TOW #27 - Why is Asian Salad Still on the Menu

Walking into a restaurant, it is not difficult to find culturally diverse and exotic foods.  However, one type of item often comes with an interesting name.  Asian foods are commonly given jokey names “Oriental Chop Chop.  Mr. Mao’s.  Secret Asian Man.  Asian Emperor.  China Island.  Chicken Asian Chop Chop.  Chinese-y Chicken” (Tsui 4).  These names reflect the common misrepresentation of Asian Americans.  Bonnie Tsui brings attention to this problem with the use of personal experience as research.  Utilizing this research has allowed Tsui to highlight the issue of unseen racism in our daily lives.

                Being an Asian American, Tsui documents the many things she’s seen in restaurants.  In her piece, she uses what she encounters as inspiration for her research.  She includes historical context on the creation of the title, “Asian Fusion.”  She notes that is was created in the 80’s and used by popular chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Roy Yamaguchi.  They sparked popularity of titling foods “Asian.”  Today, restaurants used this to their advantage, “A single Cheesecake Factory, Rainforest Café or Applebee’s could sell 500 Asian salads a week.  Each chain punched up the name to seem foreign yet familiar” (Tsui 10).  Not only does her factual evidence establish credibility in her article, but it also serves to expose these restaurants.  Applebee’s and other are utilizing Asian culture as a way to produce revenue.  Characterizing an item as Asian draws customer’s in since it sounds exotic and foreign. Not only are the restaurants just using the name, but they don’t even know the ingredients to their food.  Tsui asked Applebee’s for “more specifics on what made its Asian greens Asian and its Oriental vinaigrette Oriental, a spokesman told me the company was unable to ‘provide a thorough response” (Tsui 11).  Restaurants are solely using the Asian title as a marketing tool.

                Tsui documents the problems with restaurants through her own experiences.  Not only are restaurants using the name to draw customers, but they also don’t know what they’re putting into these foods or what makes it “Asian.”  This problem plays into the racism Asian Americans face in the country.  Their culture is taken advantage of so other companies and businesses can profit.

TOW #26 - To Stay Married, Embrace Change

“Till death do us part.”  A phrase said by almost every soon to be wife and husband.  Despite this promise, many marriages end with one partner, or both, filing for divorce.  Narrowing down the most common reason for splitting is difficult, There’s a myriad of reasons for why someone decides to leave their partner.  Ada Calhoun writes that often times the villain of marriage is change.  Whether it be too much change or not enough, partners lose their love for someone they once loved, or became someone new and their partner didn’t change along with them.  Calhoun emphasizes the need for accepting change through her use of first person further showing the importance of maintaining relationships in life.   

            Calhoun’s firsthand experience with divorce is detailed in her piece through first person.  She explains how her marriage wasn’t a big deal to her or her husband, Nick.  In fact, they “told anyone who asked that the marriage was no big deal,” (22), hinting at the fact that neither of them felt impacted by their legal binding.  Furthermore, Calhoun includes how she “didn’t feel different the next day.  We still fell asleep to “Politically Incorrect” with our cats at our feet as we always had” (21).  This lack of change was detailed in first person, giving readers the truth of how she felt to reach to appeal to their emotions.  Nothing changed after her and Nick became husband and wife, instead they pushed their marriage off as insignificant.  In her case, marking marriage as unimportant made their life consistent and unchanging.  The audience reads how Calhoun’s lack of change led to how her husband become ex-husband.  As not many people want to experience divorce, Calhoun’s first person account of her failing marriage serves as a warning to readers, pushing them to create change in their own relationships, rather than let them be the same thing day after day.

            Human nature is built off of several relationships.  Whether it be friends, family, or love, maintaining these relationships serves to keep us happy in life.  As change tends to be unavoidable, adjusting to change or creating it yourself helps keep relationships going.  Calhoun emphasizes this in her use of first person to strike fear in her audience, as she urges them to not fall into an unchanging life.  She pushes this idea as a way to help others strengthen their relationships and help other be happier in life.

IRB Intro Post #4 - Love is a Mixtape

The book I chose to read for this marking period is "Love is a Mixtape" by Rob Sheffield. This book interested me because it uses songs to tell a love story between two very different people.  I have never read something like this before and it involves music from the 90s, which is a creative way of telling a story.  Additionally, the inside cover includes the metaphor, "Love is a mix tape," which is also the title. I am intrigued to see how this metaphor plays into the book as a whole.

TOW #25 - Visual Text

In this public advertisement created by UN Women, they are using the search engine Google to convey how women are viewed in the world.  UN Women is an organization formed in 2010 focused on the empowerment and equality of women.  Being an international organization, UN Women reach countries far and wide, and reach a large demographic.  By using the popular search engine Google, UN Women emphasize the need for women to be treated equally everywhere in the world.  An aspect of Google is that when someone searches something, popular results are listed underneath the search bar.  UN Women uses this aspect to list the way women are thought of.  The common results are that women need to “be put in their place,” “know their place,” “be controlled,” and “be disciplined.”  All of these play into their audience’s feeling of both shock and sadness that they feel when reading this advertisement.  It is shocking that there are thoughts on how women need to be in society.  The fact that people believe in restricting women’s rights and freedoms in some parts of the world emphasize the need to change these ideas.  In addition, using Google as the platform to show these views increase how modern these problems are.  UN Women then juxtapose these issues with the phrase “women need to be seen as equal.”  This contrast between positive and negative increases the stark difference between how women are seen, and how they should be viewed.  UN Women use this add to bring awareness to not only the unfair treatment of women but also hint at pushing their audience to stop ignoring these problems.