AAPI Heritage Month odds and ends

There is one more category that I have been working on for a while, but I am not quite done with the reading. 

These books are the ones that did not fit, or that could have fit but the timing didn't, or maybe they fit better with something else.

It may work best as an example of how different readings connect, and how specific reading plans never really end. 

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler 

At the time of the Summer Reading Challenge for 2024, one of the categories was "A Friend's Favorite Book". I realized I didn't know a lot of friends' favorites, so I asked on Facebook. 

I got about thirty responses from eleven people (I already knew that picking a "favorite" is hard). There were not many that I had read before and I have only read about four since; it will take a while. 

One of them was Imbler's exploration of the body and self through marine biology. In some ways it is very fragmented, and maybe only some of the fragments will stick to you, but maybe they will be the ones you need. 

The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige

I have already mentioned this in another post all about dialectics (which is a part of how Boggs is guided in her work) and because there was a children's book about her as well.

See, it is all connected. 

The Cat Who Chose to Dream by  Loriene Honda, illustrated by Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani with Mark Deamer

This could have fit in with the picture books if I had read it sooner, but I stumbled across it checking something else, because the foreword was written by George Takei.

Mirikitani was held in Tule Lake with his family as a child. Discovering his art, Honda got permission to use the artwork for a book helping children process trauma, with Deamer helping to edit some of the artwork as needed. 

Honda is a psychologist, not an author, and there is some stiffness with the book as it is trying to teach the concepts, so maybe it is not best for children. 

It is an important reminder about things that we did not that long ago. There are still internment survivors, but they are aging. Mirikitani died before publication. 

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang 

This one almost fits into the other category, not yet written. However, while the family relationships are important, it is more about the history of China's transition from dynastic rule to being briefly a republic and then the takeover of Communism. 

There is a lot of information, which could easily be overwhelming, but it is so well-written that is not a problem and it really brings various historical figures to life. 

Of these four it is the most-recommended. It is also the longest, but not excessive for what you learn.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/05/childrens-books-for-aapi-heritage-month.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/01/dialectics.html 

I guess Poe Dameron is a leftist

I am taking this moment to note that plans being changed between Star Wars installments is nothing new. 

During The Empire Strikes Back, it seemed clear that the dominant romance of the first trilogy was Leia and Han. I still believe (or at least I hope) that no one had decided that Leia and Luke were twins yet when she planted that kiss on Luke to annoy Han and Luke sat back grinning.

Maybe making Rey the granddaughter of Palpatine to make her a dyad with Kylo Ren was important to give their "love" extra credence, but it was also part of a larger trend of making the series less woke.

Perhaps if we get back to the kid with the broom, he is descended from Count Dooku. 

(I guess the Sith aren't celibate.)

Charting the regression from where The Force Awakens starts to how The Rise of Skywalker ends....

• The amazing new force-having person is in fact descended from other powerful people with the force, just not the ones we like.
• Rose Tico will be sidelined.
• It is so imperative that Poe be straight that Keri Russell gets shoehorned in for a hot minute to give him a potential romance. Then two barely seen women kiss to appease those disappointed that Poe and Finn don't end up together.

I say that as someone who did not really pick up that vibe between Poe and Finn, but Commander D'Acy having a wife (a Black wife no less) who had not appeared in the other movies on was one more thing that felt forced.

Sure, there was a lot of online hate. The main cast was a woman, a Black man, and a LatinX man. Trolls objected to all of that, but in a series that is ultimately about the triumph of light over dark, good over evil, you're not supposed to give into the trolls. 

Then, when you try and appease the trolls without admitting even to yourself that you are doing it, it might lead to lower quality writing and plot points that don't feel organic.

If you don't admit it because there is a part of you that doesn't feel right when the hero is not a white man, you might overly favor the leading white guy. 

You might also find the not-Black guy close enough, and overly favor him.

Poe's refusal to trust that the women in charge led to a lot of deaths and loss that such a small force couldn't afford. . 

