Full Circle Associates

Panel: Anna John, Dina Mehta (in absentia), Noriko Takiguchi, Beverly Trayner
Moderator: Nancy White

(When I have a second, I will add in the URLs and the remote notes of Dina Mehta. Check back Sunday morning)

Nancy introduced the panel, then each offered some opening thoughts:

Bev: They and we – issues are similar, but flipped as to who is we and who is they. In Portugal should we go by US rules. For Blogher to get out of this loop, bloghers needs to reach out, new practices, new discourses, new languages. I now know that I’m an identity blogger. Em Duas Linguas because I started by trying to find my international voice, or have my international voice heard in my Portuguese community. Do I write in English for international or Portuguese for my Portuguese community. That quite often paralyzes me. What I say, how much I disclose and who I feel accountable to. I feel accountable in different ways to my international community, which often means US based, and my local Portugal community. I have more blog postings that I have never posted than those that I have put up, frozen, not knowing who I am talking to. I’m very self conscious about the whole language issue. Even when I write in English, do I write in English which is right from my heart or soul, which is a different kind of English I use for an international (Portuguese audience) where I would write more simply, with less cultural references and more context. I would like to hear what other people have to say. I can see Marian, you said something very interesting this morning as well. That you speak 5 language. The idea – you said – international means English. I’d like to put a question mark there. Does international mean English.

Noriko: I also have to start a confession, I’ve been blogging for four weeks and only made four posting. I have been resistant for a long time. As a professional writing who makes money writing, blogging looked so easy, such an easy outflow of words. I wanted to believe that any writing should be more time-taking and precious. I didn’t have energy to do it. I use all my energy in my work to make money. No time for this constant blogging, three postings a day. I changed my thinking about blogging a little bit when I wrote my first book about a Dutch Architect, Rem Kolhaus. I was so curious about what people had to say about my book. I found a lot of blogs about it. Blogging more interesting than Amazon reviews. They would say things really nasty. Some people might share the same interest to me and people who link to this blogger say interesting things. I started blogging 4 weeks ago about eating Sushi properly, in English. My first writing in English, casual and relaxing. Something I know a lot about. It makes sense for me. The Globalization, how you become local. I’d also like to raise the language issue. Since the Internet, as English native speakers, you might not notice that there is this English language structure embedded everywhere. For me who is not totally bilingual, I sort of have two worlds. I do search in English and IK do search in Japanese. You have to have two sites. Blogging is also a very American way of discourse. You have to respond quickly, be provocative, sometimes intimidate your readers to get a response. That is so foreign to me. Isn’t there any contemplations, about when you respond to people. This is something I think we need to talk about. Another issue, as any native language speaker, you don’t get to read other language blogs. I can’t read Chinese or Korean. I wish I could. I am so interested in what people are thinking. How to get a hint about what they are talking about. That’s my comment. One more thing to add. Blogging, when you start your own blog site, you sometimes have the risk of getting siloed. You have to brand and market yourself. I am the blogger in such field. You start saying something interesting. After a while you may start repeating yourself. You have more freedom to talk about yourself, what you are saying and thinking in much broader way. I hope to see a lot of that in groups of blogging.

Anna: I’m coming from a little bit different perspective, born and raised in California. I am comfortable addressing a topic of Globalization being good for women. I write for Sepia Mutiny.com about second generation people from India, anything brown. IF there were things online before, it was aimed at our parents and not of interest to us born and raised here. It is not to dismiss their topics, but we care about things immediate and relevant to being here, now. We are exactly a year old. I can’t think of a better way of celebrating that milestone than being here. Typical to a blogging story, mainstream media was ignoring us. A brown blogger was banned from the convention. I blogged about it, we did a satire about another situation. One of us said we should put this in a central location to find out what’s new. Blogging was huge in the news. People were talking about passes to the convention, citizen journalism. But no S. Asian blogger was at the conventions. We wanted something up and running before the convention. I’m so proud of this site. We cover everything. We had people up here contentious in the political blogging session, saying you have to be contentious. I’m convinced our approach is how to do it. We have 6 voices, we span the ideological spectrum, I’m the only women but this is about to change. There is this interesting view. Cover Bollywood, Cricket, the Dairy Queen commercial wit h the Indian. Anything that has anything to do with Brown. We prefer that term, rather than S. ASIAN. After the London bombing with Pakistani involvement. It is a relevant site. When you talk about globalization being good for women, there was a woman in Pakistan who was sentenced to gang rape for an alleged crime of her brother. The world was outraged. They took away; her passport so she could not come to speak about it in America. We heard about protests in DC. People wanted something to do. So several groups banned together to protest at the Pakistani Embassy. To hold Pakistan accountable. That is like the ultimate example of how globalization is good for women. We have readers everywhere, particularly where the S. Asian Diaspora settled. We could collectively create change for this women. Growing u India was “Calcutta” Mother Teresa and now Hindi tattoos are cool. Even when you have cases in Pakistan, it is often western journalists with a western gaze. I’m not Pakistani. I’m of S Asian decent, but I still feel I can add something unique to that dialog to that conversation. I come preloaded with a cultural sensitivity when these issues are exposed. I welcome all of you to come. We want everyone there. When racial profiling is more prevalent than ever.. I was stopped on the subway after the London bombings. Random searches in the US. That was crazy to be followed by an armed man with firepower looking at me. The account I wrote about that, while cathartic, opened the discussion to other people..

Nancy then Read Dina’s piece.

Comments from the room:

Lilia: I started to blog in English because this is where there community is. But I have so much to pay back to my country (Russia) but realized I can’t blog in Russian. There are not enough bloggers. The whole language, the terminology and context did not exist. I struggled and gave up. I see this in Europe. In Netherlands, people start in Dutch, then they switch into English because there is not enough audience. The people in their language get alienated. Keeping in two language, how do you do that. For me interested get

Bev: I have two blogs. One is a shared blog in Portuguese about the local countryside. My own identity blog, I do write more in English with Portuguese words. Constantly experimenting about translating certain words, use a certain kind of language and sometimes write in Portuguese. I risk losing both Portuguese and English speaking audience who don’t know the Portuguese references. I’m actually, I still don’t know. In a way, that is the aim of my blog, to try and find out if it does work

Did not capture Q&A since I was working the mic.

Wrap Up:
 Anna: Globalization is good for women. For a woman like me with multiple identities, globalization makes space for all of those identities. Reading Sepiamutiniy can help you see another part of the world. So important to me. Passionate about the fact - I don’t want to be tarred with the same brush my Middle Eastern fiends. I want to be heard. Keep the issues on the forefront. More global than just our issues. Wish for: start a group blog with people who have compelling voices different from yours. Sepia Mutiny – the never ending cocktail party owith smart S. Asians. Break down boundaries, enlighten, the cooler aspects of globalization

 Noriko: You bloggers can give me a lot of advice, to me a beginner. As a writer, I would say that writing is discovery, a process to discover yourself more than exposing yourself. Use this blogging tool for that. I also think that maybe try to escape from labeling yourself could be interesting support to that process
 Bev: use your firsthand experience of the power imbalance between women and others, the imbalance between English and Non English. English is so embedded in technology, SN, everything related to the internet. Thinking of exploring writing in another language. The blogroll of women who blog internationally. Put the Bablefish translator on your blog so people can get some kind of idea from it. An easy easy thing to do.


Categories: blogher, globalvoices, bloghercon, women