Daily Archives: September 26, 2025

student blogs

Response to “High Muck a Muck”: Playing Chinese

I think I’m just doomed to experience mental fatigue every time I engage with electronic literature. I’m not used to having chapters and stanzas broken up like this. Of course, I can always go back and re-read, but I find that it’s much easier to forget every time I click off of something. Complaints aside, this work is visually very beautiful. Despite the story being about immigration and there being some themes of forced assimilation, all of the imagery is distinctly Chinese, even down to the way the shops are drawn. There are even videos showing more visuals if you click on the cameraman in the corner of the pages. I think alongside telling a story of a tragic history, each image feels like there’s a distinct aura of homesickness.

 Of the seven places that serve as headers, my favorite was “Nelson.” It’s got a familiarity that I understand, from the setting to the acquiescence in the face of racism. The segregation of Chinese people in the cemetery was disgusting but unsurprising. The subject appeared multiple times in this section, with one of the stanzas being about a a non-immigrant who called Chinese people ‘lucky’ for having their own space. Meanwhile the speaker has to explain that no, this is only the result of discrimination. The shops feel like they’re representative of how Americans only cared for the Chinese within the bounds of services they could provide: laundry attendants, restaurants owners, laborers, etc.

There was also the mention of someone who was a Chinese “freemason.” I had to do a bit of background research into that. They were the people who cared about the preservation of their culture in Canada and stressed the importance of community. They’d do things like create newspapers to keep other Chinese people informed and provide essential services to newer immigrants, like healthcare and housing. I never knew that. Everything I learned from the American point of view about Chinese immigration was about how they were exploited. Never anything on their community. 

-SS

student blogs

High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese

This week’s reading introduced us to a much easier understanding interactive poem (in my opinion). In short, this poem explores the immigration of Chinese settlers on the west side of Canada. I thought it was really interesting that the authors used a body as the whole premise of the poem. For example, the body’s right arm was highlighted with a blue dot that represented all of Canada. But then we have other body parts that represent other cities in Canada. I guess my question would be, “Why a body in the first place?”.

And then I thought to myself, isn’t migration a physical thing? These journeys literally become embodied in peoples lives.

However, it was really illuminating seeing the different works of each other. Every point that was clicked had a different voice and led to a different aspect of an immigrant experience. My favorite part of this piece would have to be the sensory experience itself. The Chinese instruments playing in the background, followed with literal stories being told from real people. Additionally, the deeper meaning behind this interactive poem got me thinking about “having a choice”. Throughout this entire piece, us as readers had a choice on what our next move was, or what we wanted to see next. The authors gave us a choice, unlike the “characters” in the piece who had to move to another country for possibly a better life. They sort of had a choice, but also not really.

Lastly, I was thinking about how this would be such a cool project to work on with my thesis because I am sort of discussing cultural preservation. This interactive poem that keeps cultural memory alive would be such a huge part of my research.