Oscar Isaac has charm and charisma in spades -- so you want to like him -- but there still should have been a reckoning. 

His plotting happened more during The Last Jedi, defying orders for a counterattack that takes a lot of lives early on, then sending Finn and Rose on the pointless Canto Bight mission and starting a mutiny toward the end. Maybe Rian Johnson would have dealt with that if he had done the last film, but there was enough mess in The Last Jedi to not think that's the answer.

Yes, you would not expect the Resistance to be as domineering as the First Order, but defying orders and mutiny tend to have severe punishments. There are good reasons for that, just as there are good reasons for there being exceptions if the orders are go against laws and ethics. However, "I think I know better than you" may not fit under that.

At some point there should have been guilt and anguish, even shunning by others, for arrogantly assuming that he knew better and the damage he caused.

It might be hard for a white male director to conceive of such a thing. 

Looking at the podbros, they are still insisting that Biden had dementia and Harris would have been exactly as abusive as Trump. that their reasoning was good, and they did not cause any damage, and show that they would rather go all out on supporting rich boys with Nazi tattoos than someone who understands governance, hard work, and commitment.

Being truly heroic requires listening and learning, not just being really passionate and having participated in something good before.

I don't like that guy; is it just me?

You know, I forgot something else that was ridiculous from The Last Jedi: Leia being blown into space by her son and then using the force to get back inside.  

How did so many bad scenes get through? 

If some of the issues with episodes 7 through 9 related to the change in directors, there were overriding influences. One requirement was that Kylo Ren must be redeemed.

That may have been the least believable part of his arc.

Darth Vader always seemed to be very in control. He kept trying to bring over his son, but that wasn't going to happen. That he eventually decided he would rather kill the Emperor than Luke (which also saved Leia) seemed plausible. 

That he would then automatically be smiling with Ben and Yoda is maybe less plausible. I don't feel like any of the writers have thought extensively about the process of choosing light and dark and changing those choices. For what we have seen of Vader, okay, I believe he would choose Luke.

For what it's worth, I also believe that the petulant, reactionary Kylo Ren would kill Snoke over Rey, but still want to rule the galaxy. 

What was less believable was that Rey would be drawn to him, that he would get all earnest and die, and that she would feel bad about the death.

For all the things that she cared about and saw him do, there should have been nothing appealing about him. If the plausibility was supposed to be carried over by the charm of Adam Driver, that was a misfire.

(Unless all of her pleas for him to put on a shirt means that it was his chest, but I still don't see the appeal.) 

It would have worked better without the love story.

I get some of the motivations.

Ben Solo was the only child of two beloved characters; you want to believe that he can become something better.

At the same time, he has done enough bad things that a completely happy ending would be hard to earn; deathbed repentance is a way around that. 

As long as he is dying, why does he need the girl? Why does she need the heartbreak?

I have a thought on why it went that way, but it needs to be explored through a different character. That's what comes next.   

The Last Jedi

First of all, let me make a comparison: 

The Force Awakens (2015) -- 2 hours, 18 minutes

The Last Jedi (2017) -- 2 hours, 32 minutes

The Rise of Skywalker  (2019) -- 2 hours, 21 minutes

All of those movies are long. The Last Jedi is, in fact, the longest, but the actual time difference is not as long as it feels.

When I thought about how long it felt, I would generally focus on the casino scene. Finn and Rose wander around a place that feels "alien" to all we have seen of Star Wars so far (though there was a casino on the star cruiser in the 1979 Brian Daley book, Han Solo's Revenge), with a lot of nonsense about how to look for a guy they never find, getting arrested over parking, and I cannot even remember whether they successfully disabled the tracking device. The way other things went, I am not sure that mattered. It gave them a chance to work in Maz Kanata, but it felt pretty forced.

