Yue (Ivy) Blog #5: “Where is woman in the foundation of a nation?"

Anderson suggests that the departure from feudal and monarchic power structures in Europe was foreshadowed not only by a growing mercantile class but also by a growing number of readers. We have all been taught about the importance of the printing press but as Anderson points out, it literally created an unprecedented dispersal of information in the form of books, music, art- all of which reached a receptive audience, which in turn innovated and created new and other valuable information.

Anderson mentions the equalizing power of friendships but he fails to talk about the fact that words and ideas can be just as much a level playing field on for communities can grow, as skin tone or facial features. As I read the book I couldn’t help thinking about Scarlett O’Hara and Elizabeth Bennet. Were these books as familiar to men at that time as they are now? That is when the feminist movement truly took form- when the woman’s perspective and the woman’s art became known to other women. My mother always told me that Arabian countries are destined to fail because their women are oppressed, while China, which allows for greater gender equality, can only prosper because we will have twice as many intelligent minds to work. In countries that foster equal opportunities for both genders, the concept of nation involves both male and female members of society. Whereas countries that only allow culture-production to occur in the male sector of society will have a nation representing only men. This is exactly the issue in Diouana’s story. Her death has nothing to do with her actions, except for the act itself. What killed Diouana were her employer’s perceived expectations of how French people treat Africans. Anderson would have said that Diouana’s employers were overly sensitive about being judged as foreign or tainted by being so long in Africa that they took it out on Diouana.

This makes me think about Vincent Chin’s murder. This Chinese man was executed in the most primitive way man knows how outside a McDonalds somewhere in Detroit. The question of course is whether or not his death was motivated by racism. We all know the circumstances of Detroit’s failing automotive industry, Toyota and the hasty trial and the sketchy judgment. Anderson’s perspective on this would be that there is always some stress between different communities- blacks, yellows, whites are colors that exist and that human minds categorize differently. These are differences that exist on the personal level, but there are also super-categories such as the concept of nation, which is extremely complicated to explain because it involves integration of multiple layers of influence ranging from primary education to the nation’s socioeconomic policy. In the case of Vincent Chin’s murderers, Anderson would say that they were moved to break with society’s expectations because the behavior of the nation at large, on matters of industry, allowed for an attack on the concept of yellow-skinned community. Vincent Chin was Chinese and China was where Chrysler reopened their factories after they closed them in Detroit. And Toyota is a Japanese enterprise.