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All of the Feels (Internalized Hatred ((Freud views the melancholic as one…

- - - - Lorde claims that poetry "is a vital necessity of our existence, it forms the quality of the light within which predicate our hopes and reams toward survival and change" (37)
      - For Lorde, poetry is essential to the existence of women, specifically women of color and those who suffer under the hand of oppression because it is a chance to theorize and share ideas about our way of life. Without poetry, there would be a lack of consciousness for those whose voices are often ignored
    - - The idea of anger for Amia Srinvisan is a form "of communication a way of publicly making moral disvalue, calling for the shared negative appreciation of others" (104). In her essay, she deconstructs the idea of when it is appropriate to feel anger. The fact of the matter is, anger and aggression often make people uncomfortable and can be seen as counterproductive to your cause, whether justified or not, specially for minorities or the oppressed.
      - The Aptness of Anger argues that anger is necessary and "calls for public recognition but is met with dismissal or retrenchment" (133). The essay argues that to see real and significant changes, one must manifest their anger and call out the injustices they deal with. We have to reject the idea of counterproductively when discussing anger if we hope to better the situation. Srinivasan believes that there is power in anger and it is necessary for our social reality.
      - In Moving Politics Deborah Gould explores the creation and movement of ACT UP, how they were able to turn their grief into anger, in the name of their own survival. The queer community realized that their survival was on them to figure out, no one cared that gay men were dying at alarming rates, if they wanted their friends and family to stop dying, they would have to make people pay attention. Gould focuses on the movement's ability to channel their anger and turn it into something that allows for their survival.
        
        "There was a great deal of collective mourning in the queer community at that time... so if my memory serves we were bending the stick in the other direction. We were saying "Mourning's fine. No problem. Make space for mourning. but then you know, get out, grab a rock and throw it the window of the FDA"
        
        " We are inclined to favor the theory that shame is an innate auxiliary affect and a specific inhibitor of continuing interest and enjoyment. Like disgust it operates ordinarily only after or enjoyment has been activated, and inhibits one or the other or both. The innate activator of shame is complete reduction or joy. Hence any barrier to further exploration which reduces interest or the smile of enjoyment will activate the lowering of the head and eyes in the shame and reduce further exploration or self-exposure powered by excitement or joy" (135)
        
        Tomkins appears to be making the argument that shame helps us understand and appreciate the positive affects in life. He presents shame as a necessity for our existence. Even though shame brings negative feelings in our life, it allows us to appreciate the good moments, and recognize the problems in our path that need to be rectified if we hope to move forward.
        
        In our modern political climate, the idea of hope can sometimes feel futile, and pointless. For the communities that faced continual threats and oppression without any sign of stopping, the fight can seem hopeless.
        
