Got Rice? Got Fashion? Got Pride?

For tonight's dinner, I made rice. Since I'm in college now, I don't have my grandma to serve me food anymore. Because of that, I began to eat less and less rice. But when I was cleaning my rice cooker, I thought of the days when I was growing up as a kid. I would eat rice 3 times a day, even 4 times a day. I chuckled because it's funny now that I think of it. I mean, I use to eat it so much of it. Every meal will contain rice and every meal I will eat a large quantity of it. But I never got tired of it, in fact, tonight I was craving for it. Since we are in an Asian American Studies class, I am assuming most of us know how that feels. We love rice and we just can't have enough of it. It is part of our life. Our history. And we take pride in it.

Ever heard of the song Got Rice? You must have in middle or high school! Since I want to keep this PG13, I'm not going to type out the lyrics or such. So, listen to it here!


Vietnam to Japan to Mongolia, Philippines to Taiwan to Cambodia, Korea, ah ah, hometown China! yeah!! Got rice, got rice, got rice?

The reason I introduced this song and even wrote a blog on this is because sometimes I feel like people of other race look at us like we are crazy for eating so much rice. I live with 2 white girls, 2 white boys, 1 Philipino guy, and 1 India guy, and they think I'm ridiculous for consuming so much rice. But the fact is, I can't help it. I just want to say that fashion is important. Because like Kawamura said, fashion reflects who we are. It sets an image for others to perceive of who we are. An example is that "Cultural anthropologists view dress as a way to show one's modesty, but dress can also be viewed as 'the desire to be sexually attractive and adornment,' and even be protection (Kawamura 15). We know that even in America, there are many different kinds of fashion and among some the most popular ones, there are fashions that contains a hint of Asian fashion. Ao dai, bindi, Kay Pao, and many others are being used in modern fashion and will be continuing to be used in future fashion. We should take pride of our culture and be content with how much American fashion is influenced by our tradiational Asian fashions.


-Ivan Lee (Blog #6)

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Kawamura

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