Week 12: Diverse Position Science Fiction
Discuss how the text(s) you read for this week's assignment did or did not reflect the values and perspectives of majoritarian culture.
This week I read the short story I Live With You by Carol Emshwiller. The narrator doesn't give the reader an indication of who they are, leaving us to wonder if they are an actual human being, or some ghost or spiritual entity. Throughout the entire story, we are given a glimpse into the narrator's life and perspective as someone who is not "seen" by the world, as well as the life of the woman (whose house the narrator stays at, unbeknownst to the woman). As the audience, we understand that both the woman and the narrator are lonely people, and are segregated or ignored by majority of society because of a unnamed aspect. Whilst reading, I assumed that this aspect that they shared was race. They might have been a minority living in a location with a small population of that minority. Thinking about it now, making this assumption itself that the difference is race, is the similarity that these two women share and has caused them to be "excluded" and ignored by society, is also saying something about our society...that I would make this assumption without a second thought. When the author wrote, "And you're as invisible as I am. I saw that nobody noticed you just as hardly anybody notices me," it made me feel melancholic. Although I cannot say I completely relate to this narrator or the woman in the short story, I feel for them. Being from Hong Kong, and from a minority race, especially in this country, although I do not feel "ignored" or alone, there have been numerous occasions where I have felt smaller. As if my voice couldn't be heard because I was either too afraid to speak up against a majority of people who were racially different than me, or that I would speak up and my voice would not be understood because people were raised culturally different from me.
This week I read the short story I Live With You by Carol Emshwiller. The narrator doesn't give the reader an indication of who they are, leaving us to wonder if they are an actual human being, or some ghost or spiritual entity. Throughout the entire story, we are given a glimpse into the narrator's life and perspective as someone who is not "seen" by the world, as well as the life of the woman (whose house the narrator stays at, unbeknownst to the woman). As the audience, we understand that both the woman and the narrator are lonely people, and are segregated or ignored by majority of society because of a unnamed aspect. Whilst reading, I assumed that this aspect that they shared was race. They might have been a minority living in a location with a small population of that minority. Thinking about it now, making this assumption itself that the difference is race, is the similarity that these two women share and has caused them to be "excluded" and ignored by society, is also saying something about our society...that I would make this assumption without a second thought. When the author wrote, "And you're as invisible as I am. I saw that nobody noticed you just as hardly anybody notices me," it made me feel melancholic. Although I cannot say I completely relate to this narrator or the woman in the short story, I feel for them. Being from Hong Kong, and from a minority race, especially in this country, although I do not feel "ignored" or alone, there have been numerous occasions where I have felt smaller. As if my voice couldn't be heard because I was either too afraid to speak up against a majority of people who were racially different than me, or that I would speak up and my voice would not be understood because people were raised culturally different from me.
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