When I think more, I remember other scenes that took too long and were not worth it:

• Poe continually restarting the message to annoy the First Order ship
• A newly-revived Finn walking around naked in something that appears to be a bacta suit (completely impractical), instead of a tank like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back
•  Rey and Kylo Ren's telepathic talks where she keeps asking him to put on a shirt

The scenes with Poe and Kylo Ren have to do with some other flaws that will be treated in other posts.

For Finn, that may have been partly a way of trying to draw similarities between him and Luke Skywalker. It did show that he is recovering from his severe injuries from the previous film, and it gives him a chance to reconnect with Poe, but mainly is played for laughs. 

It's not funny enough for the time involved.

Hearkening back to The Empire Strikes Back, there was humor, but generally just quick quips that played into the existing points.

• "Laugh it up, Fuzzball."
• "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee!" "I can arrange that."

Those scenes didn't break the dramatic tension.

Rian Johnson might not specialize in dramatic tension.

I like the Knives Out films a lot, but despite there always being a mystery and at least two murders, they are not action or suspense films. They explore things with humor.

They explore important things, too, and I sympathize with what the Canto Bight scenes are trying to do.

They are establishing that there are people whose wealth allows them to lead glamorous lives, without having to worry about what's going on in the rest of the galaxy or the welfare of those who serve them. 

That is reasonable, but it doesn't connect. While a lot of that situation could lead to a French Revolution-style uprising or a Bolshevik to Soviet path, the First Order seems more fascist; it would have different roots. If you can establish the roots maybe there is a point there, but it feels disconnected when it should be connected.

Then, with the children, they are also trying to establish that force prodigies can come from anywhere; you shouldn't overlook anyone. 

That is also not connected enough. If Rey being a nobody from nowhere and having the force strong in her does not show that; seeing the kid with the broom for a moment won't.

Then they had to decide that Rey was not that either. 

Focus on Minh Lê and Dan Santat

I didn't want to call this a spotlight, because separately they both have several books that I have not read.

This happened by accident.

If I recall correctly, Drawn Together came up when I was searching for something else and looked interesting. A grandparent and grandson have language barriers, but are able to connect through drawing. 

I liked it, but I didn't think about it much beyond that. However, I am not the only person in this household who goes through a lot of picture books. The other one brought home Built to Last (the structures two friends build in play always get knocked down, but their friendship doesn't) in April. 

Those names sounded familiar so I looked. It had been almost a year, but yes, this was the same pair. 

In looking to see if there were other collaborations, I found one, but I also saw that they have both done many superhero comics. 

That made it a good time to read The Blur. A bittersweet story about how fast children grow up, much of it is communicated in superhero metaphors.

At that point I did think that I should do a spotlight, but that can get tricky with one person; for two it would be much harder. 

I decided to look up at least one work by each of them. Without planning, they both ended up having a common theme.

2014 Caldecott Medal Winner The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend has one of the potential imaginary friends on the island where they are born get tired of waiting to be dreamed up. He travels across the ocean to a crowded playground and is eventually spotted and named.

Nine years later, Real to Me was published. Written by Minh Lê and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, a furry green creature with big teeth and a long tail misses the friend who others insisted was imaginary and whose sudden disappearance makes him wonder whether she was ever real. He makes new friends eventually and is happy to have the memory.

Bittersweet, perhaps, but probably not as bad as Bing Bong in Inside Out.

I don't know what follows. Reading more from either of them seems likely; reading all from them would be a pretty big effort. 

That being said, I like their sensibilities. 

I don't know if they are friends who will be looking for more collaboration or it all came from publishing decisions, but I think they do good work together.

I am glad these books came my way. 

Minh Lê and Dan Santat Together:

Drawn Together (2016)
The Blur (2022)
Built to Last (2024)

Separately:

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat (2014)
Real to Me by Minh Lê and Raissa Figueroa (2023)

The editing we deserve

I had thought I would complain a little about the latest Star Wars trilogy -- primarily The Last Jedi -- and that would be the end of it. 

