Best Quality-- Links

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2011/03/135_79296.html

This link describes the traditional food Koreans eat when they celebrate a new year. They beleive that eating the snow crab's meat will provide them with 12 months of excellent health. The chemical coumpounds that are found in the snow crab are believed to break down cholestorol, clean the liver and purify the body for a fresh start to the new year
In the book, the Chinese eat crab as well to kick off the new year.

In the book Waverly makes fun of Jing Mei for going to her gay hair stylist implying the stylist has AIDS. I thought that this link about Statistics of HIV and AIDS is really interesting because it shows true numbers of people who are gay that have been infected

Asian Americans are the lowest ethnicity group that are infected. Asians are less than 20%

http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/overview/statistics/


I thought this link was very intriguing because it describes that there is in fact a way you can contract HIV through cutting hair. If a barber does not properly dispose of a utensil that leaves an abrasion and if that person is HIV positive there is a possibility that the virus will stay on the sharp tool and will be transmissed to someone else. There have specific cases of this is countries in Africa and Asia, because of poor hygiene and the repetiveness of re-usable cutting tools.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2932524/

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?currentPage=7

This article illustrates a visit to the Maine Lobster Festival. It pretty much everything you can think of lobster related. It focuses mostly on the debate as to wether or not boiling Lobsters alive is cruel. PETA makes there position clear while the lobster farmers continually say that lobsters lack a cerebral cortex and there fore feel no pain. When it gets down to it, people don't really know wether or not they feel pain or to what degree they feel pain. It talks about how this festival could almost be concodered a masacre with 100s of cooker boiling lobsters alive one after the other. Over all it was an interesting article over an issue I frankly never thought about.

Without Wood - 2/28/12 - Four Quotes

"I used to believe everything my mother said, even when I didn't know what she meant." (185)

-This is the first line of the reading. The first line always intrigues me, because depending on what the sentence is, I try to predict what will be the concept, the theme, and the plot throughout this particular section. This line makes me think that we will see Rose confront a situation in which her mother tries to control her. She says she believes everything her mother says, even when she "didn't know what it meant." That last bit is extremely powerful, as if she sees her mother's opinions and beliefs as her only options.

"I clung to the bed, refusing to leave this world for dreams." (186)

-This sentence shows how much Rose's dreams scare her. She is clinging onto the bed, as if she's holding on for her life, fearful, because if she lets go, she will fall to her death. 'This world" is the real world where she feels safe, while her dreams are foreign grounds that she is extremely afraid to explore.

"You are getting too thin." (187)

-I think the theme of women losing weight and being too skinny is a recurring thing in this book. It isn't only partial to one section, because we've seen this repeatedly. Maybe being too thin is being too vulnerable, unable to protect yourself? Or maybe it's being frail, lacking the wisdom to make your own decisions? I can't help to think it also has a literal meaning, because wood is thick and strong. When you're thin, you most likely aren't strong, hence being without wood.

"Over the years, I learned to choose from the best opinions. Chinese people had Chinese opinions. American people had American opinions. And in almost every case, the American version was much better." (191)

-This passage again brings up the old generation vs. new generation conflict. The old generation has its way of doing things, and the new generation feels like the American way is better than their Chinese heritage. The old generation seems to get offended when the new generation doesn't know about or doesn't appreciate the old culture, and the new generation is assimilating to the new American culture, which isn't the correct way to go about things in the old generation's eyes. This is also a recurring theme throughout the book.

Without Wood and Four Directions

click the writing below to see a bigger version of each image. These are from the last two readings.

Old Mr. Chou

Old Mr. Chou is the man who guards the door to Rose's dreams. Mr. Chou and Rose's mother are behind her door, waiting for Rose to fall asleep and dream. In her dreams, or nightmares, Rose is in a backyard with rows of square sandboxes. In each sandbox there's a new doll. Rose knows which doll her mother expects her to pick, so she picks another doll, then runs off. As she's running, her mother yells at her to stop, and chastises her for not listening to her mother. Rose suddenly becomes paralyzed and is too scared to move in any direction.

Zodiac

Waverly is a rabbit, born in 1951, while her mother is a Horse. According to these zodiacs, Horses and Rabbits aren't supposed to get along because of their clashing characteristics. The horse is strong, and frank to the point of tactlessness while the rabbit is supposed to be sensitive with tendencies toward being thin-skinned and skittery at the first sign of criticism.

Without Wood-Poem

My eyes opened after three days of fake sleep, in time to see the darkness.
I kept falling and sinking.
I got tired of always being on the way down.
All I wanted to do was attack the dark, dreamless land; the same way the impatient garden had begun to attack my home.
My home that used to be our home.
An undeniable force continued to pull me down.
I feared that I would forever be enclosed in foreign darkness.
Falling through nothing.
$10,000 is nothing.
Ted is nothing.
I am nothing.
And the garden is wild.
The artificial night reminded me of the good that turned bad, the bad that tried to be good.
I had abandoned the garden. I intentionally left it alone to live, and to die.
Twisted roots had grown so far into the ground, holding on to something that could not be released.
Beauty had arisen from neglect and disgrace.
And yet, all the effort devoted to Ted left me with a marriage to paper and a casual eviction.
He took me from what I thought I knew.
But now I know the darkness, and he will not rid me of that.

Without Wood Important Quotes

“Lately I had been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closet in meaning would be “confused” and “dark fog.” (188)

This sets the mood of Rose’s feelings throughout this chapter of the book. When Ted leaves her, she feels lost and depressed. She hesitates to looks for guidance, which causes her to sleep for days on end, and she does not dream during these days. She is lost in the darkness around her.

“My mother once told me why I was so confused all the time. She said I was without wood. Born without wood so that I listened to too many people.” (191)

While this also further describes her confusion and lack of guidance, it also shows how her mother’s strong perceptions of her. She describes her mother’s presence in her dream sequences as over-powering and omnipotent. For example, she knows which doll Rose should choose and influences Mr. Chou to push her in the direction of that one.

“And for the first time I can recall, I had no dreams. All I could remember was falling smoothly into a dark space with no feeling of dimension or direction. I was the only person in this blackness.” (193)

This further shows how she lacks guidance. When she is alone, she does not have a sense or feeling of direction. She feels safe in this place, completely alone, but it also keeps her from facing what’s real and dealing with her divorce.

“No way to pull them out once they’ve buried themselves in the masonry; you'd end up pulling the whole building down.” (195)

This quote shows how Rose was quite literally rooted in her marriage. Once Ted rips out these metaphorical weeds of their marriage, she crumbles and becomes very depressed.

“’I have just planted them this morning, some for you, some for me.’ And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.” (196)

In her last dream sequence, Rose’s mom plants new roots for herself and Rose. This shows how her mom will help her rebuild her life after her disaster, the divorce. Rose knows in her subconscious to reach out to her mother for guidance in her “dark fog.”