        Ernest Bloch explores the complexity and the necessity of hope in "Can hope be disappointed?". Bloch explains that it doesn't matter if the hope is simply 'wishful thinking' and will end in disappointment, that disappointment is essential in hope, "without there can be nothing new" (341). We must push past adversity and setbacks. Munoz follows this up with the idea of hope being necessary for survival because "we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, ultimately new worlds" (1). The ability to hope allows us to recreate our situation, and to work to new and better possibilities, not just for ourselves but for the generations after us.
    - - Twilight Los Angeles told the stories of various men and women in L.A who were affected by the 1994 riots after the beating of Rodney King. I believe that the riots, while they ended in violence and death, were riots of survival, the survival of black men and women, the survival of the generational trauma that lives in the black community, a chance to examine how much harder black and brown bodies had to fight for survival.
      - The film's intention was not to place blame or to give one side of the story but rather help the healing process of a broken city, full of broken people. It aimed to help heal the city of L.A and the people who continued to suffer at the hands of racism and civil unrest.
- - - - Growing up Gloria was taught that speaking in her native language was wrong and made her un-American. If she wanted to belong to America and to fit in, she had to train herself to lose the language of her people. She writes, "Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out", directly addressing the problem of assimilation. (76) She couldn't 'tame' her Spanish, or co-exist with both identities or languages.
      - Gloria wasn't only reminded that her Spanish was un-American, but that her English made her anti-Chicano. She was told as a child "Pocho, cultural traitor, you're speaking the oppressor's language by speaking English, you're ruining the Spanish language" (77). The immigrant or bilingual minorities are shoved into boxes when living in America and are forced to choose whether to stay true to their roots or lay their allegiance with America.
    - - Assimilation is able to hone so much power over those hoping to adapt to a cultural or society that is not there own by being able to control what it defines as acceptable and unacceptable, from something as simple as anger. By rejecting or dismissing their anger, the oppressed become silent and seen as overly dramatic.
      - Nussbaum argues that anger is almost always counterproductive. That those who are feeling betrayed, by acting or even feeling anger, we "want the offender to suffer" and is "normatively problematic" (3). I argue that Nussbaum believes that the complexity of anger especially for people of color or immigrants, isn't worth the effort of expressing. She claims that it is easier for everyone involved if everyone just 'gets over it', something that is easier said than done for the marginalized.
    - - The Asian American community deals with a 'split psyche when attempting to understand who they are in the fabric of America, whether it be 'the model minority' or as 'perpetual foreigners'. Either way, their identities are forced to be altered, without the chance to grieve for their loss of ancestral and cultural history.
      - They attempt to change the narrative of Melancholia being a feeling that arises from a specific loss but rather an "unresolved process that might usefully describe the unstable immigration and suspended assimilation of Asian Americans into a national fabric". Han and Eng argue that there is a significant loss of personhood and identity for those involved in the immigrant experience.
    - - Despite the best attempts of those who hope to assimilate or conform to a way of life or to a group of persons who reject them, there is always going to be a fear of the other. The bodies and psyches of black, brown, Asian immigrants, are continually attacked. The ability to conform to the white majority becomes pointless when your sheer existence strikes fear and signals a red flag.
        
        "Crucially here, we end up a fantasy in which the white child says to its mother: 'Mama the n**ger going to eat up' Such a cannibalistic fantasy of being incorporated into the body of the other, is crucial to the politics: fear works by establishing others as fearsome insofar as they threaten to take the self in" (64).
      - " As in the old days of racial segregation where black folks learned to 'wear the mask', many of us pretend to be comfortable in the face of whiteness only to turn our backs and give an expression of intense levels of discomfort." (169)
        
        The historical legacy of slavery and the 'invisibility' that slaves had to assimilate to lives on today, without any real acknowledgment from either white or black folks. Hooks points out that the black communities' refusal to acknowledge whiteness or inability to disassociate themselves from whiteness leads to internalized feels of hatred, and idealization of whiteness. Even when black folks imitate and try to embody whiteness they still perceive whites as a threat or with suspicion. This acts as a perfect critique of assimilation. A vicious cycle of trying to emulate something you despise or don't trust, creating a push and pull of self hatred and resentment.
- - - - In the second chapter of The Woman Warrior Maxine Kingston tells the story of the epic warrior of Fa Mu Lan from a first-person perspective. Fa Mu Lan is a young girl who is taken to the mountains miles away from village and family, and trains to fight against the corrupt empire repressing the Chinese population. Through the fictional Fa Mu Lan, Kingston can challenge the presence of a woman in Chinese society, where they belong, what they're capable of doing, she rejects the Chinese gender expectations. Fa Mu Lan is the ultimate story of rebellion and the power of female revenge.
      - Later in the chapter, Kingston pivots back to her own life in America where she feels unable to stand up to her racist boss or parents' disinterest in her achievements. She uses Fu Mu Lan to contextualize her own struggles in real life and realizes that her own power comes from her words. She is able to challenge the racist stereotypes of her people to bring them closer together as a population.