I find I actually have a lot more to say about the trilogy than I realized; I should get more into that next week. 

For now, that title was the note I had. I can write about that today because it was not just that movie.

I really enjoyed the Paul Feig Ghostbusters and a lot of Spy, also by him.

What I most disliked in Spy was a tendency to overindulge in anything that seemed clever or fun to explore. 

I would say what I hated most were the specific streams of profanity, but I think that was also an aspect of the self-indulgence.

Good examples would be when they are messing around with the loss of gravity in the plane or when Rayna can't remember Susan's last name (no, my name is not Susan Groupon) or when Susan is being really mean to Anton right before he gets killed.

It's not that there aren't any humorous elements to them. Actually, I think Björn Gustafsson injected a fair amount of pathos into Anton for the limited screen time he had. Still, at some point it becomes a distraction. 

It may be something that's funny in a comedy, or something that has a lot of emotion in a drama, but can still detract overall.

The fist time I remember seeing extras was on a laser disc for Austin Powers: Man of Mystery. There were scenes of friends and family getting notifications of the deaths of evil henchmen. Specifically, they were the one who loses his head to ill-tempered mutant sea bass and the one crushed by the slow-moving steamroller. In addition, there was a scene where Number Two tries to team up with Austin by offering him a briefcase full of money, but it is not the full amount, because he took some out to buy the briefcase, a Fendi.

They ranged from funny to interesting (maybe a little sad for the one henchman's wife and stepson), but they absolutely would have slowed down the film. The movie worked better without them.

This is also true of the extended version of The Lord of the Rings. Yes, we know there is a lot more that could go in there from the books, but putting all of it in there loses dramatic momentum.

Interestingly, it felt like Peter Jackson forgot everything he knew about wise editing choices based on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The two Austin Powers sequels were much more self-indulgent and proportionately less funny.

That may be a trend.

Ages and ages ago I read about the proposed final scene for The Sixth Sense. There was an extended conversation between Malcolm and his sleeping wife, where he got to say more of what he needed to her. Her breathing became less visible, indicating that the cold that he brought was receding, driving home more that both of them were able to be at peace now. 

M. Knight Shyamalan loved it, but it didn't work in the movie, so he cut it.

Again, you can lose knowledge that you have. I suppose that gets to the heart of what "deserve" meant.

What about Hedy?

I thought this would be the simplest post, but it's not.

I left one note about Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a 2017 documentary about the actress and inventor.

"I wish she could have just done science."

She was really brilliant, but she was discouraged from pursuing that because she was a woman. Then, as a beautiful and famous one, we would rather you use your influence to sell war bonds than give us this frequency hopping technology for torpedoes.

Her worst problems in life seemed to come from her husbands, but after the sixth divorce she stayed single for thirty-five years and that didn't fix everything.

Plus, she was the one to initially pursue acting. I think she would have liked to do both.

It was the acting that drew the attention of her first husband, the controlling arms dealer who didn't let her act anymore. It was also through that marriage that she got some of the early knowledge for the frequency-hopping idea.

Maybe if she had been in a technology path she would have come across that anyway, but would she have met a composer who added the technology for synchronizing player pianos? 

(Or would her work have been done on behalf of the Germans?) 

Her film career also allowed her to cross paths with Howard Hughes, who was very supportive of her inventing.

People are complicated.

Those complications cause a lot of the problems that other people will encounter, but there will be problems even under better circumstances. 

Then, regardless of the circumstances, it can be hard to untangle things later.

I wish things had been better for her, but even more I wish for better times now. 

So many women get pushed out of science and technology. They may do things now to encourage girls in STEM, but if they don't do anything about the men who will disregard and downplay work, still credit, and harass women right out of the field, we are setting those girls up for failure.

We are also setting ourselves up for failure through the knowledge and skills that get lost.

Hedy Lamarr got to do more science than a lot of people; there's something to be said for being grateful for what you have.

That's not a reason to stop hoping for better.