the feeling that they were trying to include everyone in the memorial: the people who live in New York and the workers actually trying to find people in the rubble and children and old folks and women and men and people of all races and ages and sizes and tourists and bystanders and people watching from TVs everywhere and people caught out in the streets.
It was particularly nice because right after 9/11, I felt so excluded because of the rise in nationalistic sentiment. Despite my US passport, I was very aware of being from Taiwan and not being "born and bred" American, particularly in conversations about foreigners and Muslims and how the French sucked because they wouldn't back "us" up and how the British were wusses. I put "us" in quotations because I didn't feel included. As a side note, while I appreciate the sentiment in trying to make me feel better by saying that no one deliberately excluded me, I think there is a very good reason as to why I didn't feel included, and it is because anti-foreigner sentiment was running high back then (not that it's necessarily stopped now).
Furthermore, whenever American values of mom and the flag and apple pie get pulled out, many of the images used are images of white America. I am not a part of white America. I don't particularly want to be a part of white America, as I am quite happy with who I am. And my America, the one I live in every day? That's not white America either.
Anyway.
There was a long list of names posted:
It reminded me a great deal of the Vietnam Wall, but more for thematic purposes rather than political parallels.
Underneath the long list were small memorials people had put up :
As usual, the flag bothers me, but this is more related to my own tangled issues with nationality and nationalism, and people have to right to remember their dead in any way they see fit.
I still found it very touching, despite my flag issues, and was glad that people were still putting things up five years after the fact.
I couldn't read through the entire timeline:
But, uh, to make it All About Me, this is where I was in time when I learned what had happened. And I am going to stop here, because I am too tired to write up 9/11 and race relations in America and nationalism and racism.
I am going to be wimpy and default and blog about the personal; I have been keeping my head in the sand and not following any of the political ruckus, particularly that concerning ABC's "docudrama." Suffice to say, I don't want to get in any sort of political arguments, and I am tired.
Pictures under the cuts.
When 9/11 happened, I was still in college. I had been in New York City from around the 8th through the 10th; my dad had just flown back to Taiwan the night of the 10th, and my mom and I had taken the train to New Jersey. Despite only being an hour away, I didn't go see Ground Zero while I was in New Jersey.
I saw it for the first time this Labor Day weekend; my sister, her friend and I were trying to find our way to the subway to get to Chinatown for dinner, and there it was:
I've been to the Two Towers before, the most memorable time being during freshman year of college. I don't really remember the landscape around there, but it's so odd to see such a large flat space in New York.
The odd thing is that it's incredibly beautiful:
It was the setting sun reflecting off the buildings, or something.
I hadn't seen the gallery of pictures before:
I really liked how multicultural they were; black and Asian and white and Latino (I don't remember if I saw Native American or not). I liked the feeling that they were trying to include everyone in the memorial: the people who live in New York and the workers actually trying to find people in the rubble and children and old folks and women and men and people of all races and ages and sizes and tourists and bystanders and people watching from TVs everywhere and people caught out in the streets.
It was particularly nice because right after 9/11, I felt so excluded because of the rise in nationalistic sentiment. Despite my US passport, I was very aware of being from Taiwan and not being "born and bred" American, particularly in conversations about foreigners and Muslims and how the French sucked because they wouldn't back "us" up and how the British were wusses. I put "us" in quotations because I didn't feel included. As a side note, while I appreciate the sentiment in trying to make me feel better by saying that no one deliberately excluded me, I think there is a very good reason as to why I didn't feel included, and it is because anti-foreigner sentiment was running high back then (not that it's necessarily stopped now).
Furthermore, whenever American values of mom and the flag and apple pie get pulled out, many of the images used are images of white America. I am not a part of white America. I don't particularly want to be a part of white America, as I am quite happy with who I am. And my America, the one I live in every day? That's not white America either.
Anyway.
There was a long list of names posted:
It reminded me a great deal of the Vietnam Wall, but more for thematic purposes rather than political parallels.
Underneath the long list were small memorials people had put up :
As usual, the flag bothers me, but this is more related to my own tangled issues with nationality and nationalism, and people have to right to remember their dead in any way they see fit.
I still found it very touching, despite my flag issues, and was glad that people were still putting things up five years after the fact.
I couldn't read through the entire timeline:
But, uh, to make it All About Me, this is where I was in time when I learned what had happened. And I am going to stop here, because I am too tired to write up 9/11 and race relations in America and nationalism and racism.
(no subject)
Tue, Sep. 12th, 2006 01:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Tue, Sep. 12th, 2006 01:26 am (UTC)