Language

Hands down... Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Hong is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. I feel somewhat in the dark trying to decipher what the poems in the book say. They're not even in completely in English, or another one language, like what? Why make it harder for the reader to understand what's going on? Is there a specific purpose behind this than having it be a futuristic multi-lingual language? The fact that the book is written in the view of the historian's, it is somewhat confusing. The historian knows English, but he/she (Mr. Khactu says its a he but we don't know for sure yet) decides to keep certain things in the contemporary language. So there definitely is something important about the language here, but what? This language barrier that Hong creates with the reader, I feel helps make the story more for the reader to interpret in their own way. The weirdness of the language makes the story feel foreign. It gives off a feeling that something, either the characters or the plot, is very different and non-typical than what we normally understand in everyday life. This may connect to a lot of the themes we have covered in our English class, especially the meaning of what it's like to be Asian-American. There are many American aspects in the story, but yet something is still "different". As we continue reading the book, we hope to clarify these topics and understand